October 2, 2001 (12:00 AM) ( link )

Updated the Links page. Master and Commander is proceeding rather slowly; although I'm already about a tenth of the way through, I haven't yet been drawn into the world that O'Brian has created. In particular, I'm having a hard time keeping track of all the names that keep popping up: only Aubrey and Maturin are truly memorable so far. And nothing exciting has happened yet: Aubrey is still slowly trying to stock his ship, and Maturin has been mostly absent. Where is the high adventure, the excitement, the wonderful characters and lyrical prose that are supposed to characterize O'Brian's work? Sigh. I'm staring right now at A Fire Upon the Deep, and I desperately want to read that first. But, I'll suffer as best as I can through Master and Commander, so I can see what everybody is talking about (at least). On another note, I've often wondered whether I would be embarrassed if people were actually reading this web page. It strikes me that I might be: I certainly don't want people reading it in front of me, and it's not as if I'm writing deathless prose here. At the very least, I can expect the quality of these book reviews to improve. But ultimately, these reviews are for me, to figure out what I like about the books I read and to encourage me to read more. So there.