Philip Marsden is the award-winning author of a number of works of travel, fiction and non-fiction, including The Bronski House, The Spirit-Wrestlers, The Levelling Sea and, most recently, The Summer Isles. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and his work has been translated into fifteen languages. After years of traveling, he now lives on the tidal upper reaches of the River Fal in Cornwall with his wife, children and various boats.At the Guardian, Marsden tagged ten top books about adventures: "a seeking out, a spirited or even reckless exposure to the unfamiliar in order to reveal something usually unstated, to say: 'I came within a whisker of life'.” One title on the list:
Passage to Juneau: A Sea and its Meanings by Jonathan RabanRead about another entry on the list.
Few can craft a sentence like Raban, and there are few better travelogues of the 20th century than his three waterborne books – Coasting, Old Glory and Passage to Juneau. In each one he sets off on a different boat with undisguised nervousness to produce a narrative of electrifying prose. Sailing to Juneau in Alaska from his home in Seattle is a proper nautical adventure, with fearsome episodes – winds and tides and fog – and a calamitous finale that has nothing to do with the elements.
--Marshal Zeringue
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