Fans pick 100 books like The Flight of the Eagle

By Per Olof Sundman, M. Sandbach (translator),

Here are 100 books that The Flight of the Eagle fans have personally recommended if you like The Flight of the Eagle. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Dark Matter

Cynthia Reeves Author Of The Last Whaler

From my list on survival in extreme polar environments.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve had a lifelong passion for all things Arctic that began in childhood as I devoured many tragic tales of doomed Arctic explorers. This fascination later merged with concern for human impacts on this fragile ecosystem. Though I hate the cold and suffer from vertigo, I participated in the 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition that sailed Svalbardā€™s western shores. Among other experiences, I witnessed a massive glacier calving and walked on an ice floe. Determined to fully absorb Svalbardā€™s setting for my creative work, I spent two subsequent residencies in Longyearbyenā€”one in the dark season and one as the light returnedā€”and I signed on for another expedition to circumnavigate the archipelago.

Cynthia's book list on survival in extreme polar environments

Cynthia Reeves Why did Cynthia love this book?

Iā€™m a fan of speculative fiction and those rare novels set on Svalbard. This novel satisfies both cravings. 

Spurred by a desire to change his life, Jack Miller joins an expedition to northern Svalbard in January 1937 and is abandoned by his companions as the dark season approaches. Paver mines the psychological page-turning quality of a great ghost story with beautiful language and palpable descriptions of the Arctic landscape and its natural wonders. 

Left alone, Jack must deal with loneliness and isolation and their effects on his psyche. Itā€™s hard to avoid such themes when youā€™re dealing with an extreme setting like the High Arctic, especially during the months of total darkness, but they are themes that make me think about the great philosophical questions such as how one finds meaning in life.

By Michelle Paver,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Dark Matter as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'What is it? What does it want? Why is it angry with me?'

January 1937.

Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely and desperate to change his life. So when he's offered the chance to be the wireless operator on an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it.
Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year. Gruhuken.
But the Arcticā€¦


Book cover of The Voyage of the Narwhal

Cynthia Reeves Author Of The Last Whaler

From my list on survival in extreme polar environments.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve had a lifelong passion for all things Arctic that began in childhood as I devoured many tragic tales of doomed Arctic explorers. This fascination later merged with concern for human impacts on this fragile ecosystem. Though I hate the cold and suffer from vertigo, I participated in the 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition that sailed Svalbardā€™s western shores. Among other experiences, I witnessed a massive glacier calving and walked on an ice floe. Determined to fully absorb Svalbardā€™s setting for my creative work, I spent two subsequent residencies in Longyearbyenā€”one in the dark season and one as the light returnedā€”and I signed on for another expedition to circumnavigate the archipelago.

Cynthia's book list on survival in extreme polar environments

Cynthia Reeves Why did Cynthia love this book?

Like Brockmeierā€™s book, this book is in my top-five all-time novels. I can fall in love with a novel purely for its language, and Barrettā€™s ability to describe the settings her characters encounter is unparalleled. It, too, has a rare polar setting, this time aboard the ship the Narwhal bound for the Arctic in 1855 to find the remains of a previous, lost expedition. So visceral are her descriptions that they put me right back in the Arctic.

Sheā€™s also masterful at interleaving science and history with her charactersā€™ desires without becoming didactic. One of her protagonists, the scholar-naturalist Erasmus Darwin Wells, screens the world and his philosophical musings through the lens of his scientific inclinations. I admire novels that manage to teach me something while not feeling as if the author is desperate to cram all the research s/he has acquired into the book. Barrett succeeds in avoiding thisā€¦

By Andrea Barrett,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Voyage of the Narwhal as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Capturing a crucial moment in the history of exploration-the mid-nineteenth century romance with the Arctic-Andrea Barrett's compelling novel tells the story of a fateful expedition. Through the eyes of the ship's scholar-naturalist, Erasmus Darwin Wells, we encounter the Narwhal's crew, its commander, and the far-north culture of the Esquimaux. In counterpoint, we meet the women left behind in Philadelphia, explorers only in imagination. Together, those who travel and those who stay weave a web of myth and mystery, finally discovering what they had not sought, the secrets of their own hearts.


Book cover of The Brief History of the Dead

Cynthia Reeves Author Of The Last Whaler

From my list on survival in extreme polar environments.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve had a lifelong passion for all things Arctic that began in childhood as I devoured many tragic tales of doomed Arctic explorers. This fascination later merged with concern for human impacts on this fragile ecosystem. Though I hate the cold and suffer from vertigo, I participated in the 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition that sailed Svalbardā€™s western shores. Among other experiences, I witnessed a massive glacier calving and walked on an ice floe. Determined to fully absorb Svalbardā€™s setting for my creative work, I spent two subsequent residencies in Longyearbyenā€”one in the dark season and one as the light returnedā€”and I signed on for another expedition to circumnavigate the archipelago.

Cynthia's book list on survival in extreme polar environments

Cynthia Reeves Why did Cynthia love this book?

Iā€™d rank this novel in my top five of all time, not just as a great survival story.

This book is a post-apocalyptic fantasy novel set partly in Antarctica, a meditation on human existence, and a page-turner with keen attention to beautiful writing. Its characters grapple with essential, existential questions such as: How are we connected to the world? What happens when those last connections are broken? What is the nature of loneliness, of love? Is survival alone enough reason for living? 

Iā€™ve read this novel several times, and though I know the arc of the story and the fate of its characters, I come away each time with insights into what it means to be alive. A bonus: itā€™s one of the few novels I know of set in Antarctica. 

By Kevin Brockmeier,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Brief History of the Dead as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between.

 

The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the Cityā€™s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trappedā€¦


Book cover of The Solitude of Thomas Cave

Cynthia Reeves Author Of The Last Whaler

From my list on survival in extreme polar environments.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™ve had a lifelong passion for all things Arctic that began in childhood as I devoured many tragic tales of doomed Arctic explorers. This fascination later merged with concern for human impacts on this fragile ecosystem. Though I hate the cold and suffer from vertigo, I participated in the 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition that sailed Svalbardā€™s western shores. Among other experiences, I witnessed a massive glacier calving and walked on an ice floe. Determined to fully absorb Svalbardā€™s setting for my creative work, I spent two subsequent residencies in Longyearbyenā€”one in the dark season and one as the light returnedā€”and I signed on for another expedition to circumnavigate the archipelago.

Cynthia's book list on survival in extreme polar environments

Cynthia Reeves Why did Cynthia love this book?

I enjoy the ā€œbased on a true storyā€ feel of this novel, even though itā€™s purely a product of Hardingā€™s imagination. A historical novel set in 1616, the story centers upon a headstrong English whalerā€”Thomas Caveā€”who, on a bet, stays behind alone on an Arctic island in the Svalbard archipelago to endure the dark season. More threatening than carving out an existence in a forbidding environment is the effect of isolation on Cave, whom we see through excerpts from his diary. 

I hadnā€™t realized until I wrote this list how possessed I am by novels set in extreme environments and alsoā€”not surprisinglyā€”ones whose themes arise from that obsession: the nature of loneliness and the effects of isolation. Iā€™m a fan of layered narratives as wellā€”akin to the kind of framed narrative found in Heart of Darkness.

Caveā€™s diary entries are embedded within the voice of a first-person narrator whoā€¦

By Georgina Harding,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

August, 1616. The whaling ship Heartsease has ventured high into the Arctic, but now must begin the long journey home. Only one man stays behind: Thomas Cave makes a wager to remain here, alone, until the next season. No man has yet been known to survive a winter this far north. As the light recedes and the ice begins to close in, Cave pits himself against blizzards, avalanches, bears - and his own demons. For in this wilderness that is without human history his past returns to him: the woman he had loved, the grief that drove him to theā€¦


Book cover of The Discovery of Slowness

Carl HonorƩ Author Of In Praise of Slow: Challenging the Cult of Speed

From my list on slowness.

Why am I passionate about this?

Writer, broadcaster, speaker. I used to be stuck in fast forward, rushing through life instead of living it. I finally realised I needed to slow down when I started speed reading bedtime stories to my son: my version of Snow White had just three dwarves in it! I went on to slow down ā€“ and became, in the words of CBC Radio, ā€œthe world's leading evangelist for the Slow Movement.ā€

Carl's book list on slowness

Carl HonorƩ Why did Carl love this book?

A gripping novel based on the life and death of John Franklin, a 19th century Arctic explorer. Franklin was by nature slow, and therefore out of step with the times. At school, other kids teased him for never having a ready comeback. Later, slowness became his superpower, a source of deep thinking, care, and wisdom. Franklin was an early avatar of the Slow movement!

By Sten Nadolny,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Framing the life of the nineteenth-century explorer Sir John Franklin, this novel explores not only the adventures of his career, but also enters a world where the quality of life is considered in "slow motion", where ordinary experience becomes wholly new and unexpected.


Book cover of In the Distance

Alyson Hagy Author Of Boleto

From my list on the West that twist the myth.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™m a writer fascinated by landscape and historyā€”and the American West is my magnet. Iā€™ve set three books in the West. I canā€™t get enough of the place. An entire national myth is enshrined ā€œwhere the deer and the antelope play.ā€ Independence. Freedom from the past. Land we can supposedly call our own. The West is so beautiful and also so scarred. I love to read books that deepen my experience of the deserts, mountains, and rivers. I also love to learn about the people who were here before me, those who have hung on, and those who hope to heal the scars. These books are great stories about a bewitching place.

Alyson's book list on the West that twist the myth

Alyson Hagy Why did Alyson love this book?

HernĆ”n DĆ­azā€™s first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The book is gorgeously written and meticulously researched. The Westā€™s huge, startling landscapes loom on every page. But the real genius here is the novelā€™s ā€œreverse epicā€ structureā€”how DĆ­az takes a young Swedish immigrant who gets off his ship at the wrong port (San Francisco) and sends him traveling east, against the migrant tides, in search of his brother. The journey doesnā€™t go as planned. HĆ„kan makes friends and stymies enemies. Stereotypes warp and tumble as HĆ„kan (and the reader) are forever transformed. The descriptions of California gold fields, science expeditions, questing Mormons, and other frontier communities delight and confound. Youā€™ll never cross a Western desert the same way again.

By Hernan Diaz,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked In the Distance as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels East in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing West. Driven back again and again, he meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.

Hernan Diaz is the author of Borges, Between History and Eternity (Bloomsbury 2012), managing editor of RHM, and associate directorā€¦


Book cover of Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-Year Search

John Wilson Author Of North with Franklin: The Lost Journals of James Fitzjames

From my list on the Lost Franklin Expedition.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been a Franklin geek for three decades and five of my fifty published novels and non-fiction books excavate the story of the greatest disaster in Arctic history. Reading Fitzjamesā€™ letters for my first book introduced me to a friend I would have enjoyed going for a beer with and one of the greatest thrills of my life was waking one morning in September, 2014 to learn that the wreck of Fitzjamesā€™ ship, Erebus, had been discovered. I am still excited to live in a time when the mystery might finally be solvedā€”perhaps Fitzjamesā€™ original journal lies amid the water-logged timbers off the shore where so many died.

John's book list on the Lost Franklin Expedition

John Wilson Why did John love this book?

Well illustrated and written in compelling and accessible prose, Finding Franklin is a wonderful, timely introduction to the expedition and to the extraordinary hold that the mystery of its disappearance has held on the Arctic imagination for more than a century-and-a-half. Potter is a leading expert on all things Franklin and has been intimately involved in the recent remarkable discoveries around King William Island. There are few better companions at this exciting time when it seems the answers to the mystery are at our fingertips.

By Russell A. Potter,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In 2014 media around the world buzzed with news that an archaeological team from Parks Canada had located and identified the wreck of HMS Erebus, the flagship of Sir John Franklin's lost expedition to find the Northwest Passage. Finding Franklin outlines the larger story and the cast of detectives from every walk of life that led to the discovery, solving one of the Arctic's greatest mysteries. In compelling and accessible prose, Russell Potter details his decades of work alongside key figures in the era of modern searches for the expedition and elucidates how shared research and ideas have led toā€¦


Book cover of Erebus: One Ship, Two Epic Voyages, and the Greatest Naval Mystery of All Time

Katie Daysh Author Of Leeward

From my list on to get lost at sea with.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™m an author of queer historical fiction and I love to explore stories set on the sea. I adore the drama of it, the beauty, the awe, the timelessness, and the wild backdrop that allows characters to confront themselves and their journeys. Having lived by the sea all my life on an island rich with nautical and smuggling history, it has never been far away from me. I like to read a mixture of fiction and non-fiction; both have strongly influenced my own writing. The books on this list capture the diverse reasons I am drawn to sea tales!

Katie's book list on to get lost at sea with

Katie Daysh Why did Katie love this book?

As well as the characters who populate nautical stories and the sea itself, ships have such a vivid voice.

This non-fiction book follows HMS Erebus from her early journey to Antarctica to her eventual disappearance in the Canadian Arctic. I have a small obsession with polar exploration and this book captures the drama, the terror, and the mystery of it.

Michael Palinā€™s sensitivity to the historical issues and the real figures is very moving, especially the moment when the primary documents stop and all that is left to tell these menā€™s tales is a note in a desolate cairn.

I want to also sneakily recommend AMCā€™s adaptation of Dan Simmonsā€™s The Terror, a TV show based on these events, which has some of my favourite writing in any piece of media.

By Michael Palin,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Erebus as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

_______________
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER: the remarkable true story of the exploration ship featured in The Terror

In the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, HMS Erebus undertook two of the most ambitious naval expeditions of all time.

On the first, she ventured further south than any human had ever been. On the second, she vanished with her 129-strong crew in the wastes of the Canadian Arctic, along with the HMS Terror.

Her fate remained a mystery for over 160 years.

Then, in 2014, she was found.

This is her story.
_______________
Now available: Michael Palin's North Korea Journals
_______________ā€¦


Book cover of Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape

Bill Murray Author Of Out in the Cold: Travels North: Adventures in Svalbard, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and Canada

From my list on to understand the high north.

Why am I passionate about this?

Thereā€™s nothing like personal experience. You have to read the literature, itā€™s true. Thatā€™s how weā€™ve all met here at Shepherd. But you have to roll up your sleeves and get down to visiting, too, if you want to write about travel. I first approached the Arctic in 1991 and I return above sixty degrees north every year, although I must confess to a secret advantage; I married a Finn. We spend summers at a little cabin north of Helsinki. I know the region personally, I keep coming back, and I invite you, whenever you can, to come up and join us!

Bill's book list on to understand the high north

Bill Murray Why did Bill love this book?

Barry Lopez was a nature writer and environmentalist.

He died on Christmas day 2020, and although we are fortunate to have his valedictory book Horizon, published when his traveling days were pretty well behind him, Arctic Dreams is the real deal, with Lopez as raconteur, but practitioner too, thoroughly in his element.

Lopez writes about exploration and the aurora, animals and the weather, ice and myth and survival and joy. Heā€™s effortless. Youā€™ll learn more than you knew there was to know about the high north, and the pleasure is in the learning.

If you must cut to the chase with these five books, Arctic Dreams is the book, because Barry Lopez got things right.

By Barry Lopez,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Arctic Dreams as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

**AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4**

'A master nature writer' (New York Times) provides the ultimate natural, social and cultural history of the Arctic landscape.

The author of Horizon's classic work explores the Arctic landscape and the hold it continues to exert on our imagination.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT MACFARLANE

Lopez's journey across our frozen planet is a celebration of the Arctic in all its guises. A hostile landscape of ice, freezing oceans and dazzling skyscapes. Home to millions of diverse animals and people. The stage to massive migrations by land, sea and air. The setting of epic exploratoryā€¦


Book cover of The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen

Buddy Levy Author Of Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Voyage of the Karluk

From my list on polar exploration, expeditions, and survival.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been passionate about Polar exploration since I was a boy. My father was a Nordic Olympic skier who introduced me to the exploits of Norwegian and Scandinavian explorers when I was very young. Later, I traveled to Greenland in 2003 and was blown away by the remoteness, the dramatic ice and mountains, and the incredible toughness of the people who have explored the regions and carved out life there.

Buddy's book list on polar exploration, expeditions, and survival

Buddy Levy Why did Buddy love this book?

I love a great cradle-to-grave biography, and gives the life story of Roald Amundsen, in my opinion, the greatest Polar explorer in history. I gained so much insight into the man who was driven to explore the most extreme places on earth, the Polar regions.

I relished the deep insights into Amundsenā€™s character and personality, which helped me better understand one of the more misunderstood figures in exploration history.

By Stephen Bown,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The Last Viking unravels the life of the man who stands head and shoulders above all those who raced to map the last corners of the world. In 1900, the four great geographical mysteries- the Northwest Passage, the Northeast Passage, the South Pole, and the North Pole- remained blank spots on the globe. Within twenty years Roald Amundsen would claim all four prizes. Renowned for his determination and technical skills, both feared and beloved by his men, Amundsen is a legend of the heroic age of exploration, which shortly thereafter would be tamed by technology, commerce, and publicity. Feted inā€¦


Book cover of Dark Matter
Book cover of The Voyage of the Narwhal
Book cover of The Brief History of the Dead

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Interested in explorers, the arctic, and exploration?

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