Dana's

The difference between the sea-life then and now can be no better epitomised than in Dana's description of the dress of the sailor of his day:

A CLASSIC OF THE SEA 2010

Paradoxical as it may seem, Dana's book is the classic of the sea, not because there was anything extraordinary about Dana, but for the precise contrary reason that he was just an ordinary, normal man, clear-seeing, hard-headed, controlled, fitted with adequate education to go about the work.

A CLASSIC OF THE SEA 2010

Morgan Saylor, the young actress who play's Brody's daughter, had a hell of an episode, and did a great job of conveying Dana's ambivalence when confronted with Carrie's claim that Brody's working with Tom Walker: clearly, having caught him with that dodgy package and then spied him praying in Arabic in the garage, Dana was entertaining doubts about dear old Dad.

Michael Hogan: 'Homeland' Recap: Wardrobe Malfunction! Michael Hogan 2011

Written close to the middle of the last century, such has been the revolution worked in man's method of trafficking with the sea, that the life and conditions described in Dana's book have passed utterly away.

A CLASSIC OF THE SEA 2010

Dana's description of the first time he sent down a royal yard.

A CLASSIC OF THE SEA 2010

Morgan Saylor, the young actress who play's Brody's daughter, had a hell of an episode, and did a great job of conveying Dana's ambivalence when confronted with Carrie's claim that Brody's working with Tom Walker: clearly, having caught him with that dodgy package and then spied him praying in Arabic in the garage, Dana was entertaining doubts about dear old Dad.

Michael Hogan: 'Homeland' Recap: Wardrobe Malfunction! Michael Hogan 2011

Ruth's real mother is Val Dickerson; Dana's real mother is Connie Plank, a humorless woman who compulsively reads her Bible and seems always to be putting on pots of beans for everyone to eat, although the Plank family farm grows a vast array of tasty vegetables and, in particular, strawberries, which are reputed to be the best in the neighborhood.

Joyce Maynard's "The Good Daughters," reviewed by Carolyn See Carolyn See 2010

Ruth's real mother is Val Dickerson; Dana's real mother is Connie Plank, a humorless woman who compulsively reads her Bible and seems always to be putting on pots of beans for everyone to eat, although the Plank family farm grows a vast array of tasty vegetables and, in particular, strawberries, which are reputed to be the best in the neighborhood.

Joyce Maynard's "The Good Daughters," reviewed by Carolyn See Carolyn See 2010

In Kindred, Octavia Butler takes her narrator back to the early nineteenth century, but she also brings slavery forward to our own time, both the physical marks of it in the scars on Dana's back and her missing arm, and the changes it makes to her mental map of her past and present, and it's that jarring disconnect/connect which makes the book so memorable and thought-provoking.

April Books 1) Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler 50books_poc 2009

It was Dana's cool poise that saved him from being spread-eagled and flogged when two of his mates were so treated; it was his lack of abandon that prevented him from taking up permanently with the sea, that prevented him from seeing more than one poetical spot, and more than one romantic spot on all the coast of Old California.

A CLASSIC OF THE SEA 2010