Booklist: English 1A Fall 2011

Susan Casey's The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks;

Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work;

Laurence Gonzales' Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why;

Tom Kendrick's Bluewater Gold Rush: The Odyssey of a California Sea Urchin Diver;

William Langewiesche's The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime;

and

Philbrook's In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.

Also, a good college-level dictionary.

Plus selected essays and chapters from Ebbesmeyer & Scigliano, Whitty, Wells, Steinbeck, and others as well as selected videos on sharks, marine mammals, abalone and urchin diving, and related local material. (Perhaps Steinbeck and Hemingway on writing too.)

Summer planning will be fun.

P.S. All those subtitles look a bit daunting, don't they? Or, those subtitles combine with the titles to draw you in, draw you closer!

Here's the list again, but just with the basic titles:

The Devil's Teeth

Shop Class as Soulcraft

Deep Survival

Bluewater Gold Rush

The Outlaw Sea

In the Heart of the Sea

Borrowing from Quality: Anna Mills On Nature Writing

I'm a teacher, so I'd better confess. I have borrowed--stolen?--the "lively, thoughtful" in my subtitle from my friend Anna Mills' definitely lively, distinctly more thoughtful blog: On Nature Writing. Read what she's written. Tell your friends to do so too.

Thanks, Anna.

P.S. I've since changed my original subtitle, dropping the "lively, thoughtful," and yet I aspire to both qualities in everything I write. And, I still want to give Anna my thanks for the encouragement.