Incredible book. Just about everything related to that raid is amazing.

history of salt and the salt trade and it’s impact on society and history

unironically sounds great. do you have it to hand, i’d like to add it to the list.

I think the natural tendency is to make it live action. Especially with the gargantuan success of things like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. People just expect fantasy to be costumes and CGI I guess.

But I think if someone did it animated. Perhaps even stop-motion, akin to Laika or Aardman, that might be more successful. The thing is, because he satirizes all of fantasy, you kinda have to put all of fantasy on the screen. Things like the golems, the dragons, stuff like that - the jokes only work if the things are real. If they look like people in cheap student-film costumes, the entire thing falls apart.

As for the narration, it could totally work. Just have a narrator. Especially if it ends up at a TV show. Between scenes, at the start of episodes. It would 100% work to bring some of Terry’s voice into the show.

I’ve just finished Batavia’s Graveyard by Mike Dash.

The book retells the story of one of the largest mutinies in history, led by one of the ship’s officers, Jeronimus Cornelisz, who oversaw the massacre of at least 110 people. The book explores the background of the period in history, and many of the people involved in the Dutch Republic. It casts a light on the tortuous trip from the Dutch Republic to the Dutch East Indies, and provides a detailed account of events after the captain and some of the crew’s departure for Batavia in an open boat.

Lord of the Flies meets Castaway, with all the isolation and desperation of something like The Terror, or The Martian, except it actually happened.

How there hasn’t been a film made of this story yet is beyond me.

I picked it up off the back of the excellent Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester.

Winchester examines the annihilation in 1883 of the volcano-island of Krakatoa, which was followed by an immense tsunami that killed nearly forty thousand people. Effects of the immense waves were felt as far away as France, and the sound of the island’s destruction—per Winchester—could be heard as far away as Australia and India.

I really like Age of Discovery stories, anything to do with Indonesia, South East Asia. It’s way more interesting in terms of ‘New World Adventures’ than anything in North America (which, as an American, I’m mostly saturated on).

I just like saying the word boatswain. I think any book with a boatswain or an master of the watch, or where there are commissioned officers who are twelve years old called Mister Goodfellow and shit like that, is fantastic. I love it.