Arlene Blum is another mountaineer author worth mentioning. She's written about her expeditions including Annapurna I, as well as her work as a chemist campaigning to ban toxic flame retardant from upholstery.
Re:How Mount Everest killed George Mallory
by selimthegrim on Friday June 07, 2024 @10:18PM
(#40614780)
Any books in particular or anywhere to start?
Annapurna A Woman’s Place and Breaking Trail. The first is about the namesake first American expedition to the top which she led, the second is her memoir. Both great reads, thankfully lacking much of the big headed bravado of other mountaineering books.
> - Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer (Bite-sized bits of great outdoor writing). "Into Thin Air" is a good read too.
I adored Into Thin Air, but cannot get through Eiger Dreams. Frustrating because the stories are indeed great!
- 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.