Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Reading A to Z: M is for Mountains

As I mentioned a few posts back, I started to enjoy reading books about mountains after reading Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. The trials and tribulations endured by the group on Mt. Everest made for a fascinating and tragic story. I wanted to read even more.


Jon Krakauer has another book about mountains called Eiger Dreams. It is a collection of stories of some of mountain climbing's more eccentric characters. I haven't yet read it; but it is in my reading queue on my shelf.


Miracle in the Andes is the true story about the South American rugby team whose plane crashed in the mountains. It took 72 days for them to be saved. Not everyone was able to survive, and the players had to turn to cannibalism out of desperation. The story was immortalized in the film Alive. It is a fascinating read, though the bits about eating their fellow team members was a little hard to swallow.


Another book I enjoyed reading about mountain climbing was Die Trying: One Man's Quest to Conquer the Seven Summits. Bo Parfet was overweight and out of shape when he made his adventurous plan to scale the highest summits on all seven continents. This book tells of his quest to become healthier, as well as to join a very elite group of people who have managed the same feat. I previously reviewed that book in more detail here.


So many more books are out there on this topic. Many of them I own and are sitting on that illustrious bookshelf of books waiting to be read. Others are still out of my reach and will probably be procured at some point with a gift card.

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