The Penguin Book Of The Ocean

by James Bradley (Editor)

THE WORLD'S FINEST WRITING ABOUT THE WORLD'S WILDEST PLACE

Ever since the first travellers reached the coast of Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, the ocean has been one of the wellsprings of the human imagination. Its restless immensity has given us new horizons to cross, new possibilities to explore, and inspired wonder, heartache and heroism.

In The Penguin Book of the Ocean bestselling author James Bradley presents a dazzling selection of writing exploring this grandest of obsessions, combining fact and fiction, classical and contemporary, to create a collection like no other.

From Rachel Carson's luminous account of our planet's birth to the story of the wreck that inspired Moby-Dick, from Ernest Shackleton's harrowing account of his escape from Antarctica by open boat to Tim Winton's award-winning dissection of the dark side of surfing, The Penguin Book of the Ocean is a hymn to the mystery, beauty and majesty of the ocean, and to the poets and explorers it has inspired.

Genres: Fiction, Poetry

496 pages, Paperback

First published October 25, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James is the author of five novels: the critically acclaimed climate change narratives, Ghost Species (Hamish Hamilton 2020) and Clade (Hamish Hamilton 2015); The Resurrectionist (Picador 2006), which explores the murky world of underground anatomists in Victorian England and was featured as one of Richard and Judy's Summer Reads in 2008; The Deep Field (Sceptre 1999), which is set in the near future and tells the story of a love affair between a photographer and a blind palaeontologist; and Wrack (Vintage 1997) about the search for a semi-mythical Portuguese wreck. He has also written The Change Trilogy for young adults. a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and edited two anthologies, The Penguin Book of the Ocean and Blur, a collection of stories by young Australian writers. His first book of non-fiction, Deep Water: the World in the Ocean will be published in 2024.

Twice one of The Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelists, his books have won The Age Fiction Book of the Year Award, the Fellowship of Australian Writers Literature Award and the Kathleen Mitchell Award, and have been shortlisted for awards such as the Miles Franklin Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the NSW Premier's Christina Stead Award for Fiction, the Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction and the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and have been widely translated. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines and collections, including Best Australian Stories, Best Australian Fantasy and Horror and The Penguin Century of Australian Stories, and has been shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards for Best Science Fiction Short Story and Best Horror Short Story.

As well as writing fiction and poetry, James writes and reviews for a wide range of Australian and international newspapers and magazines. In 2012 he won the Pascall Prize for Australia's Critic of the year.

Reviews

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this. Discovered some new ocean poems and some non fiction books to hunt down. Full review here: http://www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blo...

[Lucy perrone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book at an op shop in Queenstown Tasmania, as inland as you can get in this island in the heart of mountain and mining country. So it served to transport me. Really great concept, to weave together brilliant stories, poems, and literature that centre on the ocean. There’s a lot of life in this book, I particularly love how it glides through all the different faces of the ocean, her different moods. The extreme and ghastly and the gentle, calm transcendent beauty. I liked jumping from one chapter on the facts and figures and scientific processes of the ocean Maury’s the physical geography of the sea and its meteorology to then suddenly be swept in by Edgar Allan Poe’S the maelstrom. A really cool book

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favourites were:
the Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Maury’s Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology
A Descent into the Maelstrom
Owen Chase’s account of the Whale-ship Essex
Passage to Juneau
The Silent World
Seven-tenths: The sea and its thresholds
And of course William Beebe’s Hal Mile Down

[Maddie Robertson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contrary to the title, there were in fact zero penguins. Fact & fiction short stories of my one true love the ocean 🌊

[Vasile · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good collection

[Rory · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for English Lit and I can't think of any reason other than that as to why you would read it. It was made for analysing, not reading for fun.