The Reader's Shelf

From Library Journal Going Down to the Sea: Maritime Reads

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean By Casey, Susan 2011-05 - Anchor Books 9780767928854 Check Our Catalog A "New York Times "Notable Book A "San Francisco Chronicle "Best Book of the Year In her astonishing new book Susan Casey captures colossal, ship-swallowing waves, and the surfers and scientists who seek them out. For legendary surfer Laird Hamilton, hundred foot waves represent the ultimate challenge. As Susan Casey travels the globe, hunting these monsters of the ocean with Hamilton's crew, she witnesses first-hand the life or death stakes, the glory, and the mystery of impossibly mammoth waves. Yet for the scientists who study them, these waves represent something truly scary brewing in the planet's waters. With inexorable verve, "The Wave "brilliantly portrays human beings confronting nature at its most ferocious. …More

The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor By Garcia Marquez, Gabriel Editor McDonald, Erroll Translator Hogan, Randolph 1989-03 - Vintage Books USA 9780679722052 Check Our Catalog Translated by Randolf Hogan. In 1955, Garcia Marquez was working for "El Espectador, a newspaper in Bogota, when in February of that year eight crew members of the Caldas, a Colombian destroyer, were washed overboard and disappeared. Ten days later one of them turned up, barely alive, on a deserted beach in northern Colombia. This book, which originally appeared as a series of newspaper articles, is Garcia Marquez's account of that sailor's ordeal. …More

The Hunt for Red October By Clancy, Tom 2010-09 - Berkley 9780425240335 Check Our Catalog Originally published: Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1984. …More

Master and Commander By O'Brian, Patrick 1990-08 - W. W. Norton & Company 9780393307054 Check Our Catalog This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against a thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle. …More

Looking for a Ship By McPhee, John 1991-09 - Farrar Straus Giroux 9780374523190 Check Our Catalog This is an extraordinary tale of life aboard what may be one of the last American merchant ships. As the story begins, Andy Chase, who holds a license as a second mate is looking for a ship. In less than ten years, the United States Merchant Marine has shrunk from more than two thousand ships to fewer than four hundred, and Chase faces the scarcity of jobs from which all American merchant mariners have been suffering. With John McPhee along, Chase finds a job as a second mate aboard the S.S. Stella Lykes, captained by the extraordinary Paul McHenry Washburn. The journey takes them on a forty-two day run down the Pacific coast of South America, with stops to unload and pick up freight at such ports as Cartagena, Valparaiso, Balboa, Lima, and Guayaquil-- an area notorious for pirates. As the crew make their ocean voyage, they tell sea stories of other runs and other ships, tales of disaster, stupidity, greed, generosity, and courage. Through the journey itself and the tales told emerge the history and character of a fascinating calling. …More

Poems of the Sea By McClatchy, J. D. 2001-10 - Everyman's Library 9780375413292 Check Our Catalog Throughout history, poets have felt the ancient pull of the sea, exploring the full range of mankind's nautical fears, dreams, and longings. The colorful legends of the sea-pirates and mermaids, phantom ships and the sunken city of Atlantis-have inspired as many imaginations as have the realities of lighthouses and shipwrecks, of icebergs and frothing foam and seaweed. This marvelous collection includes classics old and new, from Homer and Milton to Plath and Merwin. Here are Tennyson's seductive sea-fairies next to Poe's beloved Annabel Lee. Here is Coleridge's darkly brooding "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" alongside the grandeur of Shakespeare's "Full Fathom Five." And here is Masefield's "I must go down to the seas again" alongside Cavafy's "Ithaka" and Stevens's "The Idea of Order at Key West." In the wide variety of lyrics collected here-sonnets and sea chanteys, ballads and hymns and prayers-we feel the encompassing power of our planet's restless waters, as metaphor, mystery, and muse. …More