Why am I passionate about this?

I was an under-employed Scottish poet hillwalker when I met a Himalayan mountaineer in a pub. Due to alcohol and a misunderstanding about the metaphorical nature of Poetry, Mal Duff asked me to join an attempt to climb the legendary 24,000ft  Mustagh Tower in the Karakoram. By the time I admitted I had no climbing experience whatsoever and was scared of heights, it was too late. Those Scottish winters’ apprenticeships and following Himalayan expeditions re-shaped my writing life, outlook, and friendships. My books have been shortlisted three times for the Boardman-Tasker Award for outstanding mountaineering literature, for Summit Fever; Kingdoms of Experience (Everest the Unclimbed Ridge); Electric Brae.


I wrote

Summit Fever

By Andrew Greig,

Book cover of Summit Fever

What is my book about?

Mountaineering books are written by people who have been climbing for years, working their way up from local crags to…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Living Mountain

Andrew Greig Why did I love this book?

To my mind the finest meditation on the experience of walking among the hills, looking inward and out. Written in the Forties, this short book is at once timeless and decades ahead of its time. It is profoundly philosophical yet utterly rooted in experience - environmental, ecological, spiritual, the product of many years of wandering and musing in the Cairngorms. Hauntingly lovely and true, without ever being inflated or sentimental, it goes to the heart of our being, and the mountains’ being. I had the pleasure and privilege of recommending this long out-of-print book to Canongate for its series of Canongate Classics, since when it has become more widely read and treasured.

By Nan Shepherd,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Living Mountain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain' Guardian

Introduction by Robert Macfarlane. Afterword by Jeanette Winterson

In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.

Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and…


Book cover of The Kangchenjunga Adventure: The 1930 Expedition to the Third Highest Mountain in the World

Andrew Greig Why did I love this book?

I first read this among my father’s books as a child. I believe he had met Smythe in London in the early 30, thus his signed copy of The Valley of Flowers. This is the quintessential book of that era of passionate amateur climbing and exploration, the age of Shipton and Tilman, of highly knowledgeable and deeply eccentric personalities. The writing is lyrical, just this side of purple, earthed by Smythe’s passion for botany, photography, and close observation. In the true sense of amateur, Kanchenjunga is a great adventure expedition in a time that will not come again. This is the book that prompted me to accept an invitation to climb with an expedition on a serious Himalayan mountain with real mountaineers, despite my lack of experience and hardwired dislike of heights. It changed my life. I like to think Smythe would have approved.

By Frank Smythe,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Kangchenjunga Adventure as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'We went to Kangchenjunga in response not to the dictates of science, but in obedience to that indefinable urge men call adventure.'

In 1930, an expedition set out to climb the world's third-highest mountain, Kangchenjunga. As yet unclimbed, a number of attempts had been made on the peak, including two in the previous year. The Kangchenjunga Adventure records Frank Smythe's attempts as part of an international team to reach the summit, how a deadly avalanche, which killed one of the sherpas, brought an end to their climb and how they turned their attentions instead to Jonsong Peak, which offered a…


Book cover of Tents in the Clouds: The First Women's Himalayan Expedition

Andrew Greig Why did I love this book?

Betty Stark was the aunt of a friend of mine, and she was part of the first all women Himalayan expedition in 1955. It is an antidote to the very all-male outlook and structures of many climbs of that time. It had no leader, no ‘lead climbers’. Instead, they were a small team of friends, all experienced and capable, who wished only to explore, encounter, and climb as high and hard as they could. It is anti-heroic, recording the pains, sufferings, and losses and highs, quietly downplaying and yet the efforts and dangers come through. They were outliers and trailblazers. They made their point. They were the point.

By Monica Jackson, Elizabeth Stark,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Tents in the Clouds as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Documents the expedition of three British women to unexplored areas on the border of Nepal in Tibet in 1955.


Book cover of Calculated Risk: Adventure and Romance in Scotland and the Alps

Andrew Greig Why did I love this book?

The sole novel left by legendary Scottish mountaineer Dougal Haston - prickly, opinionated, striking, not given to self-doubt, probably the finest all-around climber of his day. It has a great opening when an incensed young ambitious climber barrels his motorbike up the winding Loch Lubnaig road on his way to Glencoe, goes on to include a fictional version of his epic on the Eiger when the great American climber1966  John Harlin fell to his death beside him, and Haston helped rescue a stranded group of climbers and after a week-long drama finally summited the North Face. It is raw, emotional (has a classic climber’s love story), philosophical, full of impatience to climb, to live more. After finishing the first draft in Chamonix, Haston went to ski the same avalanche-prone gully where his central character in the book had been avalanched and miraculously survived – Haston did not. I saw him lecture at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh after the successful Everest the Hard Way expedition. His eyes were like blue searchlights. He died as he lived, right on the edge.

By Dougal Haston,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Calculated Risk as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When John Dunlop gives Judy Scott a lift to Glencoe on his motorbike, both are surprised when a relationship develops. But for John all passions must be relegated to the demands of the big climb. The focus soon shifts to the Alps where he teams up with the American climber Jack McDonald. Their careful planning goes awry and a major first ascent bid turns into an intense struggle bringing disaster and tragedy. Calculated Risk is a fictional portrayal of the world of mountaineering, of climbing the most demanding routes at a time when climbing was still emerging from its primitive…


Book cover of The Ascent of Rum Doodle

Andrew Greig Why did I love this book?

Probably the funniest and most inventive climbing expedition book ever written, loved by climbers who appreciate its satire, spoof, mickey-taking pastiche of Serious Mountaineering Expedition Books. It is Chris Bonnington turned Wodehouse, Jon Krakauer rendered by Spike Milligan. Its knowing self-mockery of all the tropes and self-important delusions of Climbing is sharp and accurate enough to raise it high above whimsy. Wildly creative, it is impossible to read without snorting in one’s sleeping bag. It is the comic, ridiculous side of the great pursuit of Getting Higher.

By W.E. Bowman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Ascent of Rum Doodle as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An English comic novel about a World War II expedition to a Himalayan peak.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BILL BRYSON

An outrageously funny spoof about the ascent of a 40,000-and-a-half-foot peak, The Ascent of Rum Doodle has been a cult favourite since its publication in 1956. Led by the reliably under-insightful Binder, a team of seven British men -- including Dr Prone (constantly ill), Jungle the route finder (constantly lost), Constant the diplomat (constantly arguing) -- and 3,000 Yogistani porters sets out to conquer the highest peak in the Himalayas.


Explore my book 😀

Summit Fever

By Andrew Greig,

Book cover of Summit Fever

What is my book about?

Mountaineering books are written by people who have been climbing for years, working their way up from local crags to their country’s hills, to ice climbing, winter climbing, then the Alps, and finally the Himalaya. As the result of a beer-fuelled misunderstanding, Andrew Greig, a writer non-climber with a deep aversion to heights and danger, found himself training in ice climbing for one Scottish winter before being part of the small team attempting the Mustagh Tower, a legendary peak in Baltistan, sometimes known as ‘the Himalayan Matterhorn’. Summit Fever is a unique adventure story of a novice’s induction into a mindset and a way of living, of an outsider becoming an insider. It is written for any armchair climber who wonders What would it be like for me? Never out of print since its publication in 1985, it has become a quiet classic, an outlier and one-of-a-kind. Stories of fear and climbing through fear, of deep friendship and novel experiences.

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No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

Book cover of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

Rona Simmons Author Of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”

Rona's book list on World War II featuring the average Joe

What is my book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.

The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.

No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…

No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

What is this book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in mountaineering, Scotland, and Nepal?

Mountaineering 44 books
Scotland 337 books
Nepal 33 books