Healing up from minor surgery this week and I'm trying to find something to read. Mountains, running, wandering, climbing, early California, the American West, are all topics I can't get enough of, especially stories involving hardship and the early mountain men. What you got?

Btw, Dylan, thanks for recommending "You Can't Win", its now one of my favorite books.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I love his prose...Fiction, but set in the west, loosely based on the exploits of the Glanton Gang (scalp hunters who I went on to study after this book). Pretty insane stuff. Also good is the Border Trilogy, also McCarthy. Again, not the nonfiction you're possibly looking for, but some pretty great writing.

Empire of the Summer Moon (S.C. Gwynne)is pretty good historical reading...Story of Quanah Parker and the Comanche resistance on the plains. Loosely overlaps with some of the period/events in Blood Meridian.

Still think you need to check out Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath...I know you like the period.

Could loan you any of these....

I still have to borrow You Can't Win...

Edited by xnomanx on 04/25/2012 16:44:58 MDT.

Well, since you just did R2R2R how about

The Man Who Walked Through Time, by Colin Fletcher
Grand Obsession: Harvey Butchart and the Exploration of the Grand Canyon, by Butler & Myers

Also good reads by Fletcher,

The Thousand Mile Summer
River
The Man from the Cave

Jon Krakauer

Into the Wild - about a guy that went into the wild in Alaska surviving on the land but eventually dies

or Into Thin air - Everest climbing accident

Forever on the Mountain by James Tabor

Touching My Father's Soul by Jamling Norgay

not exactly in your genre but
Sunk without a Sound The Tragic Colorado River Honeymoon of Glen & Bessie Hyde by Brad Dimrock

A Long Trek Home by Erin McKittrick

Good luck with your recovery!

Edited by leighb on 04/25/2012 17:24:06 MDT.

In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon, by Redmond O'Hanlon, or any O'Hanlon book, really. He's a hoot, a regular riot. And a crazy man. Love his writing, you'll laugh all night long.

Paddle to the Amazon by Don Starkell ... 12000 miles by canoe from Winnipeg to the mouth of the Amazon

If you have a Kindle, there's a ton of folks who've written up their AT PCT and CDT hikes. I can easily "loan" you some of those.....PM for details.

"The Last Season"; I've sadly forgotten the author. Any synopsis won't do it justice; however, the book is about a Sierra Nevada park ranger with youthful literary ambitions--a connection to Wallace Stegner--early love and a mysterious death...ah heck just read the book!

Also: John Muir is a really good writer. Let me re-state the obvious. So is John McPhee. Any of McPhee's books on Alaska are great; so is "The Control of Nature"; and above all his Pulitzer Prize winning "Annals of the Former World".

And of course Edward Abbey.

Other than that, the new translations of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky by the Pevears are terrific. I always like the Russians when I'm bed-ridden. I also like them when I'm hiking!

Oh and David Mitchell is the best contemporary writer going, imho; try Cloud Atlas if you like meaty and challenging with big rewards.

Give us something here: what's the last book or two that you enjoyed?

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Edited by rOg_w on 05/28/2012 17:47:34 MDT.

I keep hearing comics talking about "50 Shades of Grey".

I enjoyed "you cant win" by Jack Black. Love the way they talked, learning all the early slang terms and just the hobo life, fascinating stuff. Also, many of John Muirs writings held me for a while, I'm a nature boy at heart. Recently, " for whom the bell tolls", very good as well. Already started Craig's suggestion, "grapes of Wrath", and I have to say so far, the way this guy describes the world around him, I'm hooked.

Keep them coming!

Early California and the American West?

Sierra Crossing, First Roads To California
by Thomas Frederick Howard

--B.G.--

I second the recommendation for the Quanah Parker history, just read it recently myself.

In the Land of White Death, by Valerian Albanov.

Depending on whether your surgery was anywhere near your rib cage or belly, you might not want to follow this recommendation: anything by Tim Cahill, particularly Road Fever. But you will laugh hard and often, so beware.

Edited by dkramalc on 04/25/2012 20:13:02 MDT.

+1 Blood Meridian. Brutal, terrifying, use of language that rivals any of the classics.

Ordeal by Hunger hits all your topics. It's the first (and maybe the best) well-researched history of the Donner Party. Written by George R. Stewart, a fantastic California writer (prof. at Berkeley for years) who's somewhat neglected these days. Also wrote the novel Storm (where the main character is a storm ravaging the CA coast--gave birth to the tradition of naming storms/hurricanes and inspired the song, "They Call the Wind Maria." And wrote Names on the Land, an amazing book about place names across America. And his masterwork, Earth Abides, a (nominally) post-apocalyptic novel unlike any other in the genre (also one of the first of that type).

Other good non-fiction would be Wilderness and the American Mind, Roderick Nash; Basin and Range, John McPhee; and Crossing Open Ground, Barry Lopez.

Edit: missed the McPhee recommendation up thread. So that's a +1 as well.

Edited by DavidDrake on 04/25/2012 20:14:55 MDT.

Steve Roper's Sierra High Route has a lot of history about the early explorers and climbers in the area.

Mount Whitney: Mountain Lore From the Whitney Store, by Thompson & Newbold is interesting.

And I Alone Survived, by Lauren Elder is a true story about a small plane crash near the Sierra Crest.

Edward Abbey, just about anything is good - some is a little historical.

Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance, by Stephen Herrero is good.

Hunger Games Trilogy

if you like chic lit then "wild"

Edited by asdzxc57 on 04/25/2012 20:18:06 MDT.

Undaunted Courage: Meriweather Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, by Stephen Ambrose.

The Lewis & Clark Expedition. Fascinating. Love Ambrose's style of writing.