TSS: Summer Lovin’ Beach Bum Style

I’m departing from my standard TSS practice of lots of minireviews, since I still haven’t quite decided how to divide up my backlog. Instead, I’m going to run with a new idea I’ve been toying with. As y’all know by now, the only thing I love more than reading is putting together a good booklist! But the booklists I make on my blog are nearly always for me, which means they’re full of books I haven’t yet read. Recently, it occurred to me that it would be fun to channel my inner Nancy Pearl and start doing lists of books I’ve read and loved. Since it’s almost summertime here in the Northern Hemisphere, it seems as good a place to start as any! So, in the weeks leading up to June 22nd, I’ll be doing lists based on different ‘styles’ of summer readers. Today, I’m focusing on beach bums. :)

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You’ve got sand, water, glorious sun…what could be more appropriate reading than books of a seafaring nature?

You can’t go wrong with C.S. Forester’s classic Horatio Hornblower series. Hornblower is a British naval officer during the Napoleonic wars, and I find his combination of daring action under pressure and worried interior monologue charming. Forester can certainly write thrilling battle scenes, but he manages to use the naval language in a way that’s always understandable to myself, a confirmed landlubber. His writing style, in addition to being vivid, is nicely utilitarian, so you’ll be able to follow the story even if an occasional beach distraction pops up. While the male characters definitely outnumber the female ones (after all, this is the British 19th century navy we’re talking about!), Lady Barbara is as strong and fun woman as I could ask for. If you’re like me, and prefer to read them in the order they were written in, begin with Beat to Quarters (US title)/The Happy Return (UK title). While this is a marvelous introduction to Hornblower, I must admit that the next two books in the series, Ship of the Line and Flying Colours remain my favourite so far (I’ve read half). Be sure you have Flying Colours close at hand before beginning Ship of the Line; the latter’s cliff-hanger ending would otherwise feel too cruel! Since the books are slim, it’ll be easy to toss a couple into your tote bag with plenty of room left for sunscreen and towels.

If your seafaring preferences tend more towards the outlaw side, or if you just prefer novels with female main characters, be sure to grab Celia Rees’ Pirates!. Who can resist a title that incorporates such excited punctuation? It’s set a century earlier, in 1725 and features Nancy Kington, a girl who grows up in one of England’s port towns and eventually joins a pirate crew to escape an arranged marriage to an evil Brazilian. Along with Minerva, originally a slave from Jamaica, she sails the high seas having many a swashbuckling adventure and always hoping to run across her true love, despite knowing that as a Navy officer, he’d have to arrest her. The book definitely feels like Rees did her homework, but she walks the line of including enough details to make the setting come alive with so many it begins to read like a textbook instead. While Nancy is definitely a strong young woman, with progressive views on gender and race, she doesn’t seem so ridiculously anachronistic that I was continually pulled out of the narrative (which has definitely happened in other historical fiction I’ve read). Instead, I just enjoyed being able to accompany her on such a fun, crazy ride, and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough! For those who have read Rees’ better-known novel Witch Child, I found this one to be much better! And since it’s marketed as middle grade fiction, it’ll provide fun for the whole family. ;) Just be sure not to be turned off by the YA sticker….as an adult who doesn’t read a ton of ‘YA’ books to begin with, I adored every page of this one. I can only hope Rees will write a sequel featuring the same characters one of these days.

All of that time laying around on the beach is sure to make you start wondering more about the sea itself. Turn to Carl Safina for wonderfully personal scientific books centered around oceans and the animals that make their homes there. While Song for the Blue Ocean is his first book and a powerful call for environmental policy change, it’s a bit uneven at times. If I were you, I’d jump straight towards Eye of the Albatross or Voyage of the Turtle, depending on whether sea birds or sea turtles pique your curiousity more. Both are masterful blends of travel (Safina goes around the world tracking these animals), science, conservation, and accounts of what life is like for individual animals. Both are also books I’d recommend to those who primarily read fiction and are trying to branch out. Safina’s style is light and page-turning, but he never ‘dumbs things down.’ Personally, I prefer nonfiction authors who assume their audience has a reasonable level of intelligence but not much background information, and that’s precisely how Safina writes. Additionally, his obvious passion for and wonder about the sea and sea life comes through on every page. And that kind of passion is infectious! Oh, and have I mentioned his reasonably long chapters? One of my biggest pet peeves in nonfiction is when chapter length varies ridiculously (I just finished an eighty-page chapter in one of the books I’m reading now…so annoying!), but Safina does a good job pacing things, so you’ll always have a good place to stop when it’s time to take another dip in the ocean.

I know that this next book is not for everyone, but I ask you to at least give Moby Dick by Herman Melville a fair shot before dismissing it. For years, I’d heard that it was quite possibly the most boring book of all time, so you can imagine when I picked it up last winter, I was incredibly nervous. But it turns out it’s neither boring nor overly long (for a classic)…Melville’s writing is lively and funny and poignant, and I could almost smell that bracing salt air every time I opened up the book. The chapters are on the shorter side, often covering just a couple of pages, which makes it perfect for when you just want a bit of a reading break between beach volleyball games. ;) And sure, there’s a bit of a random digression in the middle detailing scientific information about whales, but if that’s not your cup of tea (I personally found the 19th century science quite interesting, but then…I’m a bit of an uber-nerd at times) you can simply skim those parts of get back to the story!

If you’d like a sea-based story sans all of the adrenaline-pumping adventure moments, The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima is a beautiful, gentle love story set in a small Japanese fishing village. Unlike the other novels I’ve mentioned so far, this is a book you read for its prose; Mishima’s writing is simply exquisite and compelling. I found myself being carried along through the story like a dream, and I believe I finished the book in one sitting (it’s a bit less than two hundred pages). The plot is simple: it’s a tale of first love and the obstacles the two young lovers face. But the setting, the prose, and the character examination are really what make the heart of this book, and for me it left me wanting to read Mishima’s entire backlist.

If nautical nonfiction sounds interesting, but science isn’t your thing, why don’t you try history in The Far Traveller by Nancy Marie Brown. The book is centered about Brown’s research on the medieval Icelandic woman Gudrid, both her fascinating life and modern archaelogy’s attempts to reconstruct Icelandic history. It’s full of stories of the sea, since Gudrid was part of Viking culture, and Brown simply makes history come to life. Before reading this book, I didn’t have a lot of interest in Iceland, but now I desperately want to travel there. :) Even months later, I find myself sharing tidbits I learned from the book with friends and family…it’s really that memorable. Brown’s style is easy and engaging, and her descriptions of the daily life of Viking women will leave more thankful for your time spent lounging on a beach towel. ;)

This might be cheating, since I’m only halfway through the book, but I think Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh is the perfect seafaring novel for anyone who loves historical epics. It’s structured around the ship Ibis and its voyage from India to Mauritius in the 1830s, with the meat of the book being about the back stories of the different characters who find themselves on board. Maritime trade at the time was truly a cultural ‘melting pot,’ and the characters range from an American black man born of a freewoman to Bengali Indians of various castes to haphazard groupings of sailors to Indian-born Brits and French to Europeans who have travelled to India make their fortune. Ghosh’s lanuage is marvelous: it’s salted with sailor slang, several Indian languages, and the mishmash of English and Hindi the colonists at the time used but manages to stay completely intelligible. All of the characters leap off the page, and I desperately care what happens to every one of them. While it’s a thicker book (a bit under five hundred pages), I find myself so absorbed in it that time simply flies. If you like your books to combine page-turning plots with literary style, this one will entertain you through several beach days, while making you long for exotic lands just over the horizon.

Finally, for the more genteel reader who desires a mere touch of nautical seasoning, look no farther than Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which follows the story of Anne Elliot and British Naval Captain Wentworth. Years ago, Anne and Wentworth were engaged, but Anne called it off after a close family friend told her Wentworth’s lack of position and money made the match unsuitable. Now, the Napoleonic wars have left Wentworth a rich, successful captain while Anne, in her late twenties, is teetering on the brink of spinsterhood. Circumstances throw them together again, but what will come of it? Of course, I believe that Austen’s clever writing, sharply drawn characters, and soul satisfying plots make her the perfect choice for any occasion, but this seems especially appropriate for those who enjoy beaches of a cooler nature. When I lived in northern California, I discovered that beaches aren’t synonymous with glaring sun and warm water…if you need to throw a sweater in your beach bag, go ahead and throw Persuasion in too. You’ll be rewarded with one of the best love letters in all of fiction!

Whew. That was quite fun! I hope y’all enjoy reading this list half as much as I enjoyed writing it. I already have ideas for other ‘types’ of summer readers but feel free to share any suggestions. Did I convince any of you to pick up one of these books? And what do you think makes a perfect beach read?