Well written Sea Adventures are lovely things

Thanks to the recommendation of our dear justice_turtle, I not only spent money, but have made absolutely no progress in any other books since my collection of Septimus Quinn arrived - the 4 titles in one cover version - and on top of it I've ended up staying up too late reading and being a fog-head this week.  Such is the danger of listening to my flister's reading recs.  ;-) I'd never heard of him before, but am grateful to be corrected.

A couple of years ago I don't think I would have ever noted "sea adventures" as being a category that I self-identified myself as a reader of.  Sea adventures were for boys, after all, you know... Captains Courageous and Treasure Island and so on.  But then I fell in with Horatio Hornblower and discovered Napoleonic era adventures are darn fine things, Mr. Septimus Quinn being essentially 'Hornblower Lite' and thoroughly enjoyable as such. Patrick O'Brien was good but a bit too gritty and smelly in the details - just give me the sea air and the challenge of a storm and leave out the nitty-gritty on just how a rat is eaten, thanks, and I'm happy.

Just maundering.  Have you ever been surprised to discover you are, in fact, a fan of a genre you never thought you'd read?