Fav Reads- limit to nature/Adventure

Recently read "Between a rock and a hard place" by Aaron Ralston (the guy who had to cut his arm off while pinned under a boulder in CO) That was pretty good reading, nice and graphic...with pictures!!

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Hey Sherpa, where's my book anyway?!?! Does Michelle got it? BTW that was a great read, more so Aaron's other exploits than the amputation hike.

Howevah, If i could only have two outdoors books, they would be:

1 - The Snow Leopard (Matthiesen)
2 - Desert Solitaire (Abbey)

If ya ain't read them thar two, well yer missing out big time...

Gris said:

Howevah, If i could only have two outdoors books, they would be:

1 - The Snow Leopard (Matthiesen)
2 - Desert Solitaire (Abbey)

If ya ain't read them thar two, well yer missing out big time...

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I second both these nominations.

I realize this is an ancient thread, but there needs to be a thread like this around.

I'll add a few --

Four Against Everest by Woodrow Wilson Sayre -- out of print but available; details a crazy hairball attempt by three Americans and a Scandinavian at the height of the cold war to sneak overland into occupied Tibet and attempt the then off-limits North Col / Northeast Ridge route on Everest. Incredible what these guys managed to do with just about no resources or support.

Anything by James Ramsey Ullman, novelist & short story writer much of whose fiction is set in the milieu of the mountaineering world in the decades either side of WWII. Like the memoir above, these stories will feed the fourteen year old boy in you.

A Journey on the Crest, Cindy Ross -- classic PCT thru-hiker narrative.

Do audio books count?

I just listened to "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why" by Laurence Gonzales and am following that up with one that is a little out of the "nature" category called for here but ties in nicely with the idea of making life-saving decisions: "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" by Malcom Gladwells.

Smoke From a Thousand Campfires by Paul Doherty, not only a great humorous read, but also a nice person.

Seven Summits was interesting (first 100 pages), till I gave it to a family member to read.
Geez, even Clint Eastwood knew the guys involved and endorsed the book!!

I've read alot of these recommendations. I've liked one so much that I have now read it 3 times. Great Heart, The History of a Labrador Adventure is awesome.

Great thread! Here's a couple that I liked that don't seem to be on this list:

Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrer

This Business of Exploring, Roy Chapman Andrews

Favs

Danielle and LarryB both mentioned Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrier. Don't let the movie keep you from the book. The book is so much different from and better than the movie.

No Place I'd Rather Be - it had some worthy chuckles in it.

I’ve read a few adventure books since this thread last appeared. These are some you might enjoy:

Killing Dragons by Fergus Feming. I had never heard of the book but I see chuck had mentioned it earlier in this thread. A very interesting and detailed history of climbing in the Alps.

The Lost Men by Kelly Tyler-Lewis. If you’ve read about Shackleton you probably never read anything about his party that laid food and supply caches from the other end of Antarctica. This is their story. A gripping read about some awful suffering.

Minus 148 by Art Davidson. One of the classics.

Two Years Before The Mast by Richard Henry Dana. A superb read if you’re a sailing buff (and I’m not) and a great read even if you’re not. A 19 yr old Harvard dropout becomes an ordinary deckhand on a brig sailing from Boston, around Cape Horn to California in 1834. One of Nat’l Geo’s 100 best adventure books.

Touch The Top Of The World by Erik Weihenmayer, the blind guy who climbed Everest. You’ll be really impressed by this guy. Not literature but a good story.

Three other Nat’l Geo top 100. All fascinating reads and the prose of de Saint-Exupery is lyrical and you feel the love he had for his work and nature. Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exuprey, Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger and A Short Walk In the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby.

JohnL

Just a few off the top

The Hall of the Mountain King: The True Story of a Tragic Climb (Howard H. Snyder)

Second Ascent: The Story of Hugh Herr (Alison Osius)

No Picnic on Mount Kenya (Felice Benuzzi)

In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods (Galen Rowell)

The Hall of the Mountain King: The True Story of a Tragic Climb (Howard H. Snyder)

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...and the follow ups:

White Winds (Joe Wilcox)

and, much more recently:
Forever on the Mountain : The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering's Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters (James Tabor). Interesting review by one of the survivors on Amazon, BTW.

Also just read (finally) The Last American Man (Elizabeth Gilbert) which I found rather fascinating.

I really like anything written by Ed Abbey. Still haven't gotten through all his books yet!

A friend just gave me...

The Lure of the Labrador Wild by Dillion Wallace. Fascinating. It was written in 1905 so it is out of print but you may find it in some local libraries if you are lucky.

Plus it starts out with the following segment of Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Explorer". This in itself is wonderful:

"There's no sense in going further - it's the edge of cultivation,"
So they said, and I believed it...
Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes
On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated---so:
"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges---
Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"

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JohnL said:

The Lost Men by Kelly Tyler-Lewis. If you’ve read about Shackleton you probably never read anything about his party that laid food and supply caches from the other end of Antarctica. This is their story. A gripping read about some awful suffering.

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After seeing a short video presentation about the Endurance voyage at Battleship Cove in Fall River, MA, my 9-year-old son is now obsessed with Ernest Shackleton. He's read everything they had in the youth section of our library (and written a couple book reports thereupon), so I might need to scope this one out for him.


I'm finishing up Susan E.B. Schwartz's Into The Unknown, which is a biography of Gunks legend Hans Kraus. It's a compelling read, and presents more of Kraus' life outside his climbing exploits, along with his notable FA's. I never knew he was a pioneering exercise physiologist who was JFK's back doctor during his term in office.

People mention Bernd Heinrich alot...heads up he has a new book coming ou ina few days. "Summer World"
http://www.amazon.com/Summer-World-...=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238772420&sr=1-4

You heard first at VFTT

Just finished "In the Land of White Death" by Valerian Albanov. Great read, came across it while browsing at my town library.

It's about a ship trapped in ice in the Siberian Arctic in 1914. Couldn't put it down.

"Roughing It" by Mark Twain.
If I was able to pick someone to spend a night around the campfire with (besides my wife of course ;-)), it would be Mark Twain. I think he would be able to spin some pretty good tales for you!

Cool thread, glad to share favorites with many of you.

But.

Did I miss it, or has no one mentioned David Quammen? He is probably my most favorite author ever. He writes this incredible short-story-sized pieces on all kinds of nature-y topics. Beautifully, perfectly written. Impeccable balance of zany information, field data, and personal reaction. Please, everyone, go read a few pages of Quammen's "Wild Thoughts From Wild Places", "Song of The Dodo", "Natural Acts", or any of 'em. And fall in love.

K2: The Savage Mountain by Charles S Houston and Robert H. Bates.

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing.

Two great stories of heroism in the face of disaster.