Book Stacks 3

More reader responses

Bruce Lyle sent this stack photo. Our friends at Good Old Boat publish an excellent, practical magazine. The Secret World of Weather sounds quite interesting—subtitled How to Read Signs in Every Cloud, Breeze, Hill, Street, Plant, Animal, and Dewdrop (Natural Navigation).

That spiral-bound book is the CRYA course book. Bruce says he plans for wife and daughters to take the course soon.

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Reader Henri Moone submits this tall stack of nautical goodness. Here’s another weather watching title—National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Weather—and we’ve always thought Henry Mustin’s Surveying Fiberglass Sailboats was a valuable resource. And of course Dave Bacon’s excellent The Gentle Art of Pottering is popular with our audience. A Forest of Sails is a niche title—Portland Sailing Club’s textbook.

Henri adds that “without the top book (Alcoholics Anonymous) there would be no need for the others.”

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Jim White offers a nice collection here. William Least Heat-Moon’s River Horse—about his cross-country voyage in a C-Dory is fantastic, but keep a dictionary handy. Stephen Ladd’s excellent The Five-Year Voyage details his and Ginny’s adventures on their modified Sea Pearl—some of which was covered in their series of articles in SCA.

Our longtime contributor, Emilio Marino’s “bible” Sailmaker’s Apprentice should be on everyone’s shelf. And we spy Larry Brown’s less well-known but fun small-boat sailing gem Sailing America.

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Reader David Weglicki’s book stack is laser focused. He writes: “Arguably the greatest nautical fiction of all time, the Aubrey - Maturin twenty-book series.  It is the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin (ship's surgeon and intelligence officer) of the British Navy on and off the water set in the early 1800s. The books are known for their historical accuracy of any and everything 19th century sailing ships. Written by Patrick O'Brian between 1970 and 1999.  Also the current series of 4 books to date of James L. Haley's Bliven Putnam series of the United States Navy, also set in the early 1800s.  Haley has been reviewed and praised as the American Patrick O'Brian.”

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Nathan Lunstrum’s nice mix of Northwest-heavy titles includes The Curve of Time: “This is a biography and astonishing adventure story of a woman who, left a widow in 1927, packed her five children onto a 25-foot boat and cruised the coastal waters of British Columbia, summer after summer…”

John R. Stilgoe takes the reader on a “tour of the seacoast” in Alongshore.

Noticias De Nutka is one we’d never heard of. “An Account of Nootka Sound in 1792”—how cool is that? •SCA•

More book stacks soon!