The Accidental Adventurer - Barbara Washburn

Subtitle: Memoir of the First Woman to Climb Mt McKinley

Some people who achieve amazing feats are the most humble, down to earth people.  This was my takeaway after reading the story of a WWII housewife and mother who became the first woman to climb Mt McKinley (Denali) in Alaska because she knew "her husband wanted her to be with him".  The book is written plainly with little overstatement or waxing eloquence or boasting.  I wonder at her stamina and grit to survive multiple arduous climbs.  Her and her husband, Brad, spent years of exploring to produce their map of the Grand Canyon that was published in the July 1978 National Geographic magazine.  A quick read that left me wanting to know more about their adventures.

Published: 2001  Read: January 2021  Genre: Memoir

The Flying Carpet - Richard Halliburton

Sometime in the past I'd read about the adventure stories of Richard Halliburton and added his name to my TBR list.  In a dusty old bookstore on our way back from Alaska this summer, I finally found one of his books.

Richard Halliburton was a son of well-to-do English parents who in the 1920s explored the world on foot, by sea and land and wrote about his adventures.  He was a superstar who wrote in a romantic, exaggerated style that won the fascination of the public in his day.

The Flying Carpet was the name he gave to his bi-plane that he used to travel from California to NY and then transport by ship to England where he embarked on a world tour of exotic locations from Timbuktu to Persia and Turkey and on to the Taj Mahal and Mt Everest, eventually returning to the U.S.

I was transported to the time and places and attitudes of the 1920s and thrilled with his spirit of can do optimism and daring-do.  If I run across other of his writings, I'll read them as well.

Published: 1932 (originally) 1982 ed.  Read: 2019  Genre: Adventure

Contents May Have Shifted - Pam Houston

Isn't that a catchy title?  That and the recommendations made me take this off the check-in shelf at a campground.  A very adventurous young woman is constantly traveling the world while trying to find and keep a meaningful relationship.  Roughly based on the author's life, it was a good read.  She used a technique called fractured narrative where she tells brief snippets of the story that your mind stitches together as your reading.  I liked learning about new places to visit and explore.


Published:  2012   Read: July 2019  Genre: Memoir

Blind Corners - Geoff Tabin

I picked up this adventure book in a great used bookstore in Kenai.  It's a brief memoir by an amazing man who not only conquered the Seven Summits but is also an eye surgeon.  It was written while he was early in his medical career, after graduating from Yale (undergrad) and Harvard (doctorate) and attending Oxford - whew!  He chose the title to advocate for taking risks by pursuing your dreams and testing your limits.  It was inspiring and at the same time intimidating.  At times he seemed reckless but his belief in his abilities and willingness to challenge himself has served him well.

He currently heads a philanthropic project to eliminate preventable blindness in the poor of the world and visits Nepal each year to perform cataract surgery on what is now thousands of people. 

He would be a fascinating person to meet, I plan to listen to his TED talk.

p.s.  He also is responsible for "inventing" bungee jumping!

Published:  1993   Read: June 2018  Genre: Adventure

Left for Dead - Beck Weathers

Sub-title: My Journey Home from Everest

Finishing up on my 2016 reading posts!  I picked this up at a Christmas book exchange.  It's the first person account of one of the hikers in an ascent on Mt Everest.  He suffered frostbite, was "left for dead" and lost almost both of his hands.  He shares how his obsession with mountain climbing almost ruined his family.  Not particularly good writing but a compelling tale and lessons even for those who don't go off climbing mountains.


Published: 2000 Read: December 2016  Genre: Non-fiction, memoir, Adventure

Leaving Earth - Helen Humphreys

This is a fictionalized account of a real event where two women, one a well-known aviator, the other a newcomer brought in at the last minute, establish a flight endurance record by circling a coastal town for twenty-five days.

It was a short book and fascinating to read the details of surviving with in-air refueling and meager food supplies, cold, wet clothes, boredom and lack of regular sleep.  The story revolves around the younger woman's awe at the experienced pilot and their coming to respect each other's talents and all too human shared experiences.


Published:  1997     Read:  October 2016  Genre: Historical fiction

Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis

Sub-title: Adventures on the Appalachian Trail

I picked this up on the library's "Get Outdoors" shelf.  My husband has hiked the trail to various lengths for several years and I was interested in reading another person's account.

Before reading, I knew nothing about the author.  The jacket told me she'd become a record holder in hiking the trail in the fewest number of days.  This story is about her first hike at the tender age of 21 after finishing college.  She was naive and inexperienced and sheltered and the hike changed her life.

I enjoyed the fast pace of the story, with each chapter beginning with an introduction to the next stretch of the trail and then her experiences traversing that stretch.  She chose to hike alone for most of the way, reflecting on her reactions, her thoughts and her ability to persevere.

As my husband, who also read the book, pointed out, everyone hikes their own hike.  Just like life; we all have our own view of how we experience our existence and those with share it with.

Published:  2010  Read: March 2016  Genre: Adventure, auto-biography

Pirate Hunters - Robert Kurson

Subtitle: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a legendary pirate ship

In late 2015 I read the author's earlier story of shipwreck divers.  They are back in this story searching for a pirate ship.  Like the earlier book, its about more than just diving for treasure.  There's the story of the men who do this and why they are driven to pursue the dream, sacrificing their relationships, their finances and their health.

I learned that only a couple pirate ship wrecks have been found.  The one John Chatterton (from the earlier book and his new partner John Mattera are searching for lies near the Dominican Republic.  It's known as the Golden Fleece.  It was an English vessel that was stolen by an English sea captain, Joseph Bannister, who somehow turned pirate and terrorized the seas for a time.

I love reading the history of the past and the challenges of locating the ship in the present.  The divers are passionate, larger than life personalities that the author captures, warts and all.  Great read.

Published: 2015  Read: January 2015  Genre: Adventure non-fiction

ISBN: 9 781400 063369

Shadow Divers - Robert Kurson

Subtitle: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of WWII

I waited too long to read this book.  My BFF recommended it ages ago and I finally got it off my TBR list and got a copy from the library.  It was a great read.

It's the story of two men looking for shipwrecks in the sport of "deep wreck diving". Dangerous to the extreme as well as competitive, they find a sunken submarine off the coast of New Jersey and seek to identify it.  

I really enjoyed the relationship of these fiercely independent, risk-taking men.  Their dedication to the search and their persistence despite dead ends and roadblocks and tragedy made for a good read.

Published:  May 2005  Read: September 2015  Genre: Adventure, Non-fiction

Euphoria - Lily King

Last fall I attended the Southern Festival of the Book in Nashville TN with my friend.  I thoroughly enjoyed listening to authors explain how they go about writing a book, editing it and getting it published.  I particularly was impressed with Lily King.  She makes extensive preparation when writing, drawing maps, chronologies, family trees and other diagrams of her story.  I put her story based on the life of Margaret Mead and her two husbands on my TBR list.

Margaret Mead was married to one man when she went into the jungle to do anthropological research and met the man that would become her second husband.  With that kernel of truth, King creates a fictional imagination of their relationship and a different ending.

The book teaches a lot about anthropology in the early 20th century.  Each of the main characters has a different gift that makes them suited for anthropology.  One of the men is gifted in learning new languages and the woman in connecting with the natives they are studying.  I liked this quote about communicating without knowing the language:

Quote: "You don't realize how language actually interferes with communication until you don't have it, how it gets in the way like an over dominant sense.  You have to pay much more attention to everything else when you can't understand the words.  Once comprehension comes, so much else falls away.  You then rely on their words, and words aren't always the most reliable thing."

 I liked the realistic portrayal of the challenges of doing research and the emerging science of anthropology.  The relationship between the Margaret Mead character and her future second husband slowly unfolded and the strain of her first marriage was convincingly told.  But overall I was disappointed.  It was not a story of the real Margaret Mead and her men.  It was a story of a similar situation with different personalities and outcomes.  I don't know what was fact or fiction.  I think the book jacket and promotion was misleading.  I might try another of the author's books.


Published:  2014  Read: August 2015  Genre: Fiction

Lobster Chronicles - Linda Greenlaw

Sub-title: Life on a very small island

This is a little gem I picked up in the used bookstore.  The author grew up on a small island in Maine, worked many years as a fisherman and then captain of a fishing boat in the ocean and in this story returns to her hometown to try lobster fishing.  She's real and honest and loving of her neighbors, family and friends.  The life of a lobster-woman is the backdrop to the relationships of the people of the tiny island.  A quick read from a spunky gal.

Published:  2002   Read: June 2015  Genre: Auto-biography

The Boys in the Boat - Daniel James Brown

This is the story of the young college men from Washington State who won the 1936 Olympic rowing championship held in Germany during Hitler's rise to power.  But only the last 25 or so pages is about that triumphant race near Berlin.  The rest of the book is about the boys themselves; their early lives and exhaustive detail of their rowing training during college.  Their are brief interludes that keep us up to date on what is going on in Germany while they prepare for the race back home in Washington.

I felt the story was way too drawn out with repetitive portrayals of the main rowers.  The book could have easily been half the length.  I appreciate that the author did lots of research but he didn't have to cram every piece of it into the story.

Published:   Read: May 2015  Genre: biography

ISBN: 10-1-59413-775-X

Moby-Duck - Donovan Hohn

In January 1992 a container ship rocked in a violent storm in the sub-Arctic ocean and dumped 12 containers the size of 18 wheeler semi-trucks into the ocean.  At least one burst open and spilled thousands of yellow plastic ducks, intended for children's bath toys.  The author, intrigued by the story, set out to find out where the ducks ended up.  His journey and education on the ocean, shipping, and the people who study it is the story of this book.

It's a strange mixture of hard science, quirky character portrayals and a personal odyssey, introduced in each chapter with quotes from Moby Dick, Thoreau's writings and environmentalists.  I learned about the Pacific Garbage Patch, which isn't a huge concentrated dead zone of debris but an area of the Pacific where the currents swirl and idle, where plastics that make there way to the ocean may linger.
I learned to how complex the oceans are, more like a liquid atmosphere with its own climates and storms raging below the surface.  I learned about "The Tragedy of the Commons", a concept that "in a finite world of diminishing resources...the freedom of individuals will not lead hopefully to progress but fatalistically to destruction".  The environment, shared by all, will be exhausted by the rational pursuit of individual prosperity.  Only a decline in population or consumption can avert it.

The author shares detailed facts and his novice experiences while traveling with oceanographers, environmental clean up crews and commercial ship captains and becomes dabbles philosophically in the impact of the spill and its meaning in our world.  He reveals too an adventurous recklessness that takes him from his family for weeks at a time from shortly before his son's birth, making him seem sometimes as irresponsible as the polluters he's investigating.  In all a different read.


published:  2011  Genre: Non-fiction
ISBN: 780143120506

Swimming to Antarctica - Lynne Cox

Tales of a Long Distance Swimmer

This is a memoir of the many open water swimming records achieved by the author since age 16.  It's fascinating to me how she thinks when taking on physical challenges, how she pushes her limits and continues to set new goals.  The writing is awkward and choppy at times but her spirit, will and determination to make a difference in the world is inspiring.

Lynne Cox swam the English Channel, Cape of Good Hope, Bering Strait and several other never before attempted distances as well as over 1 mile in the Antarctic Ocean - 38 degree water!   And, in just a swimsuit, cap and goggles.  The book tells how she prepares for her swims, what it is like to swim in these places and the crew that supports her.  She has written two other books, most recently one on Roald Amundsen's Antarctic expedition that I will be adding to my TBR.

Published: 2004   Read: June 2012   Genre: Non-Fiction