Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Ah, I wondered whether I'd get any guessers ... but I will remove the mysteries. They are all well known books.
The 1974 thriller. JSWolf, you hit the nail with the thriller movie bit (wondering if you had this in mind when you said it). Jaws by Peter Benchley. I've never read it, but the reviews at Goodreads suggest it could be quite readable. Lots of beach, lots of water, it's a good match to the theme.
The 1957 apocalyptic story was On the Beach by Neville Shute. I rejected this partly on the grounds that comments about Shute on here, when A Town like Alice was read, were less than enthusiastic.
The 1993 literary novel was The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. I've never read it even though there is a paper copy sitting on the shelf. I figured "shipping" should have some water in it somewhere, so this theme would make a good excuse to get to it.
The 1870 classic was, of course, 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne. Hard to get more watery than that.
I didn't mention it earlier, but I also considered Jeanette Winterson's Lighthousekeeping (2004), which sounds interesting to me (see on Goodreads). |
I also considered
Jaws and
On the Beach. I rejected
Jaws because I listened to the audiobook just a few years ago, and though it was better than I remembered, it's still quite inferior to the film. I rejected
On the Beach because I have conflated it with
Alas, Babylon--I'm not sure which one I read and liked back in the day.
I was hoping to nominate Erik Larson's
Isaac's Storm or
Dead Wake, but the former wasn't available everywhere, and the latter was excessively expensive in Australia.