It's a busy week - in a good way - for me, hence no posting until now. However, I do get online and enjoy reading great posts like this: 

Neil Gaiman about growing up with C.S.Lewis, J.R.R.   Tolkien and C.G. Chesterton

I love it when writers manage go convey such a detailed sense of what reading and experiencing other books feels like.  And the way Gaiman captures the what the (in themselves very different) styles and worlds of Lewis, Tolkien and Chesterton evoke is magnificent.

I also enjoy a good dissing now and them,  and in  this post, which actually is a praise of C.S. Forresters non-Hornblower novels, legionseagle sums up the ever popular Regency/Napoleonic Wars era novels and tv shows thusly:

Given that the Napoleonic wars is Not My Period, but is the subject of an awful lot of popular literature and TV I've consumed over the years, I've formed the view that notwithstanding Napoleon's command of the Continent's resources, tactical genius and overwhelming superiority in numbers, the poor little Corsican bugger never stood a chance, trapped as he was between Hornblower's crushing man-pain at sea and the chips on Sharpe's shoulders on land.

Ah yes.:) See, that's one more reason why I'm eager for Jo Graham's trilogy set in the Napoleonic era to be published. They center around a woman, Elza aka Ida St. Elme, are from the French pov and will reveal how Dutch-turned-French female common sense and bisexual confidence  were more than a match for Hornblower's man pain AND Sharpe's chip on the shoulder...