Books with author Jonathan Raban

With the same rigorous observation (natural and social), invigorating stylishness, and encyclopedic learning that he brought to his National Book Award-winning Bad Land, Jonathan Raban conducts readers along the Inside Passage from Seattle to Juneau. The physical distance is 1,000 miles of difficult-and often treacherous-water, which Raban navigates solo in a 35-foot sailboat.But Passage to Juneau also traverses a gulf of centuries and cultures: the immeasurable divide between the Northwest's Indians and its first European explorers-- between its embattled fishermen and loggers and its pampered new class. Along the way, Raban offers captivating discourses on art, philosophy, and navigation and an unsparing narrative of personal loss.

"Raban is searching and compassionate. . . . And he is at all times eloquent." -- Richard FordFollowing the overland triumph of Bad Land--whose prizes included the National Book Critics Circle Award--Jonathan Raban goes to sea.The Inside Passage from Puget Sound to Alaska is winding, turbulent, and deep--an ancient, thousand-mile-long sea route, rich in dangerous whirlpools, eddies, rips, and races. Here flourished the canoe culture of the Northwest Indians, with their fantastic painted masks and complex iconography and their stories of malign submarine gods and monsters. The unhappy British ship Discovery, captained by George Vancouver, came through these open reaches and narrow chasms in 1792. The early explorers were quickly followed by fur traders, settlers, missionaries, anthropologists, fishermen, and tourists, each with their own designs on this intricate and haunted sea.When Jonathan Raban set out alone in his own boat to sail from his Seattle home to the Alaskan Panhandle, he wanted to decode the many riddles and meanings of the sea: in Indian art and mythology, in the journals of Vancouver and his officers and midshipmen, in poetry and painting, in the physics of waves and turbulence. His voyage began as an intellectual adventure, but he soon found himself in deeper, more ominously personal waters than he had planned.In this seaborne epic, Raban brings the past spectacularly alive and renders the present in a prose of sustained brilliance and humor. Exhilarating, panoramic, full of ideas, natural history, and mordant social observation, his journey into the wild heart of North America turns into a profound exploration of the wilderness of the human heart.

Meet space-school attendee Bob and his alien bestie Beep in this start to an outrageously funny and action-packed chapter book series that’s great for “kids who love funny stories but may be too young for books like ­Diary of a Wimpy Kid” (School Library Journal) from debut author Jonathan Roth!Astro Elementary is a school near Saturn attended by the bravest, brightest, most elite kids in the galaxy…and Bob. Bob never wanted to go to fourth grade in dark, dangerous space. He even tried to fail the admissions test by bubbling in “C” for every answer—and turned out to be the only kid on Earth to get a perfect score! Bob feels he couldn’t be more misplaced at his school—until he meets Beep. Beep is an alien from the planet Orth who was kicked off his home world for being too small. The instant Bob finds him, Beep adopts Bob as his new mother. Soon Bob can’t turn around without bumping into Beep’s squishy little body. Together, they make the perfect team. And Bob logs their adventures on his space blog, or SPLOG, with Beep providing the illustrations. In their first adventure, Bob is humiliated on a field trip to Pluto when his tongue gets stuck to the ice. Not even Beep can keep Bob from becoming the laughing stock of the school. Bob has to find a way to completely change his personality, just in time for their next treacherous field trip—to the gaping mouth of a super massive black hole!

A luminous and entrancing travelogue from celebrated writer, Jonathan Raban.First published in 1999, Passage to Juneau is an account of Raban's personal journey from Seattle to the Alaskan Capital by boat through the meandering sea route, the Inside Passage, told in parallel to the same voyage taken by Captain George Vancouver in the late eighteenth century.Described by Ian McEwan as 'Raban at his best' this is extraordinary travel writing, told from two very different perspectives. A book about the idea of loss, Raban is home but still, he is very much still at sea.

Beep and Bob accidentally clone themselves for the school science fair in this fourth book in the hilarious, action-packed Beep and Bob series!What’s twice as fun as Beep and Bob? Two Beeps and Bobs! While up too late working on his science fair project, Bob accidentally points a duplication ray at Beep. To his shock, another Beep appears! Beep decides the more, the better, so he points the ray at Bob and PRESTO: it’s Bob 2 (or Backwards Bob). At first Bob thinks their clones are creepy, but it doesn’t take long to realize that having duplicates comes with perks: they can sleep in while their clones go to class! Then the real Beep and Bob discover a hitch: the Beep and Bob clones are EVIL, and are planning to duplicate an EVIL Earth to rule! How will they possibly get themselves (and themselves!) out of this one?

Meet space-school attendee Bob and his alien bestie Beep in this start to an outrageously funny and action-packed chapter book series that’s great for “kids who love funny stories but may be too young for books like ­Diary of a Wimpy Kid” (School Library Journal) from debut author Jonathan Roth!Astro Elementary is a school near Saturn attended by the bravest, brightest, most elite kids in the galaxy…and Bob. Bob never wanted to go to fourth grade in dark, dangerous space. He even tried to fail the admissions test by bubbling in “C” for every answer—and turned out to be the only kid on Earth to get a perfect score! Bob feels he couldn’t be more misplaced at his school—until he meets Beep. Beep is an alien from the planet Orth who was kicked off his home world for being too small. The instant Bob finds him, Beep adopts Bob as his new mother. Soon Bob can’t turn around without bumping into Beep’s squishy little body. Together, they make the perfect team. And Bob logs their adventures on his space blog, or SPLOG, with Beep providing the illustrations. In their first adventure, Bob is humiliated on a field trip to Pluto when his tongue gets stuck to the ice. Not even Beep can keep Bob from becoming the laughing stock of the school. Bob has to find a way to completely change his personality, just in time for their next treacherous field trip—to the gaping mouth of a super massive black hole!

In this adorable chapter book series that School Library Journal said is for “kids who love funny stories but may be too young for books like ­Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” space-school attendee Bob and his alien bestie Beep star in hilarious intergalactic adventures. Astro Elementary is a school near Saturn attended by the bravest, brightest, most elite kids in the galaxy…and Bob. Bob never wanted to go to fourth grade in dark, dangerous space. He even tried to fail the admissions test by bubbling in “C” for every answer—and turned out to be the only kid on Earth to get a perfect score! Bob feels he couldn’t be more misplaced at his school—until he meets Beep. Beep is an alien from the planet Orth who was kicked off his home world for being too small. The instant Bob finds him, Beep adopts Bob as his new mother. Soon Bob can’t turn around without bumping into Beep’s squishy little body. Together, they make the perfect team. And Bob logs their adventures on his space blog, or SPLOG, with Beep providing the illustrations. This stellar boxed set includes: Too Much Space! Party Crashers Take Us to Your Sugar Double Trouble

'Raban is, for my money, one of the key writers of the past three decades - not only for his immense stylistic showmanship, but also for the way he has taken that amorphous genre call 'travel writing' and utterly redefined its frontiers..."Passage to Juneau" is his finest achievement to date. Ostensibly an account of a voyage Raban took from his new home in Seattle to the Alaskan capital through that labyrinthine sea route called the Inside Passage, it is, in essence, a book about the nature of loss...You close this extraordinary book marvelling at this most distressing but commonplace of ironies. He's home, but he's lost. Just like the rest of us' - Douglas Kennedy, "Independent". 'This is an extraordinary book...The epic journey through eddies, rips, whirlpools and various other marine terrors quickly becomes intensely personal..."Passage to Juneau" is far more than a meditation on the sea and its meanings; it is also an unsparing self-examination, written with mordant humour and forensic ruthlessness' - Justin Cartwright, "Daily Telegraph". 'A thrilling adventure and a telling internal exploration...the writing contains natural description of breathtaking exactness...and the sea itself - in all its moods - has surely never been so intricately painted' - Edward Marriott, "Evening Standard". 'His erudition is enormous, his prose as beautiful and clear as the blue ocean on a crisp morning and his sense of joy at having found his place in the world is immensely rewarding. "Passage through Juneau" is a wonderfully fluid read. It is also a thought-provoking and challenging work that is likely to splash around in the memory long after the volume has been consigned to the shelf' - Anthony Sattin, "Sunday Times".

Beep and his best friend Bob get blamed for a robbery on a fancy spaceship in this second book in the hilarious, action-packed Beep and Bob series!It’s Bob’s friend Lani’s birthday, and she's having her party on a super luxury space cruiser called the Starship Titanic, whose motto is “The 100% safest ship in the galaxy.” The Titanic boasts three water parks, sixteen amusement parks, and twelve-million hyper-show channels on TV! Beep and Bob pack their favorite swimsuits and their favorite TV watching gear. When Beep and Bob arrive on the ship, however, they realize they forgot the most important item: a birthday gift for Lani. Not only that, but Lani’s parents are super rich and expect everyone to wear a suit to dinner (not the bathing suit that Bob wore by mistake). But that’s not their biggest problem. No, that happens when the lights dim and guests’ jewelry is stolen from right under their noses—and Beep and Bob get blamed for the crime! Things go from bad to worse when Beep and Bob discover that their “indestuctable” ship is headed right for the ice rings of Neptune—and then starts plummeting toward the planet below! Can Beep and his squishy alien buddy save the Starship Titanic? Or will this be their last party ever?

Shayleen Mills and her family are vacationing at the the seaside resort of Wildwood, New Jersey, along with hundres of other families. But there's something lurking in the water - something hideous from the depths of the sea. When Shayleen spots a jellyfish on the beach she doesn't think much of it. However, when a jellfish rises into the air and attacks, she knows she's in a lot of trouble. Soon, the resort community is under attack by horrify, glowing jellyfish. Shayleen and her two friends find themselves trapped in an amusement park, surrounded by dozens of electrified, vicious creatures. It's a vacation Shayleen will never forget - that is, if she makes it out alive!