Sometimes fantastic tag mashes start out as extremely boring ones. I wandered through LibraryThing looking at “nature, essay” tag mashes and then “birding, ecology” and then “birding, fiction” – and then I stopped because I got roughly 1,000 books by Patrick O’Brian. Now, I’ve only seen the movie, and there was a fair amount of time devoted to Stephen Maturin’s birds, but apparently, it’s a major theme in the books. Then, inspired by all the Aubrey-Maturin results, I searched for “Napoleonic wars, faeries” – and found only Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Which, well, yes, but I was hoping there was another book that featured both. I considered “Napoleonic wars, adventure” but figured I probably needed to narrow that down, and so I finally hit the jackpot with “Age of Sail, awesome” which produced this delightful list:
The Letter of Marque by Patrick O’Brian
Treason’s Harbour by Patrick O’Brian
The Far Side of the World by Patrick O’Brian
HMS Surprise by Patrick O’Brian
Post Captain (Aubrey Maturin Series) by Patrick O’Brian
Black Powder War (Temeraire, Book 3) by Naomi Novik
Throne of Jade (Temeraire, Book 2) by Naomi Novik
His Majesty’s Dragon (Temeraire, Book 1) by Naomi Novik
Master and Commander (Aubrey Maturin Series) by Patrick O’Brian
The Bounty Mutiny by William Bligh
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Dea and I both immediately fixed on The Bounty Mutiny, which neither of us has heard of (aside from the due South association,) but, clearly, if it’s on this list, it must be deserving of our attention. We’ll see who gets to the shelves first, bwahahahaha!
Watertown Readers' Advisory 