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books about Mountains and mounatianneers
Touching the Void
The Shinging Mountain

and one of my favorites:
The Fountainhead

tigerlilly wrote:Hey all,

I'm always looking for a good book to read. Suggestions? What are your favorites?

I started Quo Vadis ~ it is excellent. THANKS

I just started to read Tolstoy "War and Peace". Really a great read!

mstender wrote:I just started to read Tolstoy "War and Peace". Really a great read!

Tolstoy rocks. William Faulker once famously said that there were three books that taught him how to write: Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina and Anna Karenina.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Not a happy story, but it is beautiful.

They're actually turning this into a movie! I believe the release date is sometime next summer. I had a hard time getting into it but after the first 100 pages or so, I was hooked. You can def. tell it's British though!

aedwards wrote:Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Fiction, about magicians & 'englishness'. Very well written.

I thought "The Historian" was brillant! One of the top three best books I've ever read.
A meta-fictional book about the legend of Dracula and Vlad the Impaler.
by Elizabeth Kostova

If you want to read a book to find out about more books to read and a great story: Education of a Wondering Man; Louis L'Amour

For those in the Military and love the outdoors: Walking It Off; Doug Peacock.

For those interested in the desert southwest: Desert Solitare; Edward Abbey

For those interested in solid mountineering adventures: Beyond the Mountain; Steve House

Favorite climbing books:

Touching the Void
Minus 148 - must read - about the first winter ascent of Denali.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

Hey Alpinist - yes, two favorites of mine.

re: Bill Bryson - great book, lovely writing style. I was a little bothered when portions of his book reminded me an awful lot of another book I read years earlier (Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris, 1988). (....?!)

Just finished: "Blink" and "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. He also wrote "The Tipping Point". I find his books are easy to read and interesting. Blink is about going with our gut decisions and Outliers is about what makes people successful.

OK, if you like science books, try

Grasshopper Dreaming by Jeffrey Lockwood. He's an entomologist who studies grasshoppers because he's fascinated by them. But he's funded by the state of Wyoming that wants to kill them. Two twists: his dad worked on the Manhattan Project (insert obvious parallels), and Lockwood goes on a quest to find the glaciers in the Greater Yellowstone Area where (he thinks) locusts used to hang out. You may have heard of Grasshopper Glacier.

And to go outside your usual genres, try I, Claudius by Robert Graves. You may know the award-winning PBS series but the book is better.

I don't normally read fiction but here are two about women in the mountains:
Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas, set in Leadville. Uplifting but with some horrific scenes.
Serena: A Novel by Ron Rash, set in the Smokies. Pretty dark.

And last but not least
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, sold as a teen book but more than that. Extraordinary artwork that's an essential part of the story.

For Climbing,

-Touching the Void by Simpson and I think a far better book was his The Beckoning Silence.

Personally I like the Beckoning Silence since he probes into why, especially when the cost had been so high.

As mentioned Steve House Beyond the Mountain since it gives an honest insight into House, where he describes himself with brutal honesty.

Mountain Environments

-Greg Mortensons Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools which describes something far more important.

Addicted to Danger - Wickwire
Beckoning Silence - Simpson

cp0915 wrote:Great topic.

Gary Schenk wrote:The Electric Kool-Aid Acid test
In Watermelon Sugar
Helter Skelter

Good ones, though I didn't especially care for In Watermelon Sugar.

The Lord of the Rings stuff is fantastic. The greatest epic tale, ever.

-One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
-On the Road / Dharma Bums
-The Gary Snyder Reader
-The Autobiography of Abbie Hoffman
-The Antichrist
-damn near anything by Kurt Vonnegut
-Pulp, Hollywood, Ham on Rye
-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was a horrible movie, but a classic book.
-Journey to the End of the Night

The Way of Zen changed my life too. Then again, so did Electric Kool-Aid, On the Road, Cuckoo's Nest, the Abbie bio, and Journey to the End of the Night, which might be the most brilliant book ever written. Anyone else read it?

These are all fantastic books, but I think men tend to enjoy these titles more than women. Since the OP is a woman I suggest anything by Tom Robbins, specificially:

Skinny Legs and All
Another Roadside Actraction
Even Cowgirls Get The Blues
Jitterbug Perfume.

Nearly 4 pages of responses...and no one has posted a picture of two blonde swiss boob squished beauties clicking mugs of beer?

I believe this thread setting a new record.