[Johnny Brown]

Rather than over think this, I'm sticking to books I've either read many times, or have actually stuck in my sac when likely to have a good few hours to kill in camp on a trip. I've bought a few slim paperbacks now solely for this reason.

The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin. A flawed masterpiece I never tire of reading, always gets me thinking.
The Peregrine, JA Baker. Peerless, still spawning pale imitations.
45, Bill Drummond. A whole life lived as a piece of art largely designed to take the piss.
This Game of Ghosts, Joe Simpson. My copy is falling to bits now, the best 'why' book on climbing?
Jim Perrin, Travels with the Flea etc. Most of his highpoints in here, he's good isn't he?
Casting at the Sun, Chris Yates. Even Perrin can't match Yates on the landscape.
The Big Six, Arthur Ransome. After seeing a crap play of the Hobbit aged 11 I've never read Tolkien, but at the same age I did beat someone on Mastermind whose specialist subject was Ransome.
The Kingdom, Douglas Chadwick. A big photo book rather impractical for a 'ledge, but I picked it up second hand in Whitehorse, and read in the dirt at Squamish. Knocks the recent british nature writing genre into a cocked hat.
Britain: A World by Itself, Various, photos by Paul Wakefield. Again, transcendent photos transcended by the writing. The first book I'd save if the house was on fire.

[jwi]

Songlines is an amazing book. Together with “What am I doing here” it's the best Chatwin book imho

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[fried]

On Black hill is excellent too.

[Johnny Brown]

Yeah, would definitely make my fiction shortlist.

I forgot Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee. Literary duvet jacket.

[Yossarian]

Command & Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser - entertaining and terrfying

Based on your recommendation, I have just started this. Gripping...

There's also Richard Rhodes' Dark Sun, about the hydrogen bomb, Teller, Fuchs, etc which I must get round to. And John Hersey's Hiroshima.

[moose]

Command & Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser - entertaining and terrfying

Based on your recommendation, I have just started this. Gripping...

There's also Richard Rhodes' Dark Sun, about the hydrogen bomb, Teller, Fuchs, etc which I must get round to. And John Hersey's Hiroshima.

Superb isn't it? I was dubious when I read the glowing reviews - bloke who wrote Fast Food Nation writing about nuclear weapons...gedorffffit!  But it is one of the best non-fiction books I have read for years - I had read more weighty and considered tomes but none that made me look forward so much to restarting it. 

Terrifying though - every single aspect of the USA's nucler programme was (possibly still is) a disaster waiting to happen.  From the multiply awful failsafes meant to stop bombs accidentally detonating, to the silo ops, to the computing systems (a favourite being a chip at an early warning station in the frozen north that essentially failed in a manner which generated a "base is destroyed, the missiles are coming" signal - took a fair bit of nerve for the powers that be to ignore it until they obtained evidence to the contrary).

[andy popp]

There must have been others but the only book I can remember reading on the one actual expedition I have been on was In Cold Blood. By the end it had been split into four or five parts as pretty much all of us were reading it simultaneously (I remember having to wait for the person ahead of me to finish the part they were on, which I needed next).

[tomtom]

Anna Karenina. Beautifully written dense Tolstoy. A copy disintegrated in the top pocket of my rucksack as a student before I could finish it. Lasted several trips....

[jwi]

I guess with Kindles these days you don't have to take risks on a short collection of books, just download a whole bunch and hope at least a couple are good.

I killed two kindles that way before I wised up.

[Yossarian]

There must have been others but the only book I can remember reading on the one actual expedition I have been on was In Cold Blood. By the end it had been split into four or five parts as pretty much all of us were reading it simultaneously (I remember having to wait for the person ahead of me to finish the part they were on, which I needed next).

The last book I read on an expedition was William Dalrymple's The Age of Kali, a collection of essays on subjects including murder, self-immolation, massacres, etc, all in India. Which I read in various dodgy hovels in India. I with I'd brought something else. It was a little like going on a surfing holiday, and bringing an illustrated history of fatal shark attacks...

[andy popp]

There must have been others but the only book I can remember reading on the one actual expedition I have been on was In Cold Blood. By the end it had been split into four or five parts as pretty much all of us were reading it simultaneously (I remember having to wait for the person ahead of me to finish the part they were on, which I needed next).

The last book I read on an expedition was William Dalrymple's The Age of Kali, a collection of essays on subjects including murder, self-immolation, massacres, etc, all in India. Which I read in various dodgy hovels in India. I with I'd brought something else. It was a little like going on a surfing holiday, and bringing an illustrated history of fatal shark attacks...

Ha! Could have been worse, might have had Touching the Void with you. But I've got a terrible feeling now that I lied. I actually think it was Mailer's The Executioner's Song, not In Cold Blood.

[Will Hunt]

I guess with Kindles these days you don't have to take risks on a short collection of books, just download a whole bunch and hope at least a couple are good.

I killed two kindles that way before I wised up.

Do Kindles not cope with having large quantities of books downloaded onto them?

[slackline]

Do Kindles not cope with having large quantities of books downloaded onto them?

That they cope with, its being left in the tent they don't like....



Adieu chère caméra by jwi, on Flickr

[jwi]

That just killed my Nikon and 3 lenses. I had already wised up about kindles by that time....

They die in cold climates.

[Will Hunt]

I came back to this thread to get a book recommendation (think I'm going to go with one of the Moomin books) and realised that although I made my list I didn't post it.

A Sand County Almanac - Leopold
Illumination in the Flatwoods - Hutto
His Dark Materials - Pullman
English Passengers - Kneale
Roughing It - Twain
Down and Out in Paris and London - Orwell
Homage to Catalonia - Orwell
As I Walked Out One Midsummer's Morning - Lee
Cider With Rosie - Lee
Mortal Engines - Reeve

[lagerstarfish]

indeed everything by Tom Wolfe is great.

The Purple Decades is a nice collection of his stuff - be nice to have on a big wall