It seems as long as people have told stories, they have told sea stories. Gilgamesh crosses the sea and even dives to the bottom in the quest for eternal life. The nautical adventures of Homer’s Odysseus are literally legendary, as are those of Jason and the Argonauts. More recently, both Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative of the Life of Arthur Gordon Pym and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick set sail from Nantucket on voyages that sounded some strange depths indeed. Environmental writer Rachel Carson had her first big success writing about The Sea Around Us, while Iris Murdoch’s masterpiece sends her obsessive hero on a misguided journey to escape himself by the side of The Sea! The Sea! Here are some other sea stories to get you started on this oceanic bingo square:
The Rathbones by Janice Clark
Young Mercy Rathbone and her cousin Mordecai set off across the briny deep in search of her whaler father in this offbeat gothic adventure inspired by Homer’s Odyssey and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
In 1830, newly freed slave Rutherford Calhoun accidentally stows away on a slave ship bound for Africa. Johnson’s National-Book-Award-winning saga plumbs the hellish depths of the Atlantic slave trade with disconcerting wit and devastating compassion.
The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje
In three life-changing weeks at sea, travelling unsupervised from his native Ceylon to his mother in London, 11-year-old Michael experiences the world in startling new ways, sewing seeds that will be harvested years later by the novelist he will become.
Shark Drunk: The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean by Morten Stroksnes
Hunting the elusive Greenland shark across the coasts of Norway, a journalist and an artist have plenty of time to reflect on life’s depths and shallows.
For more books set on or by the sea, check out our booklist.
For more ideas for books to meet your Summer Book Bingo challenge, follow our Shelf Talk #BookBingoNW2020 series or check the hashtag #BookBingoNW2020 on social media. Book bingo is presented in partnership with Seattle Arts & Lectures .
~ Posted by David W.
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