Needed a small book to carry with me on a bus tour thing and I chose "The African Queen." I am going to assume that we don't need spoilers for a 60 year old movie and and a book that is much older than that.
More of a bodice ripper (for lack of a better term) than I expected. Some things along that line that aren't in the movie.
The Bogart character (Charlie) had a native mistress at the Belgian mine, until the Germans took her away.
Charlie also had been married 12 years before-but is not with her-but no divorce has happened yet-so legally he is a bigamist.
A certain scene in the movie implies that they made love-with the obvious implication that Rose (Hepburn) gave Charlie her virginity.
The book however is surprisingly graphic to the extent of describing the physical pain that Rose felt while the first act was happening.
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in the 90's, I read the Patrick O'Brian sea novels set during the Napoleonic Wars. I actually knew someone who read the whole series every year. Not sure if he still does-it has been 10 years since I knew him.
While there is no bigger fan of "Boy's Own" type adventure stories here than me-I have kind of avoided Forrester's "Horatio Hornblower" series of sea novels in the Napoleonic Wars-because I figured everything would be bowdlerized and cleaned up and so forth.
After "The African Queen" book-I may have to re-assess that stance.