23 books like The Slovenians

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.

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.

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.

As a fan of both Slovenia and the mountains, this book was a real treat. Written by a Canadian author, it’s an excellent account of the rise of Slovenian climbers during a golden era in the 1970s and ‘80s, who quickly became some of the most respected alpinists in the world.

Although it focuses on stories of high peaks, north faces, first ascents, and avalanches, it's set in a background of life in Slovenia, largely during the Yugoslav era. I found this insight fascinating, and it helped me to understand more about the Slovenian love of high places and what draws so many Slovenes to their numerous summits. A very enjoyable read–well-researched and written. 

I am Slovene-American, my mother being off the boat. This book told me what I’d wanted to know: how my people engaged with the world around them, not just physically, but metaphysically. Anyone interested in understanding the way folk belief mixed with medicine, and why people would resort to beliefs we would view strange in modern day, could learn quite a bit from this book about the rural folk of Slovenia and their medicine.

It’s also a key resource for one fantasy book I still have in the works, which is reminiscent of Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale, and it is a wonderful anthropological resource that shows, very plainly, how magic is alive in this world as much as it is in the fictional ones we love so much.

The sources found in Collective Identities illustrate how national ideas were received, fashioned, and conveyed by thinkers in many parts of Europe during the modern era. Each volume also includes a number of opening essays and chapter introductions which provide helpful references to additional foundational texts and matters of historical context. In sum, the volumes perform the very valuable service of introducing readers to some common elements in many ‘discourses’ from the period as well as important local variations in style and content.

This book takes the author on the ultimate high-altitude adventure, an attempt to summit the highest mountain on Earth.

It is a sobering account of the commercialization and false promises behind various mountaineering groups that pitch the summiting of the mountain to people rich enough to think they have the stamina to conquer it, but who really have no right being there in the first place.

Everest and the people who attempt to climb it have always intrigued me and this book was a stark reminder that it is a place to be revered and respected, or risk its wrath. 

No mystery I’ve read has better captured how a chronic condition can redefine your sense of self better than The Black Hour.

This book hooked me on the first page, where we are introduced to Amelia, a sociology professor who is returning to work after being shot by a student the previous year. We witness her struggling to walk up a hill she used to climb without a second thought, and now it’s Mount Everest. She’s simultaneously vulnerable, determined, defiant, and just plain in pain.

Having a chronic illness myself, what makes this book resonate with me is the way Amelia constantly compares her post-injury self to her pre-injury self and must come to terms with the distance between those two versions.

I’ve read a slew of books about climbing the big Himalayan summits and this is one of the best. It chronicles the first ascent of Mount Everest by an American team and in doing so provides a thrilling account of the climb itself, of the natural majesty of the mountain, and of the eccentric personalities of the team’s members.

Lotz's book is an intense character study, painting a portrait of her protagonist in masterful strokes.

Simon Newman is complex – simultaneously thrill-seeking but lazy, ambitious but anxious, traumatized but desperate to hide his weakness.

He has no business searching for bodies in the notoriously dangerous Cwm Pots, and he takes away exactly the wrong lessons from his survival. He certainly has no business on Mount Everest, and knows it. But now he's haunted by the (possibly literal) ghosts of his own bad choices, and he's in too deep now.

This book is a journey in its own right.