How do you choose the next book you’re going to read?

I often reach for something adjacent to what I’ve just finished reading. For example, if I’m reading a book about H.H. Holmes, I might reach next for a book about the Chicago World’s Fair, about Chicago architecture, or about serial killers of the turn of the 19th Century.

And, if I’ve been reading about early 20th century disasters, like The Great Molasses Flood or the Triangle Fire, I might reach for something like Twelve Days of Terror, which takes place in 1916 and covers the shark attacks along the NJ coast that inspired Jaws.

And having immersed myself in sharks, I might then reach for Richard Ellis’s Monsters of the Sea which covers sharks, whales, octopi, giant squid, manatees and dugongs, sea monsters, and the Loch Ness monster.

Richard Ellis is a marine biologist, who works with the American Museum of Natural History, and has written extensively about sharks, whales, the giant squid. This is no Travel Channel sensationalist. This guy knows what he’s talking about.

And I’m guessing he had a lot of fun writing this book. His writing is always entertaining but this book is for the lay reader. When he talks about Nessie, he shares the history, the various theories, and makes it easy to understand why none of them stack up. When he talks about huge mysterious blobs of… cartilage? tissue? fat?.. well, something that wash up on beaches from time to time, leading people to speculate about the species – and the unusually large size of that species – that the blob came from, he seems just as delightedly mystified as you are by it. When he introduces tales of sea monsters from early sailors, he wonders along with you what exactly it was that they were seeing. Sometimes he helps you recognize the answer, based on what he knows about the oceans. Sometimes he admits that there are things we just don’t know yet. (What was that Danish Sea-ape, anyway?)

This is a really fun book to read. He mixes history, myth, urban legend, fiction, history, and movies to help you see how we think about the sea (and lochs) and the creatures in it, and how our thinking has evolved over time. Even if you think you know a lot about say, the giant squid (a fascination of mine), you end up learning more. Like, there actually is a documented case of a giant squid attacking a ship.

Well, a rowboat. And it was in the shallows. And they killed it with an oar so it was probably dying already. And there really aren’t any cases of giant squid attacking full-blown ships or submarine, a la 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Pirates of the Caribbean.

Alas.

I love that Ellis has such an open mind but yet is scientific. There’s none of the Graham Hancock school of writing where you start with a fact, then use that fact to introduce your semi-plausible idea about that fact. Then you say “if that’s true then” and introduce a wilder theory; and then say “and if that’s true then” and introduce even wilder theory, until you’ve chained up to aliens building the pyramids. And, at the same time, Ellis avoids Michael Shermer’s trap of over-skepticism where you explain away every mystery and leave nothing to be discovered. C’mon, Michael, lighten up.

I’m with Mulder: I want to believe. But I’ve got enough Scully in me to want to see some level of viable proof before I do.

You can also read Monsters of the Sea and not be afraid to go back in the water. In fact, it may leave you wanting to take up scuba diving so you can go see this stuff for yourself.