Suggest me up!
I am ordering my mother’s birthday gift, and I’m a few dollars short of free shipping. What inexpensive but good book should I order to go with it? My current thought is to get my mother Nathaniel Philbrick’s Sea of Glory, because we both really liked In the Heart of the Sea (hey, Musey, that’s the book I was telling you about), and I think she’d like it, and bonus, I could read it too. But I could also get myself a book. So: ideas?
May 24th, 2005 at 12:24 pm
A few of my favourites are Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion, which I insist on lending to all my friends whether they want to borrow it or not, Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut and The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood. (I actually fell in love with a character in this book, Duncan - the only time that’s happened to me with someone fictional!) Hope you find something good.
May 24th, 2005 at 2:24 pm
What genre? I’m currently recommending Limbo by Alfred Lubrano and Little Children by Tom Perotta
May 24th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
I read Timequake, The Edible Woman and Little Children; I’m not sure I’m interested enough in buying Limbo. Seafaring disaster stories it is!
May 25th, 2005 at 1:23 am
It’s not seafaring disaster, but Two Years Before the Mast is a good account/memoir of early 19th century seafaring life. There’s a fair amount of nautical terminology, but you can skim those parts.
Incidentally, have you ever seen the Shackleton film footage (released, I think, as a movie entitled South)?
May 25th, 2005 at 9:00 am
I’m adding the Philbrick to my reading list! My boat book fetish sticks to Arctic/Anarctic exploration and Napoleonic era stuff. So….What about Andrea Barrett’s Voyage of the Narwhal or Caroline Alexander’s The Bounty: The True Story of Mutiny on the Bounty? Alexander’s book The Endurance is also good and awfully pretty.
May 25th, 2005 at 10:44 am
I have not seen the Shackleton stuff, though I’d like to. The first Philbrick was amazing, and I liked Bounty, but her writing style sucks. I didn’t read Voyage of the Narwhal, but luckily I can’t recall which book I am supposed to get my mother, so I can add all sorts of nautical stories, thank you Zh.
May 25th, 2005 at 3:18 pm
One you might really like is The Professor and the Madman - about a crazy man who helped write the Oxford English dictionary. It is a fascinating story.
May 25th, 2005 at 3:20 pm
And, book is noted and added to my list!
July 10th, 2006 at 5:53 am
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