Here are 56 books that Alpine Warriors fans have personally recommended if you like
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I'm an Englishman who fell in love with a 300-year-old former sausage curing hut on the side of a Slovenian mountain in 2007. After years of visits spent renovating the place, I moved to Slovenia, where I lived and worked for many years, exploring the country, customs, and culture, learning some of the language, and visiting its most beautiful places. I continue to be enamored with Slovenia, and you will regularly find me at my cabin, making repairs and splitting firewood.
I had just moved to Slovenia when I saw this book in the window of a bookshop in Ljubljana. I immediately bought it and devoured the prose, going cover to cover in just two days. So little has been written about Slovenia in English, and I was hungry for insight into the country I would call home for many years.
The book is a mix; it's part guidebook, part insightful essays on aspects of Slovenian life, such as education, the film industry, and publishing. It is also part personal memoir, with anecdotes about the author's wedding day, for example.
I was looking for an overview of the country, and Slovenology certainly provides that. If you're seeking a light, functional, and interesting read about Slovenia, this book is a really good place to start.
Slovenology is part memoir, part essay collection, part travel writing, and part guidebook. It is meant to act as a guide-in-hand while visiting Slovenia, but it can be read just as well from the comfort of your own home to give you a deeper and more colorful sense of what it’s like to live in this remarkable, little-known country. Slovenology combines an outsider’s perspective with the affection and local knowledge of a long-term resident: an engaging account of living in a singular country, and a punchy guide to traveling in it.
I'm an Englishman who fell in love with a 300-year-old former sausage curing hut on the side of a Slovenian mountain in 2007. After years of visits spent renovating the place, I moved to Slovenia, where I lived and worked for many years, exploring the country, customs, and culture, learning some of the language, and visiting its most beautiful places. I continue to be enamored with Slovenia, and you will regularly find me at my cabin, making repairs and splitting firewood.
In contrast to Slovenology, this book digs deeper into Slovenia. A memoir by an American who moved to the country in the mid-1990s after falling for a handsome Slovene poet, Debeljak tells the story of her life as she takes on the head-twisting nature of Slovenian, and gets to grips with a culture that is often quite different to that of her homeland.
Debeljak does not hold back on personal details, and I loved how she pours her heart into the story, sharing so much of her inner feelings with us. She also writes with humor and beauty. I think Slovenia has changed quite a lot since Debeljak's story, but it's still a great read for any Slovenia fan.
"[A] sunny, can-do look at intense culture shock. Debeljak makes a humorous, self-effacing guide to her own story and the only complaint I have is that I wish she’d told us more. I hope someday she gives us a sequel."—Christian Science Monitor • "Witty and warm."—Kirkus Reviews
Forbidden Bread is an unusual love story that covers great territory, both geographically and emotionally. The author leaves behind a successful career as an American financial analyst to pursue Ales Debeljak, a womanizing Slovenian poet who catches her attention at a cocktail party. The story begins in New York City, but quickly migrates,…
I'm an Englishman who fell in love with a 300-year-old former sausage curing hut on the side of a Slovenian mountain in 2007. After years of visits spent renovating the place, I moved to Slovenia, where I lived and worked for many years, exploring the country, customs, and culture, learning some of the language, and visiting its most beautiful places. I continue to be enamored with Slovenia, and you will regularly find me at my cabin, making repairs and splitting firewood.
Though I'd seen this book advertised, it took a recommendation from a Slovenian to make me read it. And I'm glad I did. Blake, a Canadian author who's lived in Slovenia for many years, has done an excellent job documenting what makes Slovenians–Slovene.
It's an informative and frequently funny look at the country and its people. I found myself chuckling at many of the behaviors Blake notes that I had personally experienced myself.
With its undercurrent of dry humor and its overview of the people, this is a must-have book for anyone interested in understanding Slovenians.
Culture Smart guides help travellers have a more meaningful and successful time abroad through a better understanding of the local culture. Chapters on values, attitudes, customs, and daily life will help you make the most of your visit, while tips on etiquette and communication will help you navigate unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.
I'm an Englishman who fell in love with a 300-year-old former sausage curing hut on the side of a Slovenian mountain in 2007. After years of visits spent renovating the place, I moved to Slovenia, where I lived and worked for many years, exploring the country, customs, and culture, learning some of the language, and visiting its most beautiful places. I continue to be enamored with Slovenia, and you will regularly find me at my cabin, making repairs and splitting firewood.
Slovenia might only have two million citizens, but they've punched above their weight. Author John Bills has superbly brought 100 of the most important to our attention. I loved reading about Slovenia's world-famous endurance swimmers, Everest skiers, scientists, musicians, poets, playwrights, and more.
Laced with dry humor, this book is a must-have for Slovenophiles who want to learn more about the Slovenian people who have gone well beyond their borders and made their mark on the greater world.
The Slovenians have given the world everything from postage stamps to pocket calculators via a conveyer belt of revolutionaries, rebels, artists and trailblazers, including men who decided it was a good idea to ski down Everest, swim the Amazon and all the rest. 'The Slovenians' is one big love letter to the men and women of Slovenian history.
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?
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.
Drawing on interviews with many leading mountaineers or their survivors, Coffey goes beyond the typical climbing book to question the reasons why climbers risk their lives. The result is a powerful, affecting book that strips the romance from adventure and returns it to the human realm: the parents, spouses, children, and partners of climbers who until now have maintained their code of silence. Interviewees include Jim Wickwire, Conrad Anker, Joe Simpson, Chris Bonington, Ed Viesturs and others.
I have loved writing since I was in grade school and after graduating university with a degree in International Affairs I became a journalist. I’ve written six non-fiction books and also teach Journalism at SUNY Purchase. I’ve always been fascinated about the way one person’s life or one seemingly small episode in history allows us a way to examine the larger picture: whether it was how Fanny Bullock Workman showed what it meant to be a woman in a predominantly male world of mountain climbing or how the deliberate sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in the closing days of WWII showed that war is never black and white, that there are layers to people and stories and events that we should always try to consider.
It illustrates how one woman’s courage to forge ahead in a male-dominated world produced scientific work that challenged gender stereotypes and led to all-male clubs breaking their male-only rules.
In August 1978, thirteen women left San Francisco for the Nepal Himalaya to make history as the first Americans—and the first women—to scale the treacherous slopes of Annapurna I, the world’s tenth highest peak. Expedition leader Arlene Blum here tells their dramatic story: the logistical problems, storms, and hazardous ice climbing; the conflicts and reconciliations within the team; the terror of avalanches that threatened to sweep away camps and climbers.
On October 15, two women and two Sherpas at last stood on the summit—but the celebration was cut short, for two days later, the two women of the second summit…
I’ve been a ski racer my entire life. I started hiking up mountains as a teenager to get in shape for winter, but I soon found climbing peaks to be as rewarding as skiing down them. When I stand on top of a mountain I feel on top of the world! And I’ve been lucky enough as a travel writer and adventurer to trek in some truly special places, including the Himalayas in Bhutan, the Rainbow Mountains in Peru, and Simien Mountains in Ethiopia, as well as throughout North America. My favorite books are the ones that inspire me to keep exploring.
Mount Everest is arguably the location of the most epic adventures ever.
This is my favorite book about Everest, perhaps because the author, David Breashears, is a friend who shared many Thanksgiving dinners with me during the thick of his climbing and high-altitude film career. He is most well-known for producing the popular IMAX film, Everest.
This is Breashear’s autobiography. It includes his perspective on the 1996 Everest tragedy, which he not only miraculously survived but also saved the lives of other climbers. I also enjoyed the book, Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, which is about that same Everest episode and had much broader commercial success. Krakauer wrote the forward to this book.
However, I found this book one to be more personal, more revealing. After reading it, you’ll admire Breashears as much as Krakauer and I do.
An IMAX cinematographer and mountaineer describes his participation in an expedition to Everest during the deadly 1996 season, detailing the creation of his IMAX film Everest and the dramatic impact on his life of his experiences in the face of disaster. 100,000 first printing. Tour.
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?
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.
Here is narrative nonfiction at its most gripping. Journalist Jennifer Jordan chronicled the individual stories of the five courageous women who have climbed K2, the most fearsome mountain in the world. Climbers call K2 "The Savage Mountain." It is not quite as tall as Everest, but it is far more dangerous, located at the border of China and Pakistan, in the deadly Karakoram range, which has the harshest climbing conditions and weather of any place in the world. Ninety women have climbed Everest, but only five female climbers have ever reached the summit of K2 alive. Three of these women…
Elizabeth Flann is a history and literature major who worked for over twenty years in the publishing industry in England and Australia before moving into teaching literature, scriptwriting and editing to postgraduate students at Deakin University, Melbourne. She is a co-author ofThe Australian Editing Handbook and was awarded a PhD in 2001 for her thesis entitled Celluloid Dreaming: Cultural Myths and Landscape in Australian Film. Now retired, she is able to give full rein to her true love—writing fiction. Her first novel, Beware of Dogs, was awarded the Harper Collins Banjo Prize for a Fiction Manuscript. She now lives in a peaceful rural setting in Victoria, Australia, close to extended family and nature.
After years of vicarious adventure tales like The Coral Island andTreasure Island, as an adult I discovered a new source: true-life adventures. From the voyage of the raft Kon-Tiki to the epic trek by Robyn Davidson across Australia’s cruelest desert, my fascination with the human capacity for survival found a new revival. One of the most riveting books I’ve ever read in this genre is Touching the Void which, although non-fiction, is written in an extraordinarily poetic form by the two survivors, each of whom suffered terrible physical privations and even more terrible moral dilemmas while climbing in the snow-covered Peruvian mountains. That either of them survived is a miracle. That both of them did is a tribute to what humans can endure in order to survive.
Extensive reading is essential for improving fluency and there is a real need in the ELT classroom for motivating, contemporary graded material that will instantly appeal to students
Based on the internationally acclaimed book by Joe Simpson, Touching the Void is the compelling true story of a mountaineering expedition which goes dreadfully wrong.
LEVEL 3 - LEVEL 4
BOOK ONLY
Perfect also for native English speaking children who are struggling with their reading
Full colour photos and film stills bring story to life and aid comprehension
Fact File section explores the making of the film, climbing Everest and other related…
I fell in love with the Himalayas in the 8th grade and vowed to go there one day. Eighteen years later I fell in love again, with a woman this time, who was living in Nepal. While living there I trekked extensively and read everything I could about the mountains, especially Everest. I thought it was odd that all the Everest books started in 1921, but the mountain was discovered in 1853. What took them so long? Hence my bookThe Hunt for Mount Everest.
This book is of the incredible-but-true genre. A man who knows neither how to fly nor how to climb buys a plane which he plans to fly to India, crash land on the lower slopes of Everest, and climb the rest of the way to the top—all for the (married) woman he loves. Does he make it? What a question! It’s the premise that matters.
“An outstanding book.” —The Wall Street Journal * “Gripping at every turn.” —Outside * “A hell of a ride.” —The Times (London)
An extraordinary true story about one man’s attempt to salve the wounds of war and save his own soul through an audacious adventure.
In the 1930s, as official government expeditions set their sights on conquering Mount Everest, a little-known World War I veteran named Maurice Wilson conceives his own crazy, beautiful plan: he will fly a plane from England to Everest, crash-land on its lower slopes, then become the first person to reach its summit—completely alone. Wilson doesn’t…
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