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Introduction

Welcome to the 3 Books To Know series, our idea is to help readers learn about fascinating topics through three essential and relevant books.

These carefully selected works can be fiction, non-fiction, historical documents or even biographies.

We will always select for you three great works to instigate your mind, this time the topic is: Sea Stories.

 Moby Dick by Herman Melville

 The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea by James Fenimore Cooper

 The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's leg at the knee. A contribution to the literature of the American Renaissance, the work's genre classifications range from late Romantic to early Symbolist. Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a "Great American Novel" was established only in the 20th century, after the centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner confessed he wished he had written the book himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever written". Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous

The Pilot, in full The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea, novel by James Fenimore Cooper, published in two volumes in 1823. The work, which was admired by Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad for its authentic portrayal of a seafaring life and takes place during the American Revolution, launched a whole genre of maritime fiction. It features a mysterious and almost superhuman American sea pilot (based on the American hero John Paul Jones) who fights battles off the coast of England against the British and American loyalists. One of the book’s themes is the ambiguous nature of loyalty. Although often bogged down by complicated nautical terminology and intrusive philosophical dialogue, the novel is nevertheless noted for its spiritual and moral dimensions.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) is the only complete novel written by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym, including shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism, before he is saved by the crew of the Jane Guy. Aboard this vessel, Pym and a sailor named Dirk Peters continue their adventures farther south. Docking on land, they encounter hostile black-skinned natives before escaping back to the ocean. The novel ends abruptly as Pym and Peters continue toward the South Pole.

The story starts out as a fairly conventional adventure at sea, but it becomes increasingly strange and hard to classify. Poe, who intended to present a realistic story, was inspired by several real-life accounts of sea voyages, and drew heavily from Jeremiah N. Reynolds and referenced the Hollow Earth theory. He also drew from his own experiences at sea. Analyses of the novel often focus on the potential autobiographical elements as well as its portrayal of race and the symbolism in the final lines of the work.

This is one of many books in the series 3 Books To Know. If you liked this book, look for the other titles in the series, we are sure you will like some of the topics