- The Shining Mountain by Pete Boardman (one of my favorite of all books, two pretty normal guys doing something absolutely epic)
- Everest: The Cruel Way by Joe Tasker (maybe history's single greatest suffer-fest, incredible).
- Touching The Void by Joe Simpson (I avoided reading this for such a long time, because it's something of a cliche, but it's actually great).
- Seven Years in Tibet in Heinrich Harrer (It's hard to know how reliable this is, and it's a bit of a tall tale, but it's absolutely not the book I expected it to be going in).
- Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer (Bite-sized bits of great outdoor writing). "Into Thin Air" is a good read too.
The "classic" I disliked was Herzog's Annapurna. It just seemed so mechanical, and so missing the joy of exploration that makes the best of these books so fun to read.
I adored Into Thin Air, but cannot get through Eiger Dreams. Frustrating because the stories are indeed great!
I dunno. Joe seems to be an okay guy.
"K2: Triumph and Tragedy" by Jim Curran is an excellent book about the 1986 disaster.
I can also highly recommend the recent film "Broad Peak" directed by Leszek Dawid about the Polish mountaineer Maciej Berbeka.
My guess is that they were using Tricouni [1] nails in their boots, by all accounts they work well over a different range of conditions to a rubber sole and crampon combination.
I did not care for Roberts personal memoir On the ridge between life and death.
These aren't Everest specific recs, but if any of you are looking for mountaineering reading:
_The White Spider_ by Heinrich Harrer
_The Beckoning Silence_ and _Into the Void_ by Joe Simpson
_Eiger Obsession_ by John Harlin. Part of my enjoyment came from my familiarity with the geography of the book.
_Solo Faces_ by James Salter, fiction, loosely based on Gary Hemmings and Royal Robbins.