When I was 10, my father quoted to me the line by Henry David Thoreau, that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." This scared me deeply. It became an enduring question. What makes us feel truly alive? I love stories that take us to these edges. I like to explore what we chase - love, adventure, ambition, art - and where it goes wrong. I’ve long been drawn to stories about people who climb the world’s most dangerous mountains, putting themselves through unthinkable ordeals in places that don’t care if we live or die. And what of their friends, families and partners?
Twenty years ago, Hugo and Ash were on top of the world. As the rock band Ashbirds they were superstars. Then Ash went missing on a mountain, and the lives of Hugo and everyone around him were changed forever. Two decades on, Ash’s fiancée Elza is still struggling to move on, her private grief outshone by the glare of publicity. Hugo is now a recluse in Nepal. Robert, an ambitious session player, feels himself both blessed and cursed by his brief time with Ashbirds, unable to achieve recognition in his own right. While the Ashbirds legend burns brighter than ever, Elza, Hugo, and Robert are as stranded as if they were the ones lost in the ice. How far must they go to come back to life?
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This is the ultimate place to understand the epic undertaking of climbing Everest. Krakauer climbed in a season with the worst death toll in the peak’s history. His book takes us through a remarkable ordeal of human fragility, of hurricanes, cold, exposure, lucky and unlucky decisions, all in a place where nothing can be trusted - not the air, not your own body or mind, not even the ground you walk on.
A different mountain, and reputedly more deadly than Everest. The focus is on a handful of professional elite mountaineers, all women, and the different ways they achieve their climbing dreams, according to their personalities - from phenomenal physical grit to unashamed use of every feminine wile. Yes, it seems you can sleep your way to the top. You might think this sounds monstrous, but I found it incredibly human and moving, and afterward I searched YouTube for videos of these women, to see their actual faces, full of unstoppable life.
Mountaineering attracts people of lionlike courage. What of the people who wait for them at home? When Maria Coffey started dating a climber, she found herself part of an exclusive club…and she soon needed them more than ever after her partner was lost in an accident. As she struggles through her bereavement she examines the adventuring nature, and the bravery needed to make a life with such a person.
We’re in fiction now. This is the story of Alice, a young professional woman with a settled life and reliable boyfriend, who jettisons it all when she meets Adam, a mountaineer. Adam is very broken, with PTSD after a tragedy in the mountains. I know climbers who would say the plot is sensationalist, but I’ve also met climbers who seem to have left their most vivid selves in that white otherworld. And this is the essential territory of Nicci French novels - people with dangerous edges and missing pieces, and how charismatic they are.
Another novel - breathtaking descriptions that really put you on the mountain, and a trio of characters caught in a tangle of obsession. While you share every painful, astounding step, you’re aching for them to put their emotional baggage down, stop dwelling on the past, and instead seize the future. Great armchair adventuring, a complicated romance, and no easy answers.
5,888 authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about mountaineering, mountaineers, and romantic love.
We think you will like Thinking, Fast and Slow, Touching the Void, and Video Night in Kathmandu if you like this list.
From Edward's list on creating and sustaining knowledge at work.
Thinking Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman’s distillation of a lifetime’s work into a highly readable volume for general audiences. Kahneman and his late collaborator Amos Tversky, both psychologists, shared the Nobel Prize in Economics for their groundbreaking work that helped establish the field of behavioral economics. In Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman tells the story of how we make decisions, and how our reliance on cognitive shortcuts leads to predictable errors. He manages to convey complex ideas in common language without talking down to his readers. It's a must-read for anyone who wants to examine their decision-making principles and practices.
From Mark's list on the thrills and dangers of extreme sports.
The original – and many of the best – books about extreme sports are mountaineering books, dating back to a time before the phrase was even coined. This is one of, if not the best of the genre. Joe Simpson’s account of his extraordinary fight for survival after a fall in the Peruvian Andes takes no prisoners. It’s brutal and raw and a wonderful piece of writing.
From Tom's list on Nepal and the roof of the world.
Only one segment of this travel classic is about Nepal, but Pico Iyer’s exploration of 1980s South and Southeast Asia throws a candid eye on a rapidly globalising world. Before social media and smartphones, foreign travelers and locals talked to one another and the results make for illuminating and elegant reading about the Lonely Planet generation and how it was received and perceived in the Far East.