Save the Whales Bookmarks and Whale Book Speed Reviews

It's time once again for Book Phantom to return her library books, which means another bookmarking caper!  This month, I bought my bookmarks from Save the Whales, and proceeds go to protect these intelligent and graceful giants.  I won't publish the bookmark fronts on my blog due to copyright, but here's the link so you can order some yourselves (the bookmarks are at the bottom of the link page).  There are eight different whale designs to choose from, and at only fifty cents each, you can order them all for less than a cup of Starbucks or a bargain paperback.  Below are the messages I left on the backs of the bookmarks for unsuspecting book borrowers.


Gray Whale Bookmark for Grayson.  It's a memoir, so the quote about time and memory seems proper.



Sperm Whale bookmark for Moby Dick.  I'm placing this in Chapter 32: Cetology, where Melville debates whether a whale is a fish or a mammal.




North Atlantic Right Whale bookmark for Galore.  This mark is just right for a story set in the North Atlantic island of Newfoundland.  The story begins with the removal of a man from a beached whale. 

Although I don't promote my blog by placing bookmarks into children's books I borrow, I'm putting my Save the Whales sticker (a lagnaippe that came with my bookmark purchase) into Nightbirds on Nantucket.  Just a little surprise for one of the younger readers out there.

Ten Things I Liked About Moby Dick

I’m not reviewing Moby Dick on this post.  Now that I have completed it, I have mixed feelings about it.  It’s basically a treatise on whales and the whaling industry from a 19^th century perspective stuffed between a slice of comedy (the first 100 pages) and a slice of tragedy (the last 100 pages).  I could never tell whether I was reading through Ishmael’s eyes or through Melville’s.  The author wasn’t kidding when he had Ishmael say, “…a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.”  Much of Moby Dick read like a dissertation.  That’s all I’m saying from a critical perspective.  Others more qualified than I can pick apart the literary nuances of the novel with greater skill and insight. 

I’d much prefer to list a few kooky things I loved about Moby Dick:

Mrs. Hussey's Try Pots Inn Chowder Recipe

The first hundred pages or so of Moby Dick are surprisingly fun and humorous.  Melville devotes an entire chapter (albeit a short, three-page chapter) to chowder.  Ishmael and his pagan friend Queequeg spend the evening at the Try Pots Inn on Nantucket before shipping out on the Pequod.  The inn is famous for its chowder.  This chapter gave me such a craving for chowder, that I just had to make some.  Here's a passage from Moby Dick that's sure to get your mouth watering, too:

Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open door leading to the kitchen, and bawling out "clam for two," disappeared.

"Queequeg," said I, "do you think that we can make a supper for us both on one clam?"

However, a warm and savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the apparently cheerless prospect before us.  But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained.  Oh! sweet friend, hearken to me.  It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuits, and salted pork cut up into little flakes! the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt.  Our appetites being sharpened by the frosty voyage, and in particular, Queequeg seeing his favorite fishing food before him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we dispatched it with great expedition: when leaning back a moment and bethinking me of Mrs. Hussey's clam and cod announcement, I thought I would try a little experiment.  Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word "cod" with great emphasis, and resumed my seat.  In a few moments the savoury steam came forth again, but with a different flavor, and in good time a fine cod-chowder was placed before us.  (Chapter 15, Moby Dick)

The Lovely (Whale) Bones - Field Trip to NC Museum of Natural Sciences

Happy International Museum Day!  To celebrate this event and to encourage reading books about whales, Book Phantom visited the NC Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.  This museum has an expansive collection of whale bones hanging from the ceiling of the first floor exhibit hall.  In fact, one particular whale, a sperm whale nicknamed "Trouble", is the museum's official mascot.  This 54 foot, 100,000 pound behemoth shored on Wrightsville Beach, NC in April 1928.  It's decaying body presented quite a problem for the local health department, hence its moniker.  Over 50,000 people from six states came to view it.  Eventually, the state museum towed the whale to Topsail Beach to let nature do its work on the carcass before taking the remains back to Raleigh. According to marine biologist Todd Pusser, Trouble is one of only a few adult male sperm whales on display in the world.  Here's what's left of him:

Tales of the Whales – May Reading List

"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: