The first book in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series finds our two protagonists in Port Mahon, on the Spanish island of Menorca, as they are about to meet for the first time.
Lieutenant Jack Aubrey is without a ship, and Stephen Maturin, physician and soon to be Jack's surgeon, is without the wherewithal to pay his landlady, or buy his next meal. As the book opens, chance has them sitting side by side in a drawing room listening to Locatelli's C Major quartet and being thoroughly displeased with each other.
From the Amazon description:
Quote:
The beginning of the sweeping Aubrey-Maturin series. "The best sea story I have ever read."—Sir Francis Chichester
This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against a thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of a life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.
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Please use this thread to discuss
Master and Commander as you read it. Rather than wait to open the discussion until everyone has had an opportunity to read the entire book, we'll open the thread early so you can comment as you go on. Please exercise appropriate discretion to avoid spoiling too much too quickly, of course, but honestly, we want to hear what you think. Whether it's about the actual book, or the specifics of a particular version of the book. (Some of us are listening to audio versions, of which there are at least four that I'm aware of.)
Master and Commander is 457 pages long, and is available at:
Amazon US (WhisperSync Enabled)
Amazon CA
Amazon UK (WhisperSync Enabled)
Audible (Patrick Tull narration)
Audible UK (Ric Jerrom narration)
Kobo US (couponable in the US; not available in Canada)
Kobo UK
Overdrive eBook
OverDrive Audiobook (Simon Vance narration)
Let the discussion begin!