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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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I'm finishing up The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence. Most of the events recollected in this book took place in 2017-18, exactly a hundred years ago. Earlier in the year I read a small,thumbnail biography Lawrence of Arabia by Anthony Nutting (who was consultant on the film released in 1962).
This is an incredible story about the Arab Revolt masterminded by the British against the long-ruling Ottoman Turks. The Turks were allied with the Germans in WW1 and had ruled over the Arabs for hundreds of years until deposed by the end of the war.
Lawrence was a sort of guerilla fighter who was a major liaison in this regard between Faisal, the various Emirs and Sharifs -- and the British.
The meticulously reconstructed battlefield tales, the unbelievable camel journeys of hundreds of miles in all sorts of conditions and weather, and inscrutable desert logistics in a region remote, and very difficult, and very deadly. All of this against a deep inner conflict that Lawrence shares with the reader.
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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just finished The Infinite Jest. my first thought is okay, back to page one.
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life is a bivouac
Trad climber
Bishop
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"The Bond" by Simon McCartney is one of the most griping recollections from the literature of Alpinism I've ever read. Somewhat akin to "Gervasutti's climbs", in which we are invited into the mind of the climber, facing doubts and fears.
Simon McCartney and Jack Roberts met in '77 at the famous Bar National in Chamonix. Sussing each other out they climbed together becoming friends, subsequently teaming up to do two first ascents of immense importance in Alaska during the late '70'S. Huntington's north face in '78 and Denali's southwest face in 1980.
I personally knew Jack Roberts as a lad in So. Cal., thru the climbing shop I worked at, The West Ridge. Jack was a member of a High School Climbing club known as "Buff" which was made up of a bunch of young guys and gals from Santa Monica High School. We often bouldered together on the local sandstone.
Jack, as many of you know, became a driven hardman of the highest caliber , strong, proud, capable, true in spirit; and without a doubt Simon is of the same mettle.
I'll not recount their achievements, however, as the story completes, after the episode on Denali, Simon drops out of the climbing scene for almost forty years; then thru a series of fateful connections, one of which was the Supertopo, Simon is lead back to the climbing community.
The read is as vigorous as 2000 feet of front pointing, compelling as melting spin drift on blackened fingers and as visceral as leaving your compromised partner on a face with only a promise.
Thank You Simon, for giving us clear incite into your, and our, love/hate affair with the mountains.
I highly recommend this to those of us who climbed in the 70's and 80's and on... As well, to those interested in our unique history.
Published by: Mountaineers Books, Legends and Lore Series 2016
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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Oct 13, 2017 - 12:40pm PT
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It Takes a Tribe: Building the Tough Mudder Movement by Will Dean and co-author Tim Adams.
Here's my review of it in The WSJ, 10/13/2017, with a little discussion of where Tough Mudder fits on the spectrum of genuine adventure.
And since that'll likely get you stuck in front of the WSJ paywall unless you're a subscriber, here it is on my website, with a photo that should enlarge enough for reading when clicked twice.
I also recently read "Deadwood," by Peter Drexler, a literary western tragedy about well, Deadwood, through the eyes of Charley Utter. Which was pretty good.
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Nov 12, 2017 - 01:46am PT
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hey there say.... just a bit about my books...
they don't get read much, as, they are self published and hard to get the word out...
have worked on one of the new ones, recently...
for those that don't know FULLY what they are about, here is a small example
to share: Jake... ex-rodeo cowboy, from south Texas, turned rancher in Montana... and this 'gang' of buddies... and a TWIN sister, that
just won't quit, ;)
FOUR NOVELS... and five, going on six, short stories,
all based on ASL, head injury, tongue loss, seizures and:
overcoming! through the bond of strong friendship, and twinship, :)
FOR THOSE THAT DON'T know about my JAKE smith ranch series... the character, Jake, recovers from a serious injury, after saving his buddy, from a bull-- he learns he had no tongue, anymore, and has head injuries, and can't function as well as he used to:
his twin sister teaches his sign language, as, he can't talk, (though, has learned to make various sound, but does not like to hear himself, or, read or write... (though later, he works out a system, down the year, as to a 'code' of sounds to mark down)-- eating is hard, and can be dangerous, too... he finally succeeds to even try eating in public, with his buddies...
god's grace, is all through my books... his whole recovery, is strongly spiritual, as well, to not give up, to, once again, 'feel like himself again'...
HE SUCCEEDS through love, friendship and loyalty, of good buddies... THESE book, show various parts of his life, to reach victory, as, being 'new and different' but STILL the same, -- the Jake that he knows he is... THIS VIDEO might give folks an idea what he goes through... there are two that i found...
i hope my BOOKS someday HELP folks to learn to be patient with others, that have these troubles, and/or head injuries, or, seizures... folks that are 'suddenly' DIFFERENT, but still wanting to be themselves...
HERE is a video, that found, recently... this woman, who-ever she is, was very brave and kind to post these, to show folks how hard her life is... (she, i think, had cancer-- another way, that folks can lose their tongue) ...
as the TITLE SAYS... this type of surgery, as to tongue loss,
is LONELY...
the character in my book, had a twin sister that was NOT going to
let him 'isolate' himself...
he gets back into being a 'mentor' to youth, as like he used to do...
through the horses on his ranch...
[Click to View YouTube Video]
[Click to View YouTube Video]
*not sure how old this video, is, but wow, please keep her in our
prayers, she was so sad, in the last one... :(
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Ross911
Trad climber
Lyons, Colorado
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Nov 12, 2017 - 06:34am PT
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River of Doubt:Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
--Ross
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Nov 12, 2017 - 09:04am PT
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Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage about Lewis and Clark. Definitely worthy of its Pulitzer Prize.
And why do we use a trite phrase like ‘badass’ instead of saying ‘Lewis and Clark’?
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Lennox
climber
in the land of the blind
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Nov 12, 2017 - 12:28pm PT
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Just finished Echopraxia by Peter Watts and Angle of Repose (again) by Stegner.
Just starting Death’s End by Liu Cixin and The Idiot (again) by Dostoevsky.
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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, A sailboat, or some time zone
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Nov 12, 2017 - 02:46pm PT
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^^^^^^. I must have read Angle of Repose 10 times. I love it. I can’t ever tire of it.
I like Stegner’s other work but that one always gets me.
Susan
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Lennox
climber
in the land of the blind
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Nov 12, 2017 - 03:07pm PT
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I last read Angle of Repose over 30 years ago. I had forgotten how great it is. I remember that I liked it so much back then that I read Crossing to Safety and some of his other works; I might have to revisit them also.
Echopraxia is hard sci-fi. It’s not as good as Watts preceding novel Blindsight, but it gave me a lot to chew on, and it was several orders of magnitude more interesting than the “What is Mind?” thread.
The first two sci-fi novels of Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem trilogy were incredibly inventive and unpredictable. I hope this third one holds up.
As with Angle of Repose, The Idiot is something I read many years ago, and I remember very little of it. For a few years back then I was obsessed with everything Dostoevsky. I read all of his works, and I read The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, and Notes from Underground several times each. I'm not religious, I don’t believe in god, and I disagree with much of what his writing seems to propose, but I still lovingly remember parts of The Brother’s Karamazov quite vividly such as Ivan’s grand inquisitor and Alyosha’s dream.
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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Nov 12, 2017 - 04:03pm PT
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The latest addition to the Oxford History of the United States series—Richard White's The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and The Gilded Age, 1865-1896.
Lots of us know our Civil War history. Very few know much about Reconstruction, and its failure.
It's excellent, but not for the faint of heart.
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little Z
Trad climber
un cafetal en Naranjo
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Nov 14, 2017 - 01:50pm PT
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when I was back in Seattle in August I went into the UW Bookstore and bought about $200 of bargain books off the front tables and carts. Been happily working my way through the pile since then.
Last night started The Best American Sports Writing 2013. This anthology has been published yearly since 1991 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) when David Halberstam edited the inagural version. The editor for 2013 was J.R. Moerhringer.
from his intro:
"Though every competition, from aikido to Xbox, is at surface about winning, it's the losing that matters in the end, because we're all going to lose more than we win. Our bedrock task as human beings is coping with loss, the knowledge of it, the memory of it, the imminence of it, and sports have the power to show us, starkly, bracingly, how."
Started with a story about the death of ultra-runner Micah True: Caballo Blanco's Last Run by Barry Bearak which first appeared in the NY Times.
Was a fine start to what looks like some good reading.
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Tobia
Social climber
Denial
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 15, 2017 - 05:47am PT
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When the Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam started I was reading Huê 1968 by Mark Bowden. It gives a focused view on exactly how misguided our military leaders were and how brave the young soldiers were fighting for survival and the citizens of Huê had little input on their survival or death.
I read David Halberstam's Ho following that and Duong Thu Huong's Novel Without A Name, which was mentioned in Bowden's book. It is a perspective of the war written by a soldier of North Vietnam.
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Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
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Nov 15, 2017 - 11:00am PT
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Tobia, since your'e on a Vietnam jag, have you read Graham Greene's The Quiet American?
Well worth it if you haven't.
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Tobia
Social climber
Denial
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 18, 2017 - 05:33am PT
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◙
Gregory, I will find a used copy, thanks.
Sycorax, I will check the Tobias Wolff book as well.
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little Z
Trad climber
un cafetal en Naranjo
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Nov 18, 2017 - 05:56am PT
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sycorax - it's on deck, at the top of the stack of my bargain book haul
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Nov 18, 2017 - 03:10pm PT
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Another Vietnam novel I'd highly recommend is Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. Marlantes won the Navy Cross, a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts, so on top of being a good writer, has the experience to back up the writing.
I just finished Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan. Biography of Edward Curtis, who was a pretty interesting character.
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Nov 23, 2017 - 01:06pm PT
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Here's a first book which will knock your sox off, Lands of Lost Borders by Kate Harris. An Atlin gal whom I like to think of as an Honorary Grand Daughter. Here's what Dave Roberts has to say about it (from Facebook):
Dave Roberts
"Last week I came home from Banff, and from the cozy little writers’ dinner my agent, Stuart Krichevsky, hosted, with a galley copy of Kate Harris’s forthcoming book, Lands of Lost Borders. I first met Kate six or seven years ago at Banff, where she was enrolled in the writing program. Bernadette McDonald told me that one of the students there was a gifted, promising writer, but that she was too shy to approach me for advice. We had a good chat in the MacLab bistro, and later I read an early draft of her book, which hangs an inquiry on the meaning of exploration on a grueling ten-month bike journey along the Silk Road that Kate and her best friend accomplished in their mid-twenties.
Here, I realized, was a writer of uncommon intelligence with a penchant for the lyrical, but the draft seemed hamstrung by a certain academic rigidity. No wonder—Kate was a former Rhodes scholar who had pursued a doctorate in science at MIT. But Bernadette was right: what promise she showed! I passed her on to Stuart, who, seeing the same talent and lucidity that impressed me, took her on.
I finished Lands of Lost Borders two days ago. Old cliché: I couldn’t put it down. But beyond the fact that Kate’s story hooked me, I realized that I was witnessing the emergence of a formidable voice speaking startlingly original things about the world. I can’t remember coming upon a first book that so dazzled me. I wish that at her age I had had half the skills that Kate unearthed in herself, and that now, with Stuart’s help, she had transmuted into prose.
The care and fresh insight show in virtually every sentence. Of an old woman met along the road in post-Soviet Georgia: “A gold ring hung on her thin finger, loosely orbiting the bone—a hand that had held hunger once and probably expected to grip it again.” Of an aperçu wrung from a truck speeding past in the muddy night: “Every heartbeat is a history of decisions, of certain roads taken and others forsaken until you end up exactly where you are.” Of the mystic pleasures of marathon biking: “I’m not sure where I go when I spin wheels for hours on end like that, except into the rapture of doing nothing deeply—although ‘nothing,’ in this case, involves a tantrum of pedal strokes on a burdened bicycle along a euphemism for a highway through the Himalaya.” “Beautiful writing” per se, though, is not my cup of tea. I can’t read Lawrence Durrell, Annie Dillard, or Rebecca Solnit. All of the craft that goes into each of Kate’s paragraphs is marshaled in the service of an accelerating plot, and toward the end of her book, her restless intelligence rises to a cri de coeur in Chinese-occupied Tibet against the tyranny of nations, xenophobia, and cultural oppression.
Yes, the biking itself often sounds arduous and lonely, the furtive campsites grim, the moments of joy too fleeting. But some of the best stories are woven out of desperate adventures: think of Apsley Cherry-Garrard or Fridtjof Nansen. My own second book, Deborah, narrated a two-man journey into our own psychic hell in Alaska. Shortly after we met, my longtime buddy Ed Ward gave me his capsule review: “I’m sure glad I didn’t go on that expedition.”
Lands of Lost Borders will be published by Knopf in Canada in January, by Harper Collins in the U. S. only next August. Write the title down, my friends, and pre-order from Amazon as soon as you can.
Meanwhile, I can’t wait to see what Kate writes next. And while our evening with Stuart, Sharon, and Roman Dial in Banff made me sorry that she lives so far away from Boston, in the wilds of northern British Columbia, I trust that we’ll find a way to connect long before next year’s Banff rolls around. After all, in my been-there, seen-it-all old age, I suspect that Kate Harris has a lot to teach me about writing and life."
Add to the above the incredibly enthusiastic reviews of Pico Iyer; "Carried me up into a state of excitement I haven't felt for years. It's a modern classic." and Barry Lopez, and you know this one is a winner. I'm ordering a bunch for friends who deserve the best. It's not just travel and adventure, it is literature in the truest sense.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Nov 23, 2017 - 02:32pm PT
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Just got Alan Steck's new hardback book from Patagonia. That guy DID stuff.
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Gail Hightower
climber
SE
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Nov 23, 2017 - 03:00pm PT
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Strange as This Weather has Been by Ann Pancake.
It is about the cost of living below a mountain top removal mine in West Virginia, and at times sounds like a post apocalyptic novel. Written from five character's perspectives.
I think it is the premier appalachian ecocriticism novel of the last 10 years.
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SuperTopo on the Web
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Let us know!