Érik Orsenna calls himself a collector of streams. In this book he tries to collect the Gulf Stream: to find where this powerful ocean current begins and where it ends.
Category: Reviews
Review: Steve Mentz “An Introduction to the Blue Humanities”
This review first appeared in the issue of “Literary Guide” (Nr 5, July/August 2023), released by the National Library of Latvia on … More
7Q Review: David Farrell Krell “The Sea”
Meditation and sea are wedded forever, wrote Herman Melville in Moby-Dick. In this book, American philosopher David Farrell Krell meditates on the sea from a philosophical point of view.
Review: “A Cultural History of the Sea” Volumes 1–6
If I were to start creating the collection of the Sea Library today, instead of five years ago, these six books would be the first to add.
Review: Madeline Miller “Circe”
When American writer Madeline Miller’s novel “Circe” was first published in English in 2018, I drank it like the nectar of the gods – quickly and with an intoxicating aftertaste. Now, when reading in Latvian, the effect is the same.
Review: “Albert & the Whale” by Philip Hoare
I have to admit that for a long time I was afraid to read it. I learned to swim after reading Philip Hoare’s previous book. What would be waiting for me now?
With a Bus and a Train to the Island of the Day Before
I’m reading now mostly on wheels. My copy of “The Island of the Day Before” by Umberto Eco is filled … More
Review: “Lampie” by Annet Schaap
Here’s a book that I read each night for my boys at bedtime recently. Soon they started to notice that … More
Review: Ernest Hemingway “Islands in the Stream”
On July 2, sixty years ago, American writer Ernest Hemingway shot himself. Among all else he left a nearly finished book.
Guest Review: Rachel Carson’s Sea Trilogy
Rachel Carson’s seminal ‘Sea’ trilogy – “Under the Sea-Wind” (1941), “The Sea Around Us” (1951), and “The Edge of the Sea” (1955) – has been reissued by Canongate in the publisher’s modern classics series, ‘The Canons’. The beautifully-produced paperbacks – each a celebration of the sea told through poetic nature writing – include a full set of integrated illustrations and a pertinent new introduction by Margaret Atwood.
Review: “The Seas” by Samantha Hunt
“Fuck the dry land. I am a mermaid,” she says in one of the first pages. Narrator of Samantha Hunt’s debut novel “The Seas”, originally published in 2004, is a 19-year-old girl, a protagonist with a witty tomboy’s voice, living in a remote, alcoholic seaside town in North America.
Review: “Salt on Your Tongue” by Charlotte Runcie
Charlotte Runcie’s “Salt on Your Tongue” is a book of stories, legends, myths and songs about the sea, and about women who are left on the shore to take care of the life on land, to wait and hope, while men are in the sea, and about women, who are as dangerous, powerful and mysterious as the sea itself, the mermaids, selkies, sea goddesses and witches.
Review: “Ship to Shore: Art and the Lure of the Sea”
“Ship to Shore: Art and the Lure of the Sea” is a monograph, a book of conversations with selected international artists whose work is connected to the sea. In sixteen intimate interviews with curator and book’s editor Jean Wainwright artists reveal how their works came to be and what the lure of the sea means to them.
Review: “The Immeasurable World” by William Atkins
“The Immeasurable World” by British writer William Atkins is about seven deserts in five continents, and about desert per se, divine and infernal. Author travels to Oman, Australia, China, Kazakhstan, United States and Egypt. “It was like nothing I had experienced save for being at sea.”
Guest Post: “Eye of the Shoal” by Helen Scales
Louise Kenward, artist and writer, in a guest post about Helen Scale’s latest book “Eye of the Shoal: A Fishwatcher’s Guide to Life, the Ocean and Everything”, where author disputes and demystifies any romantic notions, or fears, the reader has about fish.
Review: “The Rings of Saturn” by W.G. Sebald
There are books that you never truly leave, “The Rings of Saturn” is one of them. Close to impossible to escape the dreamy landscape, that dwells among the pages; it has soaked into my skin and has become part of my thoughts. “The Rings of Saturn” by W.G. Sebald enchants.
Review: “Burnt Island” by Alice Thompson
The sixth novel by British writer Alice Thompson, “Burnt Island”, kicks literary world wittily in the balls. Although this gothic story can give you shivers, the satiric prose made me laugh a lot. Struggling writer Max Long decides to write his next book with a completely different approach. He will calculate each step to create an easy-to-read bestseller. Max gets a place in a writing residency and travels with a ferry to the Burnt Island.
Review: “All Our Waves Are Water” by Jaimal Yogis
“All Our Waves Are Water” is a memoir written by American writer Jaimal Yogis, and is his third book. A guy, who grew up with Buddhist-yogi parents, loves to surf, studies journalism and searches for the blissful lining of the thing called life. Rational mind, daily hamster wheel and ego are in one hand, buddhism and meditation in the other. He juggles. The opening line “God is in this book” left me wandering through the first pages suspicious and cautious, but soon the book engulfed me and I could not put it down.
Review: “Moby-Dick or, The Whale” by Herman Melville
I didn’t just read “Moby-Dick”. I listened to it too. In 2012 an online platform mobydickbigread.com was launched. All 135 chapters and an epilogue can be listened on your laptop or even phone. More then 10 million people have visited it.
Review: “The Sing of The Shore” by Lucy Wood
Lucy Wood is a British writer from Cornwall. “The Sing of the Shore” is her third book. The sing of the shore is a phrase in Cornish, used by local sea goers. It is the sound made by waves, breaking against the shore and thus giving the experienced fishermen an indication, where they are, when fog or darkness make land invisible. To find a landmark is a silent wish of all the book’s characters. They are haunted by ghosts of the past, unfulfilled dreams and unexplainable phenomena.
Review: “The Seabird’s Cry” by Adam Nicolson
What does it feel like to be a seabird? “The Seabird’s Cry”, by a British writer Adam Nicolson, could be the closest we have ever been to imagining the world of a migrating seabird, living above the enormous oceans, breeding, feeding and dying there. Too much dying, in fact, in the recent decades. Only now the veil of mystery of seabird migration has been lifted thanks to the advanced technologies. You become well informed by reading “The Seabird’s Cry”, but the story is told by a poet, so you stay and listen as long as you can.
Review: “To the River” by Olivia Laing
“To The River: A Journey Beneath The Surface” is written by British author Olivia Laing, and is her first book, published in 2011. After a painful breakup, the author starts a week long journey. She packs her bag and walks along the River Ouse in Yorkshire, from the source to the sea.
Review: “Icebreaker” by Horatio Clare
10 days the Welsh-British writer Horatio Clare spends on a Finnish icebreaker Otso, who works in the Bay of Bothnia, helping ships that are stuck in ice. Sea ice spreads over the polar saltwater and works as an Earth conditioner. Have you ever wondered, how amazing this solid form of water is?
Review: “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf
Poetic novel “The Waves” by the British literary icon Virginia Woolf is the most experimental of her works, and is woven entirely of soliloquies spoken by the book’s six characters. Nursery, school, youth, family, job, ageing. They all meet again and again. Life is not a solid ground, and Virginia Woolf teaches us to walk on water.
Review: “The Outrun” by Amy Liptrot
“The Outrun”, by a British writer and journalist Amy Liptrot, is her first book and it’s about her. Absolutely open, disarmingly honest, life affirming and with a thin lining of silver sorrow. Amy finds herself at a rehab in London and returns home on an island by the North Sea, in hope to understand the traps of consciousness and the deeps of subconscious. To learn to see the world with new, sober eyes.
Review: “RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR” by Philip Hoare
In “RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR”, book by a British writer Philip Hoare, the words of the title are fused together as well as persons, times and events. Philip Hoare has written many books, but this is his third about the watery side of the world. He is deadly in love with the sea and its creatures, including poets, artists, many of them drowned. When you read, you can’t help falling in water like falling in love.
Review: “The Great Sea” by David Abulafia
British historian David Abulafia has written the first complete history of the Mediterranean Sea and its people. Unlikely there is any other sea in the world with such a huge role in the history of human civilisation. If you are interested in the Mediterranean, this definitely is a must-have book for you.
Review: “The Sea is My Country” by Joshua L. Reid
Academic Joshua L. Reid, with Native American origin, has written first comprehensive tribal history of the Makahs, who placed sea – not land – at the centre of their culture. For the Makahs, American Indians at the most northwestern point of the United States, saltwater is a central part of their home.
Sea Library 