BOOKS 2013: August

[bottle_of_smoke]

76. Close Quarters - William Golding
"In a wilderness of heat, stillness and sea mists, a ball is held on a ship becalmed halfway to Australia. In this surreal, fête-like atmosphere the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them thickets of weed like green hair spread over the hull

Comments

[apiphile]

Would you recommend To The Ends of the Earth etc? Because I got a little way into the series before He Who Shall Not Be Named became a thing and got fed up with your beloved's face and everyone's voices grated BUT I hugely enjoyed Lord of the Flies so... wiiiiiill I enjoy these books? Spoilers: I loved Master & Commander and I like misery. AS YOU KNOW.

There's a whole series of books like Kestrel for a Knave, I think by the same author, and I read about nine billionty of them when I was a child, I think one of them involved a teenage boy who befriended a lion? The author was clearly into animals as a redemptive force.

[bottle_of_smoke]

I'm not really certain. I think the series did a good job of getting the tone of the books across, though there were some changes plot-wise (nothing too obnoxious), so if you didn't like that you mightn't like the books. Plus Talbot, as I said, is kind of a cock who loves the sound of his own voice. OTOH you might like the "people are fucking awful" bent, and the class stuff is interesting, and Talbot is actually quite funny. He also becomes a better person because of his experiences, realising that the privilege he's been born into gives him responsibilities, though he's still something of a dick at the end. I quite liked that incomplete redemption arc stuff. Each book has a different tone of voice to it as well which is strange, with the third being written retrospectively rather than in journal form like the first two, so they almost don't feel like the same series. Basically I dunno. I liked them, though I've got to be in the right mood to read them and find bits tedious