I decided to read Treasure Island after I finished the STARS show Black Sails, because I really enjoyed the show and wanted to read the book they got their inspiration from. To be fair, most pirate fiction probably gets their inspiration from this book, but the show actually used characters from the book to tell their story. And so that is why I struggled through this book for four months. I feel like I’ve lost my reading mojo, because I just couldn’t push past the […]
Ya wee scunner, if it’s nae Scottish it’s crap!
The nice thing about living with another book lover is that when I’m between books and want to pick up something to read, I can just peruse the shelves, and I’m sure to find something new. The upside is this can lead me to discover books I would probably never have sought out on my own. The downside is my options are often limited and are heavily weighted towards nautical fiction and British history. So recently when I was trying to decide on what new […]
Good Year for the Roses
This is what in less P.C. days would be called a boys’ book. It’s a tale of outlaws and adventures, bravery and chivalry, fair maidens and feats of strength. Set in the midst of The Wars of the Roses, Robert Louis Stevensons’s episodic novel follows young Dick Shelton, a ward of the lord of his manor who comes to be torn between his various loyalties in an uncertain time. Shelton has been under the protection of Sir Daniel since the death of his own father […]
Here, Have a Black Spot.
When I first read Treasure Island, I was living in Georgia’s low country, an area embroiled in pirate history (in fact, the Benbow Inn is rumored to have been modeled on Savannah’s Pirate House). I like my reading to provide a little bit of local color. Anyway, perhaps it was my own location that made it easy to fall into Stevenson’s world. I can understand how Jim Hawkins might feel every time his little world is intruded upon by a pirate, those dual senses of […]
Love, Travel and Illness: Louis and Fanny
Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne has packed up her children and moved from San Francisco to Europe to get away from her philandering husband. While she is in France, she meets and eventually develops a relationship with Robert Louis Stevenson, a man ten years her junior, who will become famous as the author of pieces such Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (unfortunately, that’s the only thing of his I’ve read). Their life and their relationship ends up being very determined by his […]