July-September Theme Read: The Sea

Welcome to Theme Read #3 - The Sea


- the Mediterranean, taken from the coast of the Italian Riviera, July 2008

"It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top." - Hunter S. Thompson

"The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore." - Vincent Van Gogh

"maggie and milly and molly and may" - e.e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles; and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea


- the Atlantic, taken from the Burren, Ireland, July 2010

Fiction

*Note: These lists were created using the tagmash feature on LT, so I cannot vouch for their merits.

If you are looking for…

A Starting Point:
1. American Sea Writing: A Literary Anthology by Various
2. Great Stories of the Sea & Ships by N. C. Wyeth

Something Non-US/UK/Canada:
1. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima – Japan
2. The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima – Japan
3. A Winter Book by Tove Jansson – Finland
4. The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco – Italy
5. Shipwrecks by Akira Yoshimura – Japan
6. Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco – Italy
7. Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto – Japan
8. The Nautical Chart by Arturo Pérez-Reverte – Spain
9. Paradise of the Blind: A Novel by Duong Thu Huong – Vietnam
10. The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel García Márquez – Colombia
11. Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia – Cuba
12. Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini – Italy
13. The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini – Italy

Something Written by a Woman:
1. The Waves by Virginia Woolf
2. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
3. Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman
4. The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett
5. Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve
6. Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge
7. The Ripening Seed by Colette
8. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
9. Gentian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge
10. The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch
11. Coastliners by Joanne Harris
12. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
13. The Mermaids Singing by Lisa Carey
14. The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble
15. Ordinary Families by E. Arnot Robertson
16. Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-gazer: A Novel (P.S.) by Sena Jeter Naslund

A Popular Series:
1. Alexander Kent
2. C. S. Forester
3. Patrick O’Brian
4. Julian Stockwin

Classics:
1. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
2. Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway
3. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
4. To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway
5. Various works by Herman Melville
6. The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
7. The Odyssey by Homer
8. Various works by Jack London
9. The Pearl by John Steinbeck
10. Various works by Joseph Conrad
11. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
12. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
13. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
14. Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
15. The Day's Work by Rudyard Kipling
16. The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo
17. Various works by William Golding
18. The Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff

Something that You Loved as a Child:
1. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
2. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis
4. Along the Shore by L. M. Montgomery
5. The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann D. Wyss
6. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

Something Else!
1. Seawitch by Alistair MacLean
2. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
3. The Sea Runners by Ivan Doig
4. Being Dead by Jim Crace
5. The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch
6. The Sea by John Banville
7. The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor by John Barth
8. Spartina by John Casey
9. Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Connor
10. The Town That Forgot How to Breathe: A Novel by Kenneth J. Harvey
11. Amagansett by Mark Mills
12. English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
13. Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute
14. The Poseidon Adventure by Paul Gallico
15. Jaws by Peter Benchley
16. The Raven by Peter Landesman
17. In Hazard by Richard Hughes
18. The Voyage: A Novel by Philip Caputo
19. The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy
20. The Navigator of New York by Wayne Johnston

Feel free to add your own recommendations, and share your reading - both planned and completed!

Questions to Keep in Mind as You Read
1. What body of water is central to your book? How does the author characterize the sea - stormy, calm, blue, grey, endless, etc.?
2. What role does the sea play in your book? Is it symbolic of something, or merely a setting?
3. Is the sea a bringer of freedom and joy, or of danger?
4. What is it that draws the characters in your book to the sea?
5. Check out the Hunter S. Thompson, Vincent Van Gogh, and e.e. cummings quotes in Post #1. To what extent do they apply to your reading?

Thanks for setting this up. I'm looking forward to this theme. Most of the books I was considering for this theme are actually already on the lists you came up with (the Yoshimura, the Mishima and the Hugo actually). Good stuff. Can't wait!

Nice start to your theme, Cait! Off the top of my head I can think of one book I can highly recommend that doesn't appear on your lists, Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, the first novel of his Ibis Trilogy. I've ordered the second book in the trilogy, River of Smoke, which has just been published in the UK, and I'll definitely read it in July. I'll almost certainly read The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch and The Sea by John Banville, and I'll have to look for other books that I've read or would like to read.

John Banville's Ghosts also fits this theme, which is seriously messing with my TBR stack, can I say.

>5 lilisin: - Awesome! I'm finding lots of the Japanese novels enticing too.

>6 kidzdoc: - I have The Sea, The Sea on my bookshelf, so I will probably read that this summer.

>7 southernbooklady: - LT says that Ghosts is second in a trilogy. Have you read the first one? I'm curious if they are also stand alone novels.

Cait, this is great! I love the photos and the poems. Thanks so much for setting this up and for setting a high bar for the next RG host!

I can highly recommend both In Hazard by Richard Hughes and, maybe even more, his A High Wind in Jamaica. And one of my very favorite books is The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson.

I picked up We the Drowned by Carsten Jensen a few months ago in a bookstore and planned to save it for this theme read.

Interested in exploring some of the other ideas you and others have listed.

>8 Cait86: It works as a stand alone, but without giving any spoilers, there are references back to Book of Evidence, his earlier crime novel.

Oh, excellent, excellent theme! So many to choose from off my shelves...

I am currently listening to the audio of The Outlaw Sea by William Langewiesche which is just wonderful in its recounting of modern day piracy, crime, and other disasters at sea (notably the sinking of the ferry Estonia in the 1990s in the Baltic). It's a great non-fiction read.

Just came across this thread, so wasn't previously aware of the themed read for the summer. I think it's a great topic and the lists provide way too many intriguing possibilities.

However, even though the lists are thorough they're not exhaustive, and I would be remiss if I didn't recommend a book I read just last month, chosen on the basis of a rave review in the Toronto Globe and Mail Book Review. It's We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen. Translated from the Danish, this book is about the sea and the all-too-often fatal attraction it holds for mankind. Covering nearly two centuries in time, and a vast number of the world's seas. from Capt. Cook's Pacific, to Cape Horn, to the waters of Newfoundland and to the deadly North Sea during the Second World War, We, The Drowned is a terrifically exciting read, and meshes perfect with the themes of this read.

This might just be the time to pull out that copy of The Sea that's been sitting on my shelf forever.

My lineup includes:
Losing Nelson by Barry Unsworth
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Being Dead by Jim Crace
We'll see how many I have time to get to...

The most recent Books on the Nightstand podcast (#134, Surf and Turf) discusses books about the sea!

Cait86, I agree with everyone here that you did a fantastic job. I definitely will not be meeting your standards in the next quarter.

I can definitely recommend The Shipping News, Ahab's Wife, The Old Man and the Sea, Star of the Sea, and The Pearl as excellent books which fit this theme.

I also recommend Billy Budd, Foretopman as a Classic.

On my TBR I have many I could read including Dreaming in Cuban, Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett, Nation by Terry Pratchett in the YA area, Shogun which would fit both this theme and the next quarterly theme, and Moby Dick which, though not mentioned in the intro, all of us know it fits this theme if we're up to reading such a tome. I also have The Caine Mutiny for a re-read, a book I love and long to use this theme as an excuse to push it up the stacks.

Lots to choose from, but I'm leaning towards Dreaming in Cuban to start.

I am currently reading The Prospector by J. M. G. Le Clezio for the Author Theme Reads group and while it is not "about" the sea, large portions of it are taking place on the sea and I think I will be able to comment on it in this thread.

I'm going to read We, The Drowned, which I have been saving for this. I'll probably also read Das Boot about a German submarine boat during WW II.

I had a hard time figuring out what to read for this theme read, as I wanted to read from my TBR stack instead of adding another book to it. But, after searching through the teetering stacks of books (life-threatening, I tell you!), I came up with one short story and one book.

Murder at Sea (also known as Problem at Sea) is an Agatha Christie short story featuring Poirot on a cruiseship. Of course there is also a murder.

Atlantis by David Gibbins is a thriller with a description that makes me think at least part of the book will be spend under the ocean's surface (not to mention the fact that Atlantis is, you know, the sunken city)

From an extraordinary discovery in a remote desert oasis to a desperate race against time in the ocean depths, a team of adventurers is about to find the truth behind the most baffling legend in history. The hunt is on for…

Marine archaeologist Jack Howard has stumbled upon the keys to an ancient puzzle. With a crack team of scientific experts and ex–Special Forces commandos, he is heading for what he believes could be the greatest archaeological find of all time—the site of fabled Atlantis—while a ruthless adversary watches his every move and prepares to strike.

But neither of them could have imagined what awaits them in the murky depths. Not only a shocking truth about a lost world, but an explosive secret that could have devastating consequences today. Jack is determined to stop the legacy of Atlantis from falling into the wrong hands, whatever the cost. But first he must do battle to prevent a global catastrophe.

*Excuse the sarcasm and general hyper-ness in this post, I had an exam today and that always makes me a bit weird afterwards - release of pent up nerves, you know?*

As I mentioned in post 17, I've been reading The Prospector by J. M. G. Le Clézio, a novel in which the sea is very important, if not completely the focus of the book. So I can answer some of the questions posed in post 4.

The body of water is the Indian Ocean, and it is characterized in many ways; calm and blue, stormy, endless and most especially as a means of finding what one is searching for. It is both a setting, and abeautifully and carefully described one, and symbolic of the world beyond where the narrator is living. It definitely is a "bringer of freedom and joy" to the narrator, who ends the book by saying "Now night has fallen. To the depths of my being, I hear the living sound of the rising sea."

For my review of the book as a whole, you can visit the book page or my Club Read 2011 reading thread.

I just wanted to make a recommendation...
A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Life of William Dampier: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer by Diana Preston is about the man who made maps the sea that we still use today! William Dampier is said to be the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe.

Not a "global read" I suppose, but I would highly recommend The Cruel Sea, one of the best books I have ever read on this theme. The sea pervades the novel, becoming as much a character as the ship and its crew. The opening lines about the sea are especially poignant*, and from there the novel gradually and inexorably builds into a powerful portrait of life at sea during WWII (it would have done equally well for the last theme read). Great film too, and one of the few cases where the film does justice to the book. I watching a film version of a book I intend to read, but in this case I found that familiarity with the film helped me keep the characters straight. Both highly recommended!

*

This is the story - the long and true story - of one ocean, two ships, and about a hundred and fifty men. It is a long story because it deals with a long and brutal battle, the worst of any war. It has two ships because one was sunk, and had to be replaced. It has a hundred and fifty men because that is a manageable number to tell a story about. Above all, it is a true story because that is the only kind worth telling.
First, the ocean, the steep Atlantic stream. The map will tell you what that looks like: three-cornered, three thousand miles across and a thousand fathoms deep, bounded by the European coastline and half of Africa, and the vast American continent on the other side: open at the top, like a champagne glass, and at the bottom, like a municipal rubbish-dumper. What the map will not tell you is the strength and fury of that ocean, its moods, its violence, its gentle balm, its treachery: what men can do with it, and what it can do with men. But this story will tell you all that.
Then the ship, the first of the two, the doomed one. At the moment she seems far from doomed: she is new, untried, lying in a river that lacks the tang of salt water, waiting for the men to man her. She is a corvette, a new type of escort ship, an experiment designed to meet a desperate situation still over the horizon. She is brand-new; the time is November 1939; her name is H.M.S. Compass Rose.
Lastly, the men, the hundred and fifty men. They come on the stage in twos and threes: some are early, some are late, some, like this pretty ship, are doomed. When they are all assembled, they are a company of sailors. They have women, at least a hundred and fifty women. loving them, or tied to them, or glad to see the last of them as they go, to war.
But these men are the stars of this story. The only heroines are the ships: and the only villain the cruel sea itself.

> #21 I thought Robinson Crusoe was loosely inspired by Alexander Selkirk's spell on Chile's Más a Tierra / Juan Fernández I....?

#21 & #22 - I once read Selkirk's Island by Diana Souhami - it was an interesting summary of the real story behind Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe - Alexander Selkirk was the sailor marooned on the island (you refer to #22). William Dampier was I believe the captain of the ship that made the decision to maroon Selkirk there. He is a pretty fascinating character and I'm sure there must be some more good reading out there on this maverick of the seas...?

#22/#23
Ok, here is what it says in A Pirate of Exquisite Mind:

"A New Voyage Round the World ran to three printings within nine months and was rapidly translated into several foreign languages. It spawned a market for travel books, which for many years thereafter remained the public's favorite reading. As is usual for this period, there are no records of print runs, but some measure of Dampier's success can be gauged by comparison with Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Published twenty years later and the most popular secular book of its time, it built on the appetite for travel first created by Dampier and borrowed heavily from him."

and in the epilogue:

"Dampier's writing undoubtedly influenced Daniel Defoe and in particular helped shape Robinson Crusoe."

William Dampier wasn't the captain when Selkirk was left behind, but he was his shipmate. Dampier was also on the ship that rescued him (4 years later!).

#24 - Yes that's right - thanks for clarifying my hazy memory on this... The fact he was on the ship that picked him up four years later is remarkable. There is a portrait of Dampier in the National Portrait Gallery. Certainly a fascinating personality in maritime history.

I'll read at least three books for this challenge:

The Prospector by J. M. G. Le Clézio (currently reading)
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh (the sequel to Sea of Poppies)
The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch

>#23,24,25 Thanks very much to both of you for the information! I must just try to read something on this for the theme read then...

I think I should add a few more to the pot!

Ernest Shackleton's wondrously epic and inspiring memoir South: The Endurance Expedition - though not strictly a directly 'Sea' themed story - it is about the 1914-16 Antarctic expedition to be the first to traverse the continent - the expedition doesn't quite go as planned and there are many truly awe-inspiring sections of writing as the great man recounts what he would come to refer to as his 'White War' in the Antarctic Ocean. Anyone who isn't yet familiar with this tale must check this book out. My review for those interested is here (there will be spoilers...): http://www.librarything.com/review/69305266 .

Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the Narcissus, despite it's title seeming awful to modern ears, is probably my favourite of the great master of nautical classics. It's a short read as well. Other good maritime Conrad reads would be Youth: A Narrative, Typhoon, Falk, and The Shadow Line.

The Island Within by Richard Nelson is a beautiful and intimate love affair between the author and an island he lives near off the south-west coast of Alaska. It has many episodes concerning deer-hunting and the author's love of the spiritual ways and traditions of the Indians, but he also writes beautifully of the sea and the sound he regularly has to negotiate to get between his home and the island. A first-class piece of late 20th century nature writing.

I couldn't see The Sea Wolf And Other Stories by Jack London yet in the list, nor his South Sea Tales for that matter. Jack London is another whose obvious love of and respect for the sea leads him to be in my opinion one of the finest writers on the sea I've so far read.

Sailing Alone Around The World is a gripping and fascinating read by the first man ever to do so - Joshua Slocum.

I think this is a great idea for a Reading Globally theme read, and I'm looking forward to getting many more superb recommendations!

I finished The Prospector by J.M.G. Le Clézio last night, and you can read my review of it here.

I finished A High Wind in Jamaica on Friday and reviewed it here today.

I finished We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen. Here's the review I posted on the book page.

Oh, how this book went on and on and on . . . a frustrating mixture of fascinating, exciting adventure and boring looks at small town life, interesting portrayals of the world and unrealistic, overly analyzed characters, insight into life as a sailor and unbelievably coincidental plot elements.

Part of the problem stems from Jensen's goal of telling the story of a town, Marstal, a small island that produced many of Denmark's sailors and ships, over the course of a century from the 1840s through the end of the second world war, through the stories of some its residents, while at the same time recreating the world of sail and its conversion to the world of steam. It is an ambitious idea, but it doesn't quite work. The most engaging moments are the tales of seafaring -- to Australia, Tasmania, Samoa on the one hand and to Newfoundland and Greenland on the other -- and the depiction of the work of sailors, life aboard ship, and the roles of the captain, first mate, and other ranks. These parts were compelling and un-put-downable.

These tales over the century are linked through a few characters, and by Jensen's use of the first person plural, "we," to create a kind of Greek chorus of the townspeople, observing and commenting on the characters and their lives in Marstal. This, and a lot of what happens in the town itself, is, for me, where the book breaks down. The beginning of the novel, which deals at length with a sadistic schoolteacher, seemed mostly pointless; the discovery of a human skull in the waters around the island seemed unnecessarily melodramatic (as does the role of a shrunken head earlier in the story); and the difficult-to-believe but endlessly explained psychology of one of the women in town and her actions a distraction. All of these (and more) detracted from the rest of the book for me, as did the author's attempts at character analysis in general, the feeling that he was trying to create a plot that could encompass all the interesting stories he found out about late 19th and early 20th century shipping and sailing, and his frequent and obvious foreshadowing. He can hit you over the head making his points.

I don't mean to completely knock this book, because I did read the whole thing and I found parts of it, especially the parts about the sea, truly compelling. I just wish the author had had a good tough editor.

Additionally, for this thread, I'll comment on some of the questions Cait posed above. First of all, it covers almost all of the seven seas on the various voyages described in the book. I would say the sea is at the same time home, a challenge, a way to achieve manhood, and the ever-present threat of death. It is both real and symbolic.

Just came across this quote in Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King and thought of this thread:

I fished off that dock many a time when I was little, Andy, and I guess I thought it'd always be there, but in the end the sea takes everything.

I highly recommend In The Heart of The Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. A histroric recounting of the ship that a young Herman Melville sailed on. Reads like a novel.

is haunting. reminds one of Edgar Allen Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

#33 I agree, In the Heart of the Sea is a terrific book and would be an excellent read for this group.

Since I can't seem to settle on one thing these days, here's what I'm working on for the "sea" read:

Island beneath the sea by Isabel Allende. I abandoned the audiobook, but I picked it up in print and have been reading this at lunch. It’s historical fiction, set in Saint-Domingue (present day Haiti) at the end of the 18th century. It’s good but not great. Written mostly in third person, the novel focuses on Zarite (Tete) a mulatto slave and the people around her.

Though the action (at least in the first half of the novel) takes place on an island in the Caribbean, the"island beneath the sea" actually refers to death. I keep reading because I want to find out how Zarite gets to the place that is foreshadowed earlier in the book, and because this is a relatively painless way of acquiring some basic history.

More exciting to my taste was Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki, the real-life story of six men sailing from Peru to Polynesia on a balsa raft in 1947. Heyerdahl had developed a theory that the Polynesian Islands had been settled by voyagers from South America. Since the academic community’s immediate response was that it was impossible to sail that far on a raft, Heyerdahl set out to prove them wrong.

I’ve also read a book from the public library’s juvenile collection called Crossing the seas; Americans form an empire 1890-1899 by Eric Schwartz that has given an interesting overview of the influence of the Monroe doctrine on the annexation of Hawaii, the Spanish-American war, US involvement in Cuba, the Phillipines and Puerto Rico.

Finally, I’m attempting another audiobook, Nathaniel Philbrick’s The sea of glory: America’s voyage of discovery about the four-year sailing expedition to explore and chart the Pacific Ocean. This expedition, which took place in the mid-1840s, charted almost 300 islands and a new continent – Antarctica.

So . . . Allende's book is the only one that comes close to fitting the goal of exploring the world through fiction, but I sure am enjoying the ride!

I read Losing Nelson by Barry Unsworth. Not entirely a sea-themed novel, though sea battles and naval heroes were a large component. It is historically accurate as far as I can tell so I'll consider myself that much smarter on British naval history in any case. My review follows:

Losing Nelson is about many things: OCD personalities, the creation of heroes, the hero ego, feminine vs. masculine interpretations of events, the effects of bad parenting, and of course British sea battles around 1800. I found it to be exceptionally well written and even though I am generally bored to tears by battle scenes, I found Unsworth's to be more palatable and interesting than most. The most brilliant part of this book though is the masterful character depiction of Charles Cleasby. His disfunction, obsessions, and painful interpersonal skills were perfect. Odd as he was, I felt I completely understood who he was and how he came to be that way. His flashbacks to his childhood were particularly haunting.

I recommend this book to most readers who appreciate a slowly paced but well done work of literature. 4 stars

Just found this group in July and the theme of the sea convinced me to join my first LT group. Since then, I have reread In Hazard and have read Life of Pi, which has been on my tbr pile for some time, as I had completely prejudged it as something I wouldn't like. Thanks so much for prompting me to read it and to change my mind.

My suggestions would be Long John Silver by Bjorn Larsson to find out what Silver did with the rest of his life; Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone to see what drives someone to sail alone for huge distances; and Galore by Michael Crummey for the story of an unknown, washed ashore.

Here's my review of the book I read: (US author--Russian, Canadian and US territories in the mid 1800's) This one has lived on the TBR mountain for a long time--it's one I meant to read the last time this group read ocean themes......

The Sea Runners by Ivan Doig

In the mid-1800’s, Alaska was a Russian territory. Natives were used by the Russians for menial labor; more skilled labor, such as blacksmithing, was often provided by Scandanavians, indentured for seven years in exchange for their passage to the Russian territory. This story is based on a true event. Four of these men, tired of being treated as slaves, stole a native canoe and set off southward to the American port of Astoria. The distance paddled, from what would later be known as Sitka to the Oregon coast is approximately 1000-1200 miles. This distance is staggering as Doig points out that this would be equal to starting from the coast of Norway and paddling to the coast of Italy. In addition, these men managed their feat in midwinter, escaping during Christmas celebrations.

The coast they travelled is a maze of channels with literally hundreds of islands and passages. The battle against the sea is vividly described—storms, fog, the totally uninhabited coast except for a few hostile natives and the sheer distance they had to paddle produced not only physical but mental challenges. The beautiful but deadly setting is wonderfully described. I found the characters believable and well realized. The plot had several unexpected twists that kept me turning the pages.

I have been a fan of Ivan Doig’s storytelling for many years now. This is an early work of Doig’s, obvious in that his writing style is far less polished than in his later books. There is an odd mix of very convoluted, incredibly long sentences, followed by staccato partial sentences. I found this combination hard to read and it made it difficult for me to get into the storyline. Nevertheless, after feeling that I was slogging through the first few chapters, Doig’s storytelling once again caught me and I was hooked.

Recommended with some reservations about the writing style. 3.5 stars.

Review Atlantis by David Gibbins (4 stars)

Jack Howard, an underwater archeologist, discovers clues that could lead him and his team to the legendary city of Atlantis. But the deep waters of the sea don’t only hold the secrets of the past, they are also the terrain of pirates who will stop at nothing to get their hands on valuable archeological finds. And when Jack’s team discovers a Russian submarine from the Cold War era, there is suddenly more at stake than just their own lives.

I loved this book. It had a little bit of everything I love: history, mystery, and adventure. It is definitely a book for those that love history, as it is full of historical information. It is very clear that David Gibbins knows what he is talking about, as well he should, considering he’s an underwater archeologist himself. His hands-on experience is most notable in the descriptions of the diving scenes, which were breathtaking.

The only downside of David Gibbins’ extensive knowledge of his subject is that sometimes the book was a bit information heavy. Especially on history subjects, which I didn’t mind because I love history, and on weaponry, which got a bit tiring after a while because it doesn’t really interest me.

But, all in all, this book was a great read and I am really happy it is only the first in the series. I look forward to reading more of Jack Howard’s adventures.

Answers to the questions as asked in post 4 by Cait68

1. What body of water is central to your book? How does the author characterize the sea - stormy, calm, blue, grey, endless, etc.?

The body of water most central in this book is the Black Sea, and it is characterized by its lifelessness. At the depth the characters reside for most of the book there is no life due to toxic conditions.

2. What role does the sea play in your book? Is it symbolic of something, or merely a setting?

It is a setting, but a very important one. And very diverse, much more than I had originally thought possible.

3. Is the sea a bringer of freedom and joy, or of danger?

The sea is a treasure trove full of history yet to be discovered, yet also a dangerous place where heavily armed pirates without any regard for life rule. A true double-edged sword.

4. What is it that draws the characters in your book to the sea?

The historical treasures buried beneath the waves. Not the monetary gain that can be had from them, but purely the knowledge they hold.

5. Check out the Hunter S. Thompson, Vincent Van Gogh, and e.e. cummings quotes in Post #1. To what extent do they apply to your reading?

"It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top." - Hunter S. Thompson, it’s like a description of the book. Pirates and crooks rule the international waters, and sometimes even the territorial waters, and all characters are very aware of this, and have to deal with it in the book.

"The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore." - Vincent Van Gogh, a description of the characters, who don’t back down in the face of danger. Who go out every time, and don’t always come out unscathed.

I've started Tony Horwitz's Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before.

Here are five books, recommended by B&N, on the subject of sailing: http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Five-Books/Sailing/ba-p/5459?sourceid=L000...

I am deleting what I originally posted because it turns out we do have a leader for the fourth quarter migration theme read -- whymaggiewhy -- and I had a (I hope momentary) lapse of memory!

Rebecca, I was under the impression that I had already agreed to lead this one. If someone else would rather do it because they've never lead before, I'll certainly step down.

Again, thanks, thanks for reminding me, and apologies for my memory and reading lapse!

Not a problem. I'll put up a thread regarding it on 9/1 or shortly thereafter.

I finished Being Dead by Jim Crace while on a seaside vacation. Quite apropos. Here's my review and "sea" comments:
With Being Dead, Jim Crace takes a very original look at death and love and life. It's almost micro-biotic. With utter calm, detachment, and beautiful prose he describes murder, death, and decomposition down to the cellular level. I enjoyed the story-- the past love life and marriage of the deceased. However, the whole theme of the book was quite depressing: people die and you don't know when but it could be just around the corner and you're going to turn into soil and everything else will keep going on without you. I don't know, that just depressed me, and I'm not typically sentimental. I wold definitely not recommend this for "older" people.
The marriage aspect of it was also the most unromantic perspective possible. Perhaps accurate, but sad all the same.
So I give the book credit for being unique and very well-written-- even beautiful-- but it won't be for everyone. 3.25 stars

The story does not happen at sea, but by the sea. Seaside landscapes and sea life are a big part of the mood of the book and Crace describes it all perfectly. The main characters are zoologists studying small sea creatures and they love the seaside in a way that transcends your typical "isn't it nice to sit by the ocean." They revisit the location of their first encounter since the area is about to be bulldozed for condos. I suppose it is sweet or beautiful that they got to die here and meld with the sand and get eaten by the creatures. It was kind of icky too.

I finally finished Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before. Cook plied both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans while on his 18th Century voyages of discovery, mostly the Pacific.

Cook was the son of a laborer, and should have expected the same for his life. However, his father's employer, a landed gentlemen, recognized his intelligence and had him educated for a few years. There he excelled in mathematics. After working for a short while with a merchant, he began working from the bottom up on ships, eventually enlisting in the Navy, again at the bottom, and quickly working his way up the ladder, leading to him piloting his own ship intent on discovering new lands.

Tony Horwitz begins the book when he serves for a week on a replica of Cook's ship, Endeavor. There he learns many of challenges such a ship brought with it in the 1700s when sailing into nearly totally uncharted areas. Most of the rest of his journey discoverying the places Cook discovered are by airplane, with the exception of Alaska, which he again does by boat (a ferry).

I learned an immense amount about Cook's brilliance, foresight, and great courage and about his discoveries and how those places have been changed in the centuries since. Cook was a much more important discoverer than I knew and I appreciate that this book enlightened me in such an entertaining way.

I'm coming to this thread late. When I was reminded that this quarter's theme reading was related to the sea, I found only two books on Mt. TBR that qualified: The Search for the Giant Squid by Richard Ellis, and the one I ended up choosing: Prehistoric Sea Monsters by Josef Augusta.

Questions to Keep in Mind as You Read
1. What body of water is central to your book? Bodies referred to as Triassic seas, Jurassic seas, etc. Some of them were located in the middle of current continents!

How does the author characterize the sea - stormy, calm, blue, grey, endless, etc.? From the preface: "a boundless expanse of water, glittering majestically on sunlit days and calm, starry nights, magnificent in the rays of the setting sun..." He goes on in that vein for three more long paragraphs.

2. What role does the sea play in your book? Is it symbolic of something, or merely a setting? After the preface the sea takes a distant back seat to its denizens, so it's merely a setting.

3. Is the sea a bringer of freedom and joy, or of danger? An equal measure of both: joy with success in finding food and danger while one creature tries to escape being eaten by another.

4. What is it that draws the characters in your book to the sea? They are animals that are required by their biological nature to live there!

5. Check out the Hunter S. Thompson, Vincent Van Gogh, and e.e. cummings quotes in Post #1. To what extent do they apply to your reading? Hunter S. Thompson's is perfect. This book is all about the food chain.

No fishermen around at the time this book is set, so the Van Gogh quote is only relevant if one thinks of icthyosaurs, placodonts, and plesiosaurs as "fishermen". They certainly wouldn't have let danger and storms keep them from their pursuit of food.

Even though there wouldn't have been a "molly" back then either, she probably would encounter a "horrible thing which raced sideways while blowing bubbles" if she time-traveled to the eras about which Augusta wrote.

Without having come across this thread, I just finished reading Ahab's Wife, and before that The Sea Captain's Wife. Both on a similar theme of nautical 19C women, and both engaging. Ahab's wife goes to sea when she's unmarried; the SCW persists in accompanying her husband after marriage. I like how they both reveal not only what life at sea could have been like, but also share different aspects of the culture and economy that were interwined with seafaring.

Ahab's Wife (a speculative novel on the character of the wife of Moby-Dick's Captain Ahab, who gets only a few lines in Melville's novel) focuses on New England's whaling industry. SCW is set in the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick, and is about the global shipping and trading, and the small towns that supported it. Interesting parallels can be found between the two.

I read Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier which takes place on the coast of the English Channel. This is a historical fiction story based on Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot, two fossil hunting women. Not only was their interest in fossils uncommon for a lady in the early 1800s, but it was also frowned upon by upstanding members of society.

The water from the English Channel helps in the same way it destroys in this story; it destroys by weakening the slope of the coast causing landslips, but mostly it helps by unearthing fossils for our amateur lady scientists to discover. One part I found amusing was when they found a large fossil too big to unearth. They had to wait a few months for the ocean to help dig it out for them.

Another part I really enjoyed was when Elizabeth Philpot took her first voyage by sea, which was also the first trip she ever took without a chaperone. The feeling of freedom it gave her brought her courage and forever after changed her as a person.

As for the quotes...

"It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top." - Hunter S. Thompson

This makes me think of Elizabeth realizing what she was discovering with her fossils was contrary to what she had read in the Bible, causing her to question Reverend Jones regarding extinction and evolution. It unfortunately was not in his scope of imagination to consider the answers.

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles; and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea - e.e. cummings

Obviously Mary and Elizabeth found shells, Brittle Stars, and stones which fits the poem precisely. I felt like Mary and Elizabeth were like the fossils in a way, finding themselves throughout the story.

I really enjoyed this story because of the strong female characters.

@50: Mary Anning was featured in my book, Prehistoric Sea Monsters!

I finished reading Shipwrecks by Akira Yoshimura (Japan) in September but have only now gotten to writing the review. I want to do more justice to the book but I'm a bit tired and this was all I could master

After non-stop recommendations, I stuffed the book into my purse for the plane ride to Paris. I ended up feasting over the text, not caring about the fact that my overhead light was probably bothering my neighbors' sleep. The book was just too good to put down.

The power of the book is its imagery. It's a visual feast to read with the first half running through the seasons. The main character, Isaku, goes through the coming and going of the squid, the octopus, and the various other types of fish at the coming of spring, winter, fall and summer. Tempting the octopus with a red piece of cloth at the end of a spear, and lying down flat on a boat on a serene sunny day waiting for a flash of silver to appear before hand catching the gathered fish. It feels like watching a National Geographic documentary; one doesn't even need to close one's eyes to see the images; the images float about the page.

Isaku is learning to become the man of the house as his father sold himself for manual labor on a boat and won't return for three years. A fisherman's catch is pivotal to keep the family afloat, allowing them enough to eat and trade. He hopes that he will become a fine enough fisherman so that his father doesn't need to sell himself again for more money. In the meantime, Isaku goes through his daily duties taking care of his siblings and his mother.

While fishing he learns about ofune-sama, a mysterious entity that allows his people to thrive instead of struggle to survive. But while the ofune-sama can bear a great gift, with it can also come great peril to the unfortunate discovery of the village.

Such a powerful book that I will be recommending to anyone as it was recommended to me. It is too beautiful not to be passed along.

That sounds like a fascinating book. I know you have read a lot of Japanese books and I, shamefully, have read none, but your review may be nudging me to start with Shipwrecks -- in fact, I just ordered it!

Fantastic. I'm happy to hear that. And I hope it starts you down the wonderful journey that is Japanese lit.

I agree, lilisin, it looks like a great read. I love all things Asian, especially Japan, so I've added it to my wishlist.

briefly stopping in to thank rebeccanyc for putting me on to Le Clezio's The Prospector. What a gorgeous book.

Just a recommendation about a book which subject is one of the master painters of the sea: J.M.W. Turner; the voyage of the slave ship by Stephen J. May.