Me too. Hornblower was ok but his love life annoyed me and his personality reminded me of someone that I’m not overly fond of succeeding in spite of myself.
Good stories, I just didn’t like any of the people in them. Didn’t like the show either.
Aubrey/Maturin series I’ve read start to finish a half-dozen times. Hornblower - once.
I’d still recommend checking them out, but I wouldn’t recommend buying the entire series up front.
Checking them out, I find that there are other uncollected Hornblower stories:
Hornblower and His Majesty [Hornblower], (ss) Colliers Mar 23 1940
Argosy (UK) Mar 1941
Hornblower and the Hand of Destiny [Hornblower], (ss)
Argosy (UK) Apr 1941
Hornblower and the Big Decision [Hornblower], (ss)
Argosy (UK) Apr 1951
Hornblower’s Charitable Offering [Hornblower], (ss) Argosy (UK) May 1941
Hornblower and the Pirate Plot [Hornblower], (sl) The Saturday Evening Post Feb 22, Mar 1 1958
There are others listed here, but some may be excerpts from the books:
http://users.ev1.net/~homeville/fictionmag/s583.htm#A21782.35
I’m lucky that Mr. brown is as much in love with these books as I am. We’re espresso drinkers, and we like to drop some Aubrey-isms in as we make our morning coffee – “Killick – Killick, there. Bear a hand – light along some coffee. Hot and hot.”
During my latest reading, my loudest guffaw came when I was reading about Jack drilling the midshipmen on history. He asked one about what started the American Revolutionary War, and the midshipman replied it was about tea - “They threw it into the harbor, shouting ‘No reproduction without copulation’”, which Jack cautiously accepted as a right answer. Forgive my paraphrasing:
Jack: Stephen, what was it the Americans said at the beginning of the war?
Stephen: “No taxation without representation.”
Jack: Not “No reproduction without copulation”?
Stephen: No, indeed, some of the lower species can reproduce without copulating.
Jack: So the Americans didn’t say that.
Stephen: No, the Americans are very much in favor of copulation.
Jack: Well, damn taxes anyhow.
I’m with CK on this one. I’ve re-read the Hornblower series many times. I tried reading an Aubrey one - couldn’t get interested enough in it to finish it. Couple of years later, thought i’d give it another go, maybe I’d just tried one that didn’t grip - so tried another one. Still not interesting enough to incline me to finish it. So I’d have to say that Hornblower’s the better series, from my perspective.
There is humor in the Hornblower novels, just not nearly as much as in the movies (and in the movies, most of Hornblower’s own attempts at humor fall flat; the movies’ humor tends to be in the interactions amongst his men). Probably one of the funniest things in the books is when we are informed as to Captain Hornblower’s nickname amongst his men (never used when any of the officers are near enough to figure out who’s shouting it): “Old Horny” (his first wife, Maria, calls him “Horry” and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her he hates the sound of it). Oh, also when Hornblower gets outwitted by his second wife in “Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies” was pretty amusing, at least to me.
Granted, nothing as guffaw-funny as the line in the Master and Commander movie about how you must always select the lesser of two weavels. 
Actually, some of the lines in the Hornblower movies do get close, such as this exchange from Hornblower: Retribution, with Lieutenants Hornblower, Bush, and Kennedy deciding they need to jump off a cliff into the water to escape some persuers:
Kennedy and Hornblower grab Lieutenant Bush by the arms and drag him towards the cliff
Hornblower: “On three!”
Hornblower and Kennedy: “One… two… THREE!”
Hornblower and Kennedy jump off the cliff, taking Bush with them
Bush: “I CAN’T SWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISPLASH” 
I read through the Hornblower series many times from age 12 to present. Read through Aubrey/Maturin once. Loved them both. Would not, on balance, compare one adversely to the other. Hornblower is an easier read (perhaps because Forester’s technique is less intrusive). Forester wears his erudition lightly.
Yes, Hornblower is neurotic, but easy to be fond of for all that. The Hornblower story arcs are relatively easier to follow and less bogged down with numerous characters - Forester seems to have happily struck upon the device of having an ensemble cast (Bush, Maria, Pellew, Barbara) which changes only relatively slowly so there is time to develop the characters. I contrast that with, for example,
the unsatisfactory way that Diana is simply written out in Aubrey/Maturin
I also found
the to-ing and fro-ing of Aubrey and Maturin’s financial affairs, and their relatively random resolution a little unsatisfactory
The stronger ensemble effect in Hornblower may be a consequence of the fact that Hornblower’s career is completed in fewer books.
And for mine, Aubrey’s villains can be a little cartoony. Hornblower’s Spanish opponent in The Happy Return, by contrast, is wonderful.
While there is nothing in Hornblower that is the parallel of Maturin’s devotion to natural history, Hornblower’s combination of intellectualism (devotion to Gibbon, etc) and physical courage suggests that Aubrey/Maturin represents (to some degree) a splitting of aspects of Hornblower into two characters, perhaps for plot-exposition reasons. And the splitting allows presentation of more extreme manifestations of the separated characters than would be plausible if combined in the one, as in Hornblower.
The wonderful formality of 19C manners is still present in Hornblower, although in a slightly different way. There is almost no overt sexuality. The sense of obligation and attendance to duty and concepts of honour feature in similar ways. The absence of slapstick humour is not a burden in Hornblower - he is no painfully humourless Thomas Covenant.
I read Hornblower in chronological order, as I did A/M. I was not troubled by the (relatively minor) plot hiccoughs this causes - it’s not supposed to be a John le Carre, after all.
I can’t imagine anyone who loves A/M not enjoying Hornblower.
Yeah, but you have to assume that Bush had a falling piece of rigging knock him silly, since it’s apparant that he has no memory of serving with Hornblower since they were both lieutenants when you meet him in “Beat to Quarters”
The thing that pissed me off the most about the Hornblower novels was
Bush died.
I though that was gratuitous and unnecessary.
Well, I’ll admit to being irritated when O’Brian - big spoiler - killed off Bonden so abruptly.
I remembered another funny scene from the Hornblower series. Hornblower has just come aboard ship, and he’s in his cabin, and he is infuriated by an incessant thumping noise coming from the deck right above his cabin. He gets dressed and storms on deck ready to rip someone’s head off - only to find that the noise is being caused by
Bush’s wooden leg thumping on the deck as he walks around.
Then he has to pretend there is some other reason why he’s come out.
Disclaimer: I last read through the Aubrey/Maturin books last year, but haven’t read any Hornblower books for a decade.
I was thinking about this some more, and in addition to my previous comment about humor, I also think the Aubrey/Maturin books have a lot more touching moments as well. One part that I absolutely love to reread is when Stephen, terrified that his daughter Brigid is autistic, overhears Padeen teaching her Gaelic. When she comes to dinner and greets him in perfect Gaelic, and he responds, I tear up every time.
Another great scene is after Jack’s father dies, and Jack is first interacting with his 10 year old half brother Philip. Philip, now fatherless and practically motherless, is returning to boarding school and asks Jack, a famous war hero who is no doubt idolized by all Philip’s classmates, for “an old pencil stub, or a piece of paper with your name on it I can show the other boys.” Jack thinks for a moment, then gives him the lead ball Stephen removed from his back after his last battle. Can you imagine being a 10 year old boy showing that to your friends?
And a hijack - if you enjoy the Aubrey/Maturin interactions, and like science fiction, I recommend the Lt. Leary series by David Drake. You can read the first book here. It’s basically Aubrey/Maturin recast as space opera (the author freely admits he based it on O’Brian’s work), and all the main characters are there - Aubrey & Maturin of course, Killick, Bonden, Sir Joseph Blaine, etc. all have their parallels.
My favorite quote come from when the ship’s clock had been dropped and broken and someone ( I forget his name) asks Stephen why the Captain seemed so upset about not it. Stephen explains that the ships clock is an important navigational tool in that it is used to determine latitude. Whereupon Aubrey strides over and tells Stephen that most navigators use a sextant to determine latitude. The clock is usually used to determine longitude, “You remember longitude Stephen, they are the lines on the map that go up and down instead of side to side”.
I found some of the most touching moments also to be those that concern the two girls rescued from the island epidemic. They way the whole crew takes to raising them chokes me up every time.
I was thinking the adventures of Lt Reede and the Ringle would make a fantastic series all on it’s own. The ‘biscuit toss’ scene was incredibly thrilling.
Oh, I’m still very upset about that. Especially the fact that
It basically happened offscreen and for no particular reason.
It doesn’t necessarily reflect Forrester’s actual reasoning, of course, but I recall an article by Gene Roddenberry in which he discussed using Hornblower as a model for Captain Kirk, and he observed that Hornblower was interesting to him because he was a man with 20th Century sensibilities in a 19th Century setting. Ever since I read that observation it’s influenced my reading of the Hornblower series, and I think it’s one of the essential differences in the books – Aubrey is very much an 18th Century man.
I also seem to recall a statement somewhere by O’Brian in which he said that he had never read the Hornblower stories (or at least not prior to his first Aubrey/Maturing story). If that’s so, there are some pretty interesting coincidences. I believe Aubrey and Hornblower were both supposed to have been born in 1776 and the fight with the Spanish treasure fleet are places where the two charachters coincide. In spite of O’Brian’s protestation, I’ve always thought that Aubrey was written as the anti-Hornblower. Hornblower hates music, Jack loves it; Hornblower doesn’t have much sense of humor, Aubrey loves a good laugh; Hornblower is introspective, Aubrey much less so; Hornblower is very aware/concerned for his physical safety, Aubrey gives little thought to danger; Hornblower is stiff and reserved, Aubrey can’t keep his pants zipped, etc.
A while back I posted a geeky speculative question on the relative abilities of the two with Hornblower and the Lydia vs. Aubrey and the Surprise . Consensus was that Aubrey easily comes out on top.
In his essay on writing the novels, Forrester explained his reason for this: War is brutal, so people had to die, even central characters; and war isn’t heroic, people die in unimportant little skirmishes, not in heroic grand battles, just the same and are just as dead.
That’s certainly true in real life; but in the novels, it feels like a betrayal of faith. I’ve read the Hornblower books, and The African Queen, and The Good Shepherd, and it seems to me that Forrester is a rather cold author, without a lot of sympathy for his characters.
Hey, I’m used to books where it ain’t all sweetness and light. I’ve enjoyed most of the Honor Harrington books (if you like space opera, Honor Harrington is basically a space navy Hornblower - there’s even a little throwaway line about it in one of the books) and in those books
just about everybody dies eventually, in big dramatic battles and not so much. That I accept. But Bush’s death didn’t seem true to the books, and it was offscreen! Just, like, by the way, this guy who you’ve loved for book after book bit it, like, a couple days ago. Just FYI. It upset me.
One of my favorite things to do in the early Honor Harrington books was to find RMN ships that shared names with ships from the Hornblower books (IIRC, Captain Helen Zilwicki commanded the HMS Hotspur in the Short Victorious War, there were various other ships which shared names with Hornblower ships in other books).
Man, about deaths in the Harrington series: At All Costs was a freaking BLOODBATH, not just in terms of redshirts (well, I guess in the RMN they’d be Blackshirts), but even major characters like Javier Giscard and Alistair McKeon bought it, IIRC, McKeon’s death was even off-screen.
I always thought that Hornblower was Forester’s largest exception to his rule of Awful Things Happening to his Characters (and it wasn’t just his war books – people generally suffer horrible fates in all his books. And the ending of the novel “The African Queen” isn’t the same as that of the movie). Hornblower Gets Away and Succeeds. By the end of the last story chronologically (“The Lasty Encounter”), he’s freakin’ Admiral of the Fleet! If he tried to continue, he’d end up as God. (Albeit an insecure, highly introspective God who was still tone-deaf).
But generally, his characters have a tough time of it. For the ultimate in depressing fates, read The Gun. Everyone who comes into contact with that piece of prdnance comes to a bad end. They adapted it into a movie The Pride and the Passion, which I haven’t seen, but which had to have ben extensively rewritten (the book is very episodic and the characters change throughout). I’ll bet they stuck a Happy Ending on it (The Pride and the Passion (1957) - IMDb )
There are a few other Happy Endings in Forester’s books. “The Captain from Connecticut” and many of the short story characters. But generally you get the feeling that Forester’s heroes ought to be wearing red shirts.
To be fair, Hornblower has on occasion had a rough time of it. I nicknamed “A Ship of the Line” “Horatio Hornblower Gets Shafted”, but then, ASotL WAS the Hornblower equivilant to Empire Strikes Back (although to fully fit that mold, El Supremo would have to turn out to be Hornblower’s father)
Actually, one thing I liked about the original Hornblower trilogy was how each book had him dealing with a different nobleman (maybe Father figures, but it doesn’t quite seem to fit that way).
Beat to Quarters had El Supremo, the insane rebelling land owner, A Ship of the Line had Sir Admiral Leighton, the arrogant and not-terribly-loved-by-his-men CO of Hornblower’s squadron, and The Happy Return had the French nobleman who let Hornblower and his boys crash on his couch for a few months.