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As per Nelson. I really enjoyed Endurance as well while waiting out bad weather on Aconcagua.

On long Nepal trips, I take heaps of books, I pity the poor Yak (or Nak). I pretty much make it a rule not to take anything about mountaineering. Besides that I might bring whatever may have won the Booker Prize recently (which always seems to be something about India)

Hotoven wrote:

spiritualspatula wrote:Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey.

I hate this book, sorry spiritualspatula!

All Abbey does is bitch about humans who aren't just like him. He talks about getting out and being alone and different then people, but hates on those who do the drive threw of National parks instead of trekking 20 miles into the hills to really get the experience. To me he obviously has some pride issues and doesn't like most people. He writes them off before he knows them.

Quite true, and he admits just as much of himself. Whoever said you have to agree with something to read it? There's something to be said, reading about a crazy old man bitching about living in a little hut in the middle of the desert when I'm bunkered down in the mountains solo waiting for the weather to break.
I'd also wholeheartedly recommend Beyond The Hundredth Meridian by Wallace Stegner. It's about Powell's trip down the Colorado and his later influence (or attempt to influence) western policy. It's pertinent reading for anybody living in the west, and Powell is a grade A badass. It's about adventure into the unknown and the consequences of opening up the unknown to the nation.