What are you reading?

[cybrhikr]

The Kings's Deception by Steve Berry. Very good,hard to put down.

[Hungry Jack]

What has that Dan Simmons fellow been smoking?

[Jim Davies]

He does live in Colorado.

[gb]

"The Mountain" by Ed Viesturs. Most of the way through it, lots of Everest history plus Viesturs' experiences on it. Great book if you're an Everest junkie or if you've never read a single book on Everest.

Edit to add: Book review if you're interested: http://14erskiers.com/blog/2013/12/book ... -mountain/

[BB_ME]

"Goedel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid," by Douglas R. Hofstadter. Loosely about the nature of consciousness, I've been reading this fascinating, cute, difficult book for the last month. Parenthetically, do book reviewers actually read the tomes they review from cover to cover?

[USAKeller]

"Hot, Flat, and Crowded" by Thomas Friedman - an interesting and thought-provoking manifesto of arguments on the issues surrounding climate change and how a clean energy revolution can bring back a sustainable America.

[EZSide]

Rocky Mountains by David Muench ... I'm just looking at the pictures .... I stumbled upon it in a library closeout and it was like finding a box of old Playboys

[opticstalk]

Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming
and
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity

I like to read "both sides" then make up my own mind.

[edhaman]

"The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science," by Natalie Angier.

[gb]

Last year, Patagonia books gave us the opportunity to give away one of their books. Jim Davies won Fred Beckey's 100 Favorite North American Climbs. This year, Patagonia will be giving away Climbing Fitz Roy, 1968 through my website. Sorry if this whole post seems spammy, but it's really a nice book and I want as many people as possible to have the chance to win it. I guarantee the odds are better than tonight's mega millions jackpot. Just click here to enter: http://14erskiers.com/blog/2013/12/free ... -roy-1968/

[WarDamnPanic]

Just finished The Mountain by Ed Viesturs, now reading Freedom Climbers. Both are good not great

[justiner]

Just finished The White Spider, Heinrich Harrer. Kind of a classic read.

I tried reading Viester's "No Shortcuts to the Top", but I found his writing style - and basically his whole persona (saw him at the Tattered Cover) so squeaky clean as to not feel very honest. His Q&A seemed pretty polished, and not so spontaneous. I didn't get much of a feel of, "struggle". I like a little bit more romanticizin' in my writing.

Some of other books en route: Epic Stories of Survival from the World's Highest Peaks - mostly a collection of excerpts from other famous books, like Annapurna - a good survey, for sure. Some of the stories are much better than others. It's funny how the, "big huge snowclimb" narrative sort of repeats itself.

The High Lonesome: Epic Solo Climbing Stories, edited by John Long - very similar to Epic, except most of these are self-contained short stories. Good read, though. Some crazy fuckers out there.

Out of sheer hilarity, I purchased a copy of, Speed Climbing!, 2nd: How to Climb Faster and Better - maybe because of it being co-written by Bill Wright. It still has some interesting ideas in it.