If you live in the chillier latitudes of the northern hemisphere and spent the holidays by the fire with a book and not at the wheel of a yacht, I have a question: was it a sea book or a land book?

It is tempting to take such a binary approach when contemplating sailors’ reading habits. Sailors, you understand, usually revel in the briny exploits of their adventurous predecessors. Some, therefore, read nothing but the hair-raising memoirs of Joshua Slocum, Pete Goss and Ellen MacArthur. For those with a taste for fiction, there is Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, C.S. Forester or Patrick O’Brian.