library
- pino book club
- canada to mexico
- mexico to marquesas
- fiji to majuro
- majuro to ogasawara
- japan to canada
- the permanent collection
While books are great they take up a lot of space, are prone to mold, and in warm countries, they ultimately attract insects. To protect them from moisture, we have resorted to keeping them in plastic sleeves. In cold weather, if your boat is kept warm and is well-ventilated you won't have to worry.
Amongst sailors, and likely other types of nomads, books and movies are a trading currency. Social hubs will often have bookshelves inviting you to take and leave a book. We have found countless gems in those.
Most of our books now, are on our Kindle Paperwhite, which takes little energy and allows us to read at night.
pino book club

When the weather permits, we read a lot on passage. We first started 'The Pino book club' during our transit from Mexico to the Marquesas. During nightwatches we'd read and discuss them the next morning over coffee. It was one of our favorite things to do. We also did this with podcasts. Here is a list of the books we've read during passages.
canada to mexico
- Guns, Germs & Steel, Jared M. Diamond
- The Box Wine Sailors, Amy McCullough
- Le Ton Beau De Marot, Douglas Hofstadter
- Beyond Good & Evil, Friedrich Nietzche
- The Circle, Dave Eggers
- Pictures From The Water Trade, John David Morley
- Rationality From AI to zombies, Elizer Yudkowsky
mexico to marquesas
Passage length: 28 days
- A Universal History of Infamy, Jorge Luis Borges
- Alice's adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Caroll
- Collected Short Stories, Mark Twain
- Ecce Homo, Friedrich Nietzshe
- Flatland, Edwin Abbott
- Fourteen: A Daughter’s Memoir, Leslie Johansen Nack
- How not to die, Michael Greger
- How To Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran
- I hope I shall arrive soon, Philip K. Dick
- In Praise of Darkness: Jorge Luis Borges
- Incognito, David Eagleman
- Kokoro, Natsume Soseki
- La conquete du pain, Pyotr Kropotkin
- Letter to My Father, Franz Kafka
- North to the night, Alvah Simon
- À nos amis: Comité invisible
- Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely
- Self Sufficient Sailor, Lin and Larry Pardey
- Storm tactics, Lin & Larry Pardey
- Stiff, Mary Roach
- The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
- The Aleph & Other Stories, Jorge Luis Borges
- The Art of War, Sun Tzu
- The China Study, Colin Campbell
- The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
- The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Franz Kafka
- Travels in Hyperreality, Umberto Eco
- Walden and Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau
fiji to majuro
Passage length: 24 days
- Animal Liberation, Peter Singer
- Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
- Don't sleep, there are snakes, Daniel L. Everett
- Godforsaken sea, Derek Lundy
- On Trails, Robert Moor
- Seraffyn's Oriental Adventure, Lin Pardey
- Aesop's fables, Aesop
- The sixth extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert
- The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff
- On Food And Cooking, Harold McGee
majuro to ogasawara
Passage length: 21 days
- The Japanese Art Of Decluttering, Marie Kondo
- Aesop's fables, Aesop
- The Definitive H.P Lovecraft: 67 tales of horror, H. P. Lovecraft
Favorite stories: 'Cool Air', 'Herbert West Reanimator', 'The Evil Clergyman' & 'The Music oF Erich Zann'. Every evening after dinner, I'd make readings aloud of each story.
- The Te of Piglet, Benjamin Hoff
japan to canada
Passage length: 51 days
- The long way, Bernard Moitessier
- Divine comedy: Purgatorio, Dante Alighieri
- Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem
- One Straw Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka
- Solaris, Stanislaw Lem
- Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
- Singlehanded sailing tips, Andrew Evans
- The journal of Henry David Thoreau, Henry David Thoreau
- Golden apples of the sun, Ray Bradbury
- The art of Unix programming, Eric S. Raymond
- Finite and Infinite games, James P. Carse
- The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin
- One Human Minute : Stanislaw Lem
- The Mushroom at the End of the World, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
- The incredible tide, Alexander Key
- A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller
- The Timeless Way of Building, Christopher Alexander
- Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
- Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, Marion Nestle
the permanent collection

Above are readings we've done at sea, not all were our favorites but here is a list of the books we keep on Pino.
- Watership Down, Richard Adams
- The Summer Book, Tove Jansson
- Dracula, Bram Stoker
- The Long Way, Bernard Moitessier
- Monkeywrench Gang, Edward Abbey
- Le Città Invisibili, Italo Calvino
- Walden and Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau
- North to the night, Alvah Simon
- Akira collection, Katsuhiro Otomo
- Flatland, Edwin Abbott
- The Marlinspike Sailor, Hervey Garrett Smith
- On Food And Cooking, Harold McGee
- Le Matin Des Magiciens, L. Pauwels & J. Bergier
- Blumroch L'admirable, Louis Pauwels
- Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem
- Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
- Duck, death and the tulip, Wolf Erlbruch
- How not to die, Michael Greger
- A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold