The most recommended books about Alaska

This book is about Anne Hobbs, a nineteen-year-old girl, who in 1927 travels to Alaska to run a ramshackle, one-room schoolhouse. Along the way, she is exposed to more than just the elements. Against the local’s advice, she allows Native American children into her class and falls in love with a half-Inuit man. In this fascinating and charming story, Anne learns the meaning of prejudice and perseverance, irrational hatred, and unconditional love. 

This story taught me that we, as girls, can do important things and change the world around us. Anne was sweet and shy, but through showing compassion and concern, she made a change in her community. It wasn’t easy and she faced hardship, but she was successful and content within herself. Why do I love this book? First of all, the book is an adventure about survival in the wilderness. Anne had people watching out for her and… show more.

I love Soar High because it took me on an emotional journey with its well-developed characters I’ve come to love in the previous books.

One moment, I’m on the edge of my chair with the suspense; the next moment, I’m laughing out loud, and the next, I’m crying genuine tears. Both Kit and Hawk have such (emotional) scars and insecurities. I love how they slowly open up and heal.

Combined with the setting and atmosphere of a small Alaskan town and the amazing side characters like Lilian and Felix, the other books in the Sons of the Survivalist series will be stories I return to and reread over and over again.

There are many books recounting living the wilderness lifestyle in Alaska. At the top of the list is probably Dick Proenecke’s One Man’s Wilderness. But The Hard Way Home deserves to be there, too. Steve Kahn has an engaging personal writing style that makes you think you are sitting by the fire in his cabin listening to his tales. 

And there are some whoppers: from boating on Lake Clark in imprenatrable fog to tramping the hillsides in search of Dall sheep, to being forced to walk miles through an unexpected autumn snowfall to be flown out from a hunt. Remembering idyllic summers at Farewell Lake to the horrors of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and much in between, Kahn writes like a guy who knows the real Alaska.

I love a story that tells it straight, right from when the person was a know-nothing beginner and was trying and failing, and trying and failing…and oh, the failures that Paulsen somehow survived! The drive and obsession that kept him going all the way to the big one, the Iditarod, shows me the beauty of what an individual can do, even all alone, unwitnessed and unhelped, in the middle of the freezing winter night, with a pack of dogs that doesn’t even care about him a little bit yet.

In reading this book, I feel I have witnessed how a person starts from nothing and then becomes an expert at something. In this case, it’s more than 10,000 hours, Anders Ericsson.

Before becoming a published writer, I was a lawyer litigating primarily large, multi-district environmental insurance coverage cases. I became familiar with the many ways by which we damage our precious natural resources, be it groundwater or soil or the air we breathe. Beginning with Rachel Carson, we have rich literature that speaks to the degradation of the planet, including the devastating changes wrought by global warming. The stories in this anthology speak to the physical and emotional topography of our current climate crisis, from a Sami woman who studies fish populations to a Wisconsin man contemplating the animals who make his trailer a portal to a world unsullied by humans. Fish & Water is a smart collection on a topic we ignore at our peril.

When Muir made his second great canoe trip in Alaska, in 1880, one of his canoe-mates, a Presbyterian missionary, brought along a little terrier named Stickeen. At first, Muir didn’t like the dog. But later, the two spent a cold, wet day exploring a massive glacier, and barely survived. Muir called it the greatest of his many adventure stories. The illustrations in this book are exaggerated, but stunning. You can almost feel the cold, and the elation man and dog feel at the end as they become fast friends.

Wilderness guru Bob Marshall and I share at least one thing in common: despite several attempts, neither of us succeeded in climbing Mount Doonerak, the sentinel rising above the North Fork of the Koyukuk. I have traveled that country around the Gates of the Arctic multiple times, but I remain in awe of Marshall’s pioneering trips during the 1930s when the area was generally unknown and unmapped. 

Marshall’s account is part history, part adventure, and part human-interest story as he teamed up with interesting characters like Ernie Johnson after whom he named Ernie Creek. The two always managed to feast on Dall sheep. And it was Marshall who named the Gates of the Arctic. For those who can’t travel first-hand through what is still wilderness, Bob Marshall remains an enjoyable armchair guide.

I love cold, northern places and dogs, and, if you haven’t already noticed, warts-and-all stories about women finding strength they didn’t know they had in the wilderness. Blair Braverman’s memoir checks all these boxes. As a teenager, she goes to a folk school in the Norwegian Arctic and learns to work with sled dogs, something she later continues as a guide in Alaska. (Braverman is now a professional musher and has run the Iditarod.) The book’s subtitle is Chasing Fear and Finding Home In the Great White North, and Braverman is unsparing in her exploration of fear rooted in both the human and natural world. I read this book on a series of airplanes in one long travel day, and I’m still reminded of it every time I see Braverman’s delightful Twitter stories about her dogs.

The initial hook in Still Points North was, for me, the opening and its description of the 4-seat plane that the author often flew in with her father. I flew in one when I went to Denali for field research for my novel, and it became not just one of those memories I’ll never forget but also experiential data for my book. I also appreciated how the author so eloquently describes the landscape, comparing and contrasting life in the wilderness with life on the East Coast. But what most impressed me was her revelation, which coincides with the experiences of my novel’s protagonist, that relationships can sometimes be more frightening and challenging than Alaska’s natural savagery.

I love the entire Midnight Breed series. The lore is unlike what I've ever seen in most vampire books. The vampire race was born from alien fathers and human mothers with special talents. These vamps can see their reflections, are not allergic to holy water, and are very much alive. So sexily alive. I spent a solid hour trying to choose one favorite book from this series. They’re all so bloody good! However, Taken by Midnight has some of my fave tropes: badass heroine, protective but gentle hero, interracial relationship, and all the spice. If you like vampires with a unique twist, you’ll love this series.