Books for eastcoasters

I also have 'Mudlarking'. Not wishing to lower the tone too much but I've really tried to read it but it can't even get my attention whilst in the loo. Most reading matter fills the time there but not this. :(

Shame: birthday present from our daughter.
 
Well I bought "Salt Marsh & Mud" when this thread started and I wish I hadn't. Litotes has summed up the book. It is very very difficult to read and the standard of grammer is diobolical.

I am no litarary expert but I find it unbelievable that the book is published at all with such disjointed ramblings, going on about "mate" and "skipper" doing/saying this that and the other. Strikes me he has tried to copy Maurice Griffith's stile of writing but has failed misserably.

I won't insult anyone by offering to send them the book, I will put it in the recycling.

PS. I do hate being ripped off................what a waste of money, I have never seen such an unreadable book in my life.
 
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A book I enjoyed, but haven't seen for years is A. P. Herbert's, The Singing Swan. A fiction based around a Thames sailing barge set about the start of WWII.
A P Herbert also wrote a short story called Rumpelheimer V Haddock [Misleading Cases], which would probably please many Coll Regs enthusiasts on the forums.:D
 
MrCramp said:
I am no litarary expert but I find it unbelievable that the book is published at all
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With "Mudlarking" I kept wondering what the publisher's editor thought she was doing. Not only is the syntax often excruciatingly clumsy, but some sentences are incomplete and/or nonsensical. There are also spelling howlers such as "I couldn't bare (sic) it" and Oyster yachts being for the "well-healed". Perhaps he meant their bank balances needed healing after purchase? It's a wonderful compendium of every cliche ever employed by amateur writers in yacht club journals, mind you. This is the world in which you never go to the pub for a pint and then on for a meal. Rather, you "repair to a hostelry" where you "sup ale" before "adjourning" to wherever you are planning to eat.

I also wondered how the book came to be published. Now I learn there are more where that came from? Oh dear.

I am currently reading a book called "Tigers in Red Weather" by Ruth Padel, who is a great, great granddaughter of Darwin. She is also, incidentally, the well known poet who got herself in a pickle over the the recent appointment of the Oxford Professor of Poetry. Now if Mr. Ardley wants an object lesson in how to bring his travels to life for his readers and stir their imaginations with precise and vivid word pictures of the world he observes around him (as he seems to be struggling to do) then I would recommend that he read and learn from Ms. Padel. It isn't boaty - it's mainly about tigers, with a side helping of the end of a love affair. But mostly tigers. Great reading on land or water.
 
On a contrary note to the majority of contributors to this thread, I have all of Nick Ardley's books and have enjoyed every one of them.

I especially enjoyed "The May Flower", the story of his formative years living with his family on a sailing barge.

But then again I don't consider myself a literary snob..........
 
surekandoo said:
But then again I don't consider myself a literary snob..........
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What a pity. This forum always seems to me to be a bit more sensible and "grown up" than Scuttlebutt, where that curse of the internet forum, the urge to insult people whose opinions are different from your own, is so prevalent.

Each to their own is the better way.
 
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Litotes said:
What a pity. This forum always seems to me to be a bit more sensible and "grown up" than Scuttlebutt, where that curse of the internet forum, the urge to insult people whose opinions are different from your own, is so prevalent.

Each to their own is the better way.
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Sorry if I've offended but I did feel that some of the reviews were a tad pretentious.

I'll turn the sarcasm switch off in future. ;)
 
surekandoo said:
Sorry if I've offended but I did feel that some of the reviews were a tad pretentious.
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Here's another pretentious comment for you. I don't think you know the meaning of the word sarcasm. :D

I appreciate and enjoy good writing and am not much interested in wasting good reading time on very, very bad writing. My values are different from yours. If that's "snobbery" in your book, so be it. As is usual on these forums, your comments say more about you than about those of us who didn't think much of these books.

Each to their own.
 
I thought the review was fair and concerned nothing more than the unreadability of the book. It's a shame surkandoo responded that way, maybe he just misjudged the tone of the East Coast Forum. As for sailing books that wind you up, the sequal to the incomparable Riddle of the Sands takes some beating, in my case with a large stick. I finished it in the hope it would get better, my wife thew it down ater a few pages. I think if you're going to write a sequal to an iconic book you need to write half as well as the original author, Sam got nowhere near that percentage. I'd offer to pass it on but I took delight in chucking it on the bonfire. Those evangelicals know a thing or two about dealing with books they dislike.
 
Lazy Kipper said:
As for sailing books that wind you up, the sequal to the incomparable Riddle of the Sands takes some beating, in my case with a large stick.
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I like the idea of the bonfire :) And I'm afraid I'm rarely impressed by writers who try to ride on the backs of other writers' successes.

It occurs to me that one east coast book that I have thoroughly enjoyed, as have friends to whom I have lent it, is "Gotty and the Guv'nor, by Frank Copping. It's another oldie - published around 1904, I think. It concerns the author's purchase of a Bawley and his adventures with the skipper (Gotty) who is a Leigh fisherman. They do venture onto the south coast, but it's "east" through and through. It's a very funny book and also a charming, gentle one that describes the relationship between the owner and skipper and with the various other characters they encounter in a hugely vivid and engaging way. It's a true story, of course, and it contains photos of the real-life Gotty etc.

I believe this has just been re-printed and is available on Amazon. Lovely book. :)
 
Saw your mention of

Frank Cowper's "Sailing Tours Part 1: The Coasts of Essex and Suffolk."

Found a bit of the text online so suggested to wife that it would make a good xmas present.

She found a perfect condition copy of it (looks unread - 1985 print) and it arrived today -I've hardly been able to put it down - such great turns of elegant prose.

Having braved the Deben Bar without a pilot 'There is a risk undoubtedly in coming into such a place a total stranger, as there is in travelling in a railway carriage as an unprotected male, or in crossing a glacier without a guide.'

Love it!

Now got to find another suggestion for Xmas present.
 
Some sequels are more difficult to find;

There was a sequel to the Gotty book, "Gotty goes furrin", there is a copy for sale at £191!

Swin, Swale and Swatchway was followed by "Last Cruise of the Teal" in 1893, the author this time called himself Leigh Ray, and the first three quarters of the book is a very readable table of cruising the creeks of the lower Medway. The Cruising Association had a copy in their library. (the final quarter is best left unread, a weird fantasy about the Teal being trapped in a tunnel in Norway).

Several Alker Tripp books have been recently republished, but as yet not "Under the Cabin Lamp" with many short stories of EC cruising.
 
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