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| "Whaling Voyage Round the World" c. 1848 by Benjamin Russell and Caleb P. Purrington |
This month Book Phantom will be reading about whales and seafaring.
How did I come to this subject?
It’s nearly summer, and time to start thinking about seaside vacations.
However, little synchronicities in my life have been pointing me towards “whale lit”.
First, when I was browsing Books of the Month at Amazon, I came across a recommendation for
Galore by Canadian author Michael Crummey.
I was pulled in by the blurb about a strange, pale man cut from the body of a beached whale.
My next sign came as I was reading
Swamplandia!.
In the chapters that took place at The World of Darkness theme park, Karen Russell described a ride called the Leviathan in which tourists could slide down into the innards of a great fake whale.
The third sign came when I took my daughter on a field trip to Shackleford Banks last week.
This island was the site of a small whaling community in the 1800’s called
Diamond City.
It was abandoned in 1899 after a great hurricane flattened most of the town.
I learned on this trip that
North Carolina was the only state south of
New Jersey that had a whaling industry of any note.
My final reason for choosing whale tales is that whaling is in my family history.
My husband’s great-grandfather left the Azores at the age of fourteen upon a whaler and eventually settled in
Erie, Pennsylvania in the late 1860s.
In order to give my kids a better understanding of their ancestry, I thought it would be helpful to read some literature about it.
So, the universe was giving me a nudge, and the notion to read about whales emerged from the depths of my subconscious as clear as a tail fin or a spout from a blowhole. Here are my “Tales of the Whales” reading selections:
