Our Favorite Book: The Old Man And The Sea

A Blue Marlin Publications Review
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemmingway, is our all-time favorite books. This novel and the inspiration provided by the main character, Santiago, is how we came up with our name and logo. Santiago struggles for days to catch a huge Blue Marlin, only to have the fish devoured by sharks as he returns exhausted to his home port. This is the timeless story of man's struggle with nature. All that aside, it's a great read.

The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, April 1, 1995 described this classic as follows: A "Short novel by Ernest Hemingway, published in 1952 and awarded the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Completed after a 10-year literary drought, it was his last major work of fiction. The novel is written in Hemingway's characteristically spare prose.

It concerns an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago who finally catches a magnificent fish after weeks of not catching anything. After three days of playing the fish, he finally manages to reel it in and lash it to his boat, only to have sharks eat it as he returns to the harbor. The other fishermen marvel at the size of the skeleton; Santiago is spent but triumphant."