#nauticality

[nicheguides]

Going Mad at Sea: A Packing List.

Are you planning on a nautical severance from your sanity? Here are some things to consider packing along!

[png-magician]

[alohamoon]

I love you ocean, I love you beach, I love you seashell, I love you fish, I love you moon, I love you sun, I love you stars, I love you mermaids, I love you ships, I love you sailors, I love you surfers, I love you weird deep sea creatures, I love you pearls, I love you fossils, I love you treasure chests, I love you houseboats, I love you anchors, I love you waves, I love you sea foam, I love you sea glass, I love you-

[vivtanner]

The despotic fleet, one of the main adversaries of the Dioscorian agents 🔥 The Hidden Isle

[the-most-sublime-fool]

Then, too, at sea—to use a homely but expressive phrase—you miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark, upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is mustered. There is one less to take up the wheel, and one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss.

—a sailor's diary entry, on losing a shipmate, ca. 1834 (from Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr.)

[shiftythrifting]

$400 boat bed mattress not included.

[burningvelvet]

historical costume appreciation: captain flint's dark coat in season one of black sails

[infantisimo]

"One mind trying to envision everything that could happen, everything that could go wrong, everything that one ship of humans could ever need to say to another. There is something tender about the tendency toward thoroughness. And then something grave about how the language effloresces, absurdly, into such dark specificity."

[pizzat-i]

something's a bit fishy about this man

[ltwilliammowett]

A silver snuff box in the shape of a fish, mid 19th century 

[humanjeff]

I know they're just trying to stop random idiots climbing on it, but the total lack of explanation makes this sounds like every government warning in a horror movie ever.

anyway who wants to go find out what secrets and treasures are on the boat with me

[the-golden-vanity]

I miss this... North Atlantic Ocean, near Block Island, 8/12/24.

[orangeblossombitch]

The kelp is blooming

[zoestanleyarts]

Stinku Fishtuna

Miku Hatsune in Gullible gulls art style.

[carouselfawn]

bath oil in a seashell shaped glass decanter from avon, 1990

[jesslovesboats]

Hello friends, I am back with more reading recommendations for your agonies! Next up we have the long awaited and much requested Sad Boat Fiction list. As with all of my lists, this is NOT exhaustive and there WILL be great books left off, and also you may or may not like these books! I only rec things that I've personally enjoyed or that come highly recommended by trusted friends, but taste in books is incredibly subjective, especially with fiction. If I missed your favorite, please add it in the comments or drop it in my DMs!

Now that I'm feeling more settled in my new job, I will hopefully have a lot more time to make book lists and do more virtual Readers' Advisory. I have lists in the works for women in polar exploration and companion reads for the HBO War series, but if there's something else you would love to see, please send me a message!

Classics of the Genre

At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

The Terror by Dan Simmons

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

Media Tie-Ins

Who Goes There? (Filmed as The Thing) by John W. Campbell, Jr.

The North Water by Ian McGuire

Cold Skin by Alfred Sánchez Piñol

The Terror by Dan Simmons

Graphic Novels

Whiteout by Greg Rucka

How to Survive in the North by Luke Healy

The Worst Journey in the World- The Graphic Novel Volume 1: Making Our Easting Down adapted by Sarah Airriess from the book by Apsley Cherry-Garrard*

*this is only fiction in the broadest possible sense of the term, but there is a shiny new American version of this book coming out with a gorgeous new cover and you should pre-order it immediately

Science Fiction

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson

Romance

Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

My Last Continent by Midge Raymond

Inspired by the Terra Nova Expedition

The Worst Journey in the World- The Graphic Novel Volume 1: Making Our Easting Down adapted by Sarah Airriess from the book by Apsley Cherry-Garrard*

The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge

Terra Nova: A Play by Ted Tally

Antarctic Navigation by Elizabeth Arthur

*this is only fiction in the broadest possible sense of the term, but there is a shiny new American version of this book coming out with a gorgeous new cover and you should pre-order it immediately

Inspired by the Franklin Expedition

The Rifles by William T. Vollmann

Minds of Winter by Ed O'Loughlin

Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler

On the Proper Use of Stars by Dominique Fortier

Literary Fiction

The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen

Inspired by the Classics

The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate

Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund

Modern Day Antarctica

How the Penguins Saved Veronica by Hazel Prior

South Pole Station by Ashley Shelby

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Polar and Nautical Horror

Where the Dead Wait by Ally Wilkes

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

Cold Earth by Sarah Moss

The Deep by Nick Cutter

All the White Spaces by Ally Wilkes

Dark Water by Elizabeth Lowry

The Deep by Alma Katsu

Happy reading!