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2022 reads, #47. THE� ‌GREAT� ‌COMPLETIST� ‌CHALLENGE:� ‌In� ‌which� ‌I� ‌revisit� ‌older� ‌authors� ‌and� ‌attempt� ‌to� ‌read� every� ‌book� ‌they� ‌ever� ‌wrote�

Currentlyâ€� ‌inâ€� ‌theâ€� ‌challenge:â€� ‌Margaretâ€� Atwoodâ€� ´¥â€� ‌JGâ€� ‌Ballardâ€� ´¥â€� Cliveâ€� ‌Barkerâ€� ´¥â€� Christopherâ€� Buckleyâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Jim Butcher's Dresden Files | ‌Lee Child's Jack Reacher | ‌Philipâ€� ‌Kâ€� ‌Dickâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Ian Fleming | CS Forester's Horatio Hornblower | Williamâ€� ‌Gibsonâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Michelâ€� Houellebecqâ€� ´¥â€� Johnâ€� ‌Irvingâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Kazuoâ€� ‌Ishiguroâ€� ´¥â€� Shirleyâ€� Jacksonâ€� | ‌Johnâ€� ‌Leâ€� ‌Carreâ€� ´¥â€� Bernardâ€� ‌Malamudâ€� ´¥â€� Cormac McCarthy | Chinaâ€� ‌Mievilleâ€� ´¥â€� Toni Morrison | ‌VSâ€� Naipaulâ€� ´¥â€� Chuckâ€� ‌Palahniukâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Timâ€� ‌Powersâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Terryâ€� ‌Pratchett'sâ€� ‌Discworldâ€� ´¥â€� Philipâ€� ‌Rothâ€� ´¥â€� Nealâ€� Stephensonâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Jimâ€� ‌Thompsonâ€� ´¥â€� Johnâ€� ‌Updikeâ€� ´¥â€� Kurtâ€� ‌Vonnegutâ€� ´¥â€� Jeanette Winterson | PGâ€� ‌Wodehouseâ€� â€�

Finished: ‌Isaac� ‌Asimov's� ‌Robot/Empire/Foundation�

I recently had a chance to watch again all eight of the "Horatio Hornblower" television movies produced by the British ITV in the late 1990s and early '00s, regarding the derring-do adventures of an officer in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars; and my big enjoyment of them all over again finally convinced me to try reading at least one of the original books by CS Forester these are based on, first published in the 1930s through '60s. I've put it off until now, frankly, because it feels like a real grandpa move to me; and that's primarily because when I was a kid in the '70s, these were exactly the kinds of books my actual grandfathers and all the grandfather-types around me used to read, along with unending amounts of Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey, James A. Michener and other such "manly men" genre thrillers about cowboys and conquistadors and square-jawed sailing ship captains, screaming "FIRE!!!" to their dutiful crew shooting a 50-pound cannon out a hole in the side of their wooden ship at those damned dirty Frenchies.

On the other hand, however, I am trying to get in more easy-reading genre thrillers in my life these days, or at least during the summer, to nostalgically honor my pleasant memories of being in my public library's childhood Summer Reading Camp each year; and it's not like I had to sign on for the entire eleven-book series just to check out one of them, and not like I even had to finish the first book if I wasn't jibing with it, given that I just got it from the Chicago Public Library for free anyway. And so I tried it, and I suddenly discovered why grandpas the world over have been falling in love with these books for the last 80 years and still counting, because this turned out to be a lot easier for a non-sailing enthusiast like me to read and understand than I had been expecting, a real corker of a swashbuckler that not only delivers action-movie thrills but also gives you a lot to philosophically think about when it comes to human nature, why we admire the people we do, and the age-old question of whether the severe stoicism of military life erodes our fundamental humanity or not.

Here in the first book of the series, originally published in 1937 during the interregnum of the World War (which, as sci-fi author Ada Palmer has inspired me to do, I now treat as just one big war that lasted from 1914 to 1945, not a War 1 and War 2), we are introduced to our series hero already as a middle-aged captain of a major naval ship in the year 1808, in the middle of the war years when the people of Spain and its Central American colonies rose up against French occupation, declared independence and suddenly became the allies of Great Britain. That's what takes Hornblower and the HMS Lydia not just to Central America but to the western, Pacific side of Central America, where British ships almost never went (this is long before the Panama Canal, mind you, when the only way over there from Europe was to sail all the way around the southern tip of South America), to help out a former member of the Nicaraguan nobility who has decided to enact a military coup of the occupying French forces.

This nicely also helped Forester solve the challenge he faced each time with every new book, which is that he didn't want to have to deal with the Mid-Century Modernist equivalent of snotty Comic Book Guy leaving rants at Amazon about how he got tiny details of actual Napoleonic battles wrong, so he instead set each Hornblower book far away from any of the actual battles that were taking place in the real world at that time. In the 1808 of this book, these were mostly back in Spain and Portugal, so Forester instead places Hornblower literally thousands of miles away, which allows him to be both geographically accurate in the book but also take a lot of liberties when it comes to what actually happens. That's what lets him stuff this first one to overflowing with fascinating developments that, while fanciful, did actually happen occasionally in these years; the Central American noble he's sent to help turns out to be a dictatorial psychopath who literally crucifies his enemies, while Hornblower's ship ends up in a rare turn of events picking up a woman for part of its trip, an important noble back in Britain who's also unusually forward and independent, and unusually has training in treating the sick and injured (and so helps out after a major battle in which half the ship is injured or killed, gaining her a lot of admiration among the all-male crew). And that's not even counting the chasing of a fabled ship filled with Spanish gold; the idyllic pause at a sandy South Pacific island while they tip the entire ship sideways, repair the hole-filled bottom, and create a brand-new 125-foot-tall main mast; and the bragging contest on board over which sailor ate the most amount of rats during a period at sea when they ran out of food.

Yeah, Forester's packing in every detail he can get away with in a tale about the Napoleonic British Navy, including introductory lessons on sailing terms and how ships navigated in the 1700s using only a sextant and the night sky. That's what makes this so memorable, because it's everything and the kitchen sink, not just exciting but thought-provoking and instructive, and so scratches that very specific older male itch that modern authors like Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton do in our own times. That makes it all the more the surprise that it's so relatable and easy to follow as well, and that Forester really squeezes as much as he can out of this milieu by making Hornblower an unusual character on top of everything else, unusually caring and sensitive but who overcompensates by always maintaining a stony arms-length demeanor with his men, ironically celebrated by them for this as an exemplary example of the True British Man. That's beating in the heart of any grandpa nerd who still tears through a book every couple of days like they did when younger, but whose tastes have simply gravitated towards the more traditional, more historical and more conservative as they've gotten older; underneath the fascination with guns and vehicles and other inventions is the heart of a romantic, and this Hornblower novel lets this tech-obsessed military-friendly male reader vicariously see himself in our admirably tender captain, who feels much more deeply for his men than the infamously insular discipline of a naval ship would ever allow him to display publicly.

Forester actually wrote five novels in a row depicting Hornblower at the height of his powers, a dashing and wise Jean-Luc Picard type who is never less than brave, honest, even-tempered, and most often the smartest one in the room, which got us in his fictional timeline to July 1815 and Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo; but public demand for more stories was so vociferous, Forester then turned to Hornblower's early years in the Navy as a bumbling teenager who was constantly making mistakes but still acting with guts and bravery, set way back in the 1790s when Napoleon was still just a military commander and not yet emperor. Those turned out to be equally as popular, so much so that some people now read them in the chronological order of the character, not the order Forester originally wrote them. (Certainly this is what the ITV movie series did, following an adventurous Hornblower in his teens and twenties as he rises from a lowly midshipman [basically a cadet] to eventually the captain of his own warship; star Ioan Gruffudd, who moved to Hollywood at the end of the series to star in the ill-fated "Fantastic Four" movies, has publicly stated in many interviews since that he'd be very enthusiastic about doing a contemporary big-budget adaptation of this first Hornblower adventure now, in that he's currently middle-aged himself and thus naturally ready to take on the part.)

Whatever the case, with there being only eleven books in the whole series, I think for sure that I'll be tackling at least one more of them, and I imagine unless they suddenly go horrible that I'll probably be incorporating the rest into my summer reading challenges over the next decade, when I tackle such other summer-friendly beach and airport authors as Lee Child, Jim Butcher, Elin Hilderbrand, Terry Pratchett and more. For now, I very enthusiastically recommend this first book of the series, at least for those of you who also have at least a theoretical interest in Clancy, Crichton, Michener, Grey, L'Amour and others. I'm 53 this year, so I'm just officially old enough now to start unironically embracing the "grandpa-lit" category out there (eat your heart out, chick-lit); and this first Hornblower novel is a super-solid entry in this category, exactly the gift for the silver-haired technothriller fan in your own life.

CS Forester "Horatio Hornblower" books being reviewed in this series: Beat to Quarters (1937) | Ship of the Line (1938) | Flying Colours (1939) | Commodore Hornblower (1945) | Lord Hornblower (1946) | Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (1950) | Lieutenant Hornblower (1952) | Hornblower and the Atropos (1953) | Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies (1958) | Hornblower and the Hotspur (1962) | Hornblower During the Crisis (1967)