Note from Jen: Shirley sent this to me on November 30, but I didn't see her email -- so posting now and counting in our November totals
The Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure selected and introduced by Lawrence Ellsworth Paperback Book: 475 pages Genre: Adult Fiction Pirate Tales
Who doesn’t love a good pirate tale? I have always enjoyed tales growing up such as Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, the stories of Black Beard the Pirate, how could those tales not take one’s imagination on a ride across the sea, salt air blowing in your face, the white caps of the ocean rising and falling with the creaking of the masts flying the Jolly Roger! Even though Pirates were a salty lot and for the most part likely murders and thieves something about that devil may care attitude and doing what you want – leaving land behind to high tail it across the ocean to other exotic shores. Drinking and singing o.k. fighting and pillaging too but isn’t that the freedom feeling we all go looking for when taking off on a road trip? Not to take a single thing from anyone, just to feel that swagger of the romantic ideal of that dark lusty fellow in all those bodice rippers – captain of our adventure – freedom! I think that is why Captain Jack Sparrow is such a delight to so many people, he goes for it like we all secretly wish we could with gusto! You will find that here. Lawrence Ellsworth has pulled together some of the best stories of courageous pirates facing certain doom with sword and dagger drawn all the way to the end of the scurvy dog. Who doesn’t love to talk like a pirate? You learn it as a child and it sticks with you there is never a time you can’t summon up your inner pirate if you really want to. So fun and so are these stories, they take me back to my childhood reading the classics and you really get that same feeling of reading something of quality more so than just the normal stories. These stories don’t stay on the page they come to life. They play their scenes in your mind as your lift the words from the pages with your eyes like walking in a dream alongside these larger than life characters written with love and heart by such authors as Alexander Dumas, who delivers such elegance in his story that you feel where he gathered the Three Mousketeers from or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose tenacious brigadier lures you into comparisons with his oh so famous detective who wielded a cane with the best buccaneer or the deliciousness of the writing of Baroness Orczy who brings you to the streets of France so completely the cobblestones are tangible under your feet and the clip clops of horses traipsing by are loud enough in your ears to spirit you away there while in the enthralling story she tells here, or Harold Lambs packiderms made so real within the pages you can hear them trumpet and feel the embroidered cloth beneath you as you lumber along through the crowd of Moslem peoples. And Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood’s Dilemma describing the elegance of this magnificent pirate down to the black rosettes on his shoes. Ahhh, it doesn’t get much better than this. Aye, if ye be fans of the rogues of the seas then this be yor jug o’ ale. Excellent collection of masters at their craft. Bravo!
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