Billy Budd, Sailor
1924 · 385 pages
Struck dumb by a false charge of mutiny, a beautiful young sailor answers with his fist and kills his accuser. Melville leaves his captain to choose between the law and the plain truth.
★ 7.0
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
The Caine Mutiny
1951 · 537 pages
Missing strawberries send Captain Queeg hunting a duplicate key through his own ship, and in a typhoon his executive officer takes command. Wouk's trial asks what a crew owes a failing captain.
★ 6.0
Sailing Alone Around the World
1900 · 273 pages
Slocum rebuilt an oyster sloop, left Boston in 1895, came back three years later the first person to circle the earth alone. He recounts it in the practical voice of a working sailor.
★ 5.7
A High Wind in Jamaica
1929 · 279 pages
A hurricane wrecks their Jamaican home, so the Bas-Thornton children are shipped to England and captured by pirates. Hughes strips childhood of its innocence, and the pirates prove no match for them.
★ 5.0