The Adventure Bookshelf
Another round of inspiration
After three past “themed” bookshelf posts (Polar, Mountain, Underwater), it’s been close to a year since my last list of reading recommendations. Assuming most of my audience here is in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re still in the midst of prime reading season, and for those in the southern half of the planet, it’s time to stock your bedside pile for the forthcoming season. I try to spend a couple of hours by the fire each night after work with a book in hand and a glass of something well aged at my elbow. While I’ve been reading a lot of fiction lately (perhaps a future bookshelf post?), I find winter a good time for armchair travels—a bit of escape from the dark, cold nights and inspiration to make plans for my own getaways.
Today’s list isn’t specific to any theme, but I’ve got too many good adventure books to not share a few more. Some of these are older, well known tomes, while others a bit more obscure and perhaps even hard to find. There’s some ocean sailing, big sharks, overlanding, shipwreck hunting, mountaineering, and even some space travel to get you through the second half of winter. So, without further ado, here’s the adventure bookshelf.
Susan Casey, a former creative director at Outside magazine, likes the ocean, but not in the way most people do, at least judging from the subjects of her books. She’s written about the rogue waves that sink ships and draw daredevil surfers, the secret life of dolphins, and, her first book, The Devil’s Teeth. I read it when it was first published back in 2005 and then again, perhaps unadvisedly, before I swam across San Francisco Bay, “escaping” from Alcatraz. In it, Casey profiles the scientists who live in an old house on one of the desolate Farallon Islands just a few miles outside the Golden Gate Bridge. Ostensibly there to study the bird population that lives on the islands, this committed group took up a side gig observing another local population: the great white sharks that patrol the islands’ waters, feasting on elephant seals. This isn’t your typical shark story. Instead it’s more about the passion of the people who put up with spartan conditions to do what they love in a very niche field.
Back in 2015, I was visiting the Cayman Islands on a self styled tourism press junket. Aside from the diving, island history, and fabulous food scene, I had a very specific thing I wanted to see there, on Cayman Brac. On the overgrown edge of a beach near a car rental agency was a derelict hull of a catamaran, cracked and graffiti-adorned: the Teignmouth Electron. This was the boat built and sailed by Donald Crowhurst, an eccentric Englishman who entered the first round-the-world sailing race, the Golden Globe of 1968-69. Crowhurst was vastly under-qualified and got in over his head, literally. The book, A Voyage for Madmen, by Peter Nichols, is about the Golden Globe race, which was an extreme adventure before the days of GPS, satellite phones, and modern survival gear. Nine competitors set out. Only one returned. It’s a tale of triumph and tragedy and has been the subject of at least two good films: Deep Water, and Mercy.
On a more terrestrial front, First Overland, by Tim Slessor also chronicles an epic voyage in an earlier age, specifically 1955, when a team of undergraduates from Cambridge and Oxford persuaded Land Rover to provide them with two factory fresh Series I trucks to drive from London to Singapore. The book, written by one of the participants while on the journey is humorous and harrowing. To continue the alliteration, it’s also heartwarming. Reading this book reminds me of the audacious naïveté of youth, the willingness to set out, against better wisdom, to attempt something. It also shows how different the world was in the 1950s, when one could even consider driving across parts of the world now off limits for a number of reasons, at least for Westerners. Though a large part of the appeal is the use of old Land Rovers, this is a story about so much more than the vehicles.
The most recent of the books in this list is one I read in about two nights: Nimsdai Purja’s Beyond Possible. While I wouldn’t say this is the best written book of the bunch (largely ghostwritten), it’s easily the most inspirational. By now, Nims’s story is well known to even casual followers of mountaineering or adventure sports. In 2019, the Nepalese Gurkha climbed all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks in a little over six months. An astounding feat by any measure, what makes it more incredible is Purja’s background and his sheer drive to succeed in spite of hurdles and naysayers. The man is a force of nature, simply put, and what comes across to some as arrogance I admire as undistilled ambition and self confidence. Read this book, then try to come up with excuses why you can’t do something.
Speaking of drive and ambition, and of incredible heights, Scott Kelly’s Endurance is up next. I am a long-time space buff, but my preferences run more to the Cold War space race and books like The Right Stuff, so I didn’t think I would enjoy Kelly’s memoir about his time as a space shuttle commander and time aboard the International Space Station. Honestly, the more recent era of space travel and exploration don’t feel so much like adventure as it does science. But Kelly, whose twin brother, Mark, was also an astronaut, was one of the last of the hot shot test pilots turned NASA spacemen and his book is articulate, humble, but full of stories of his days flying an F-14 Tomcat off of aircraft carriers to his qualification as an astronaut, and then his astounding year that he spent in space. Admittedly, I received this book as a gift from the PR rep at Breitling, for whose brand Kelly is a longtime ambassador. I had a chance to briefly meet Kelly at the Breitling boutique in New York but had to leave before having him sign a copy. So when a personalized, signed copy arrived a month later, I was compelled to read it and am glad I did.
Back to the sea for my next pick. Islands of Angry Ghosts was written in, and about my favorite era of exploration—the 1960s. It follows a ragtag group of Australian divers, including the author, Hugh Edwards, who set out to explore a shipwreck in a remote island archipelago off the southwest coast of Australia. The wreck is thought to be that of the Batavia, a seventeenth century Dutch ship that met its demise on the rocky shoals of the islands. The subsequent tale of the crews’ and passengers’ devolving barbarism, mutiny, and murder is the stuff of horror stories. But it’s the divers’ attempt to explore the wreck of the ship, the island ruins, and makeshift graveyard that captivated me. Again, the middle of the last century was perhaps the last era of pure, wild adventure in far flung places by people using decidedly analog equipment (Aquastar provided the watches) and seat-of-the-pants bravery. This book is long out of print and likely hard to find, but well worth the effort.
Finally, in the same vein as the preceding book, is The Sea and the Snow, which is not only set in the 1960s, but incorporates both sailing and mountaineering. I love a good multi-sport adventure—skiing in to a remote alpine lake with dive gear towed in a sled? Count me in. Bicycle camping? I’m all about it. But I digress. The Sea and the Snow, by Philip Temple is about an expedition to remote Heard Island to climb its 9,000-foot volcanic peak, named Big Ben. Climbing the snow covered, steep mountain would be daunting enough, but did I mention that Heard Island is in the Southern Ocean, closer to Antarctica than Australia, and only reachable by boat? This not only made the climbing more challenging due to the high winds and bitter cold, but sailing through the ‘Roaring Forties’ and ‘Furious Fifties’ latitudes was downright dangerous.
Good thing the team had recruited H.W. “Bill” Tilman as skipper. I’ll say no more about Tilman, except to encourage you to look him up—talk about an adventure hero. This book inspires big dreams for me and a bit of nostalgia for an age in which I never lived but wish I did. It also makes for an excellent fireside read when the wind is whipping outside the window.
I’m always looking for book recommendations, as I’m sure other readers are, so please drop your favorites in the comments below. Happy reading!
My boy you are what you read for sure. I might point out Depth Charge is also a good read! Dad.
Hi Jason, I can highly recommend Sir Francis Chichester’s book Gypsy Moth Circles the World that he wrote shortly after he completed his journey in the Gypsy Moth IV. It was a miracle that he not only survived but also cut the previous time by almost half in a yacht that was poorly designed and constructed just as badly. On top of that he was a 65 year old man with numerous physical ailments that basically sailed the entire 228 days in a malnourished state.