The Bookshelf (AKA Reading Rainbow)


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Curious what books you guys think might appeal to TLD fans.

Just post one per a post, so conversations are easier to track, give a short description.

I'll start :-)

One Second After, by William R. Forstchen

A story about survival in a semi suburban rural area after an EMP.

It gives you great info on what you can expect to work/not work, and how thin our veneer of civilization is when people become hungry, tired, and displaced.

I just finished One Second After. I am now terrified and will start pricing prepper bunkers! Holy crap!! Amazing book that will have you thinking about asymmetrical nuclear warfare in a whole new light...while sitting in the dark. ;-) This should be required high school reading!

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The first survival book I ever read. Set in Canada, no less: Hatchet

From Amazon: Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is on his way to visit his father when the single-engine plane in which he is flying crashes. Suddenly, Brian finds himself alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a tattered Windbreaker and the hatchet his mother gave him as a present—and the dreadful secret that has been tearing him apart since his parent’s divorce. But now Brian has no time for anger, self pity, or despair—it will take all his know-how and determination, and more courage than he knew he possessed, to survive.

Absolutely loved this book as a kid.

evan_wd beat me to Hatchet, but I'll see his heartwarming tale about a normal average Canadian boyhood and raise him One Man's Wilderness, An Alaskan Odyssey, which consists of excerpts from the journals of Dick Proenneke.

From Amazon: "This best-selling memoir from Richard Proenneke's journals and with firsthand knowledge of his subject and the setting, Sam Keith has woven a tribute to a man who carved his masterpiece out of the beyond. To live in a pristine land unchanged by man . . . to roam a wilderness through which few other humans has passed . . . to choose an idyllic site, cut trees by hand, and build a log cabin. . . to be self-sufficient craftsman, making what is needed from materials available...to be not at odds with the world, but content with one's own thoughts, dreams and company. Thousands have had such dreams, but Richard Proenneke lived them. This book is a moving account of the day-to-day explorations and activities Dick carried out alone....alone in the wilderness...and the constant chain of nature's events that kept him company".

There was a documentary made about Proenneke, using footage he'd shot himself (he beat Les Stroud to the film-yourself-surviving thing by several decades):

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Curious what books you guys think might appeal to TLD fans.

Just post one per a post, so conversations are easier to track, give a short description.

I'll start :-)

One Second After, by William R. Forstchen

A story about survival in a semi suburban rural area after an EMP.

It gives you great info on what you can expect to work/not work, and how thin our veneer of civilization is when people become hungry, tired, and displaced.

Read this one to my wife a while back. Good stuff, but it glosses over the fallout (har) of 100+ nuclear reactors losing connection to the grid and the resultant loss of coolant accidents, meltdowns and so forth. I'll leave the googling of reactor locations in North America to the audience...

Getting back to media, I give you Farley Mowat's Walk Well, My Brother, a short story about a bush pilot who crashes while flying an Inuit girl to the hospital. Apparently, being stranded in the tundra is lifethreatening, unless you have an Inuit teenager with you, at which point it becomes like being stranded at the mall with Paris Hilton... It was made into a movie called The Snow Walker which is actually quite good.

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Just started reading this book called the Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood. I was doing some research into HP Lovecraft, as Guillermo del Toro is adapting one of his books, and came across this guy, Blackwood, and his book the Wendigo for free in the Kindle store. I'm not super far into it, but it's about these guys in the Canadian hinterlands (they actually use the word at one point) who are hunting moose, but something else starts to show itself to them.

Anyway, haven't gotten super far, but atmospherically it's kind of what I imagine TLD to be dipping into. Check it out. It's freeeeee.

Thanks for this one. Great little read. Really enjoyed it.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Wow, what an awesome thread!

The Road - I cried. Yes I am an adult man and this book had me sobbing.

One Second After - buckets of salty rain. Again. [a rebuttal to the melt-down comment from an ex navy nuke - I think our civilian plants would safely shut down and cool down. The problem arise when decay heat cannot be removed...even when a reactor 'shuts down' it still produces heat based on it power history--higher powers for longer times means more decay heat. But our civilian plants accommodate this possibility with backup measures, some of which include natural circulation. TMI was a gross procedural mistake in which containment worked. Chernobyl was atypical poor Russian design. Fukushima was literally an act of God IMO.]

On the Beach - no tears but a great survivor tale and a clarion call to the risks of global war.

The others I have not read, but trust me--they are going onto my list!

I was surprised to not see any Jon Krakauer in here. Although he doesn't deal in end-of-the-world fiction, there is plenty of trouble you can find yourself in while adventuring outside the cities.

lauLMwn.jpg

Into the Wild - a great read about an intelligent youngster who leaves a promising college life and strikes out across the American west and eventually Alaska. And a stern warning about the perils of wilderness living. Also a decent movie.

Into Thin Air - a disastrous account of a Mount Everest expedition, includes some history of the mountain, and the science and biology of high altitude adventuring.

Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors - this is a non-fiction account of some naval action in WW2 that occurred peripheral to the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Small American destroyers and destroyer escorts assigned to escort carrier group TAFFY THREE found themselves engaging massive Japanese ships--including the YAMATO--in a desperate attempt to save their carriers. Anyway, why does this belong on this list? The last part of the book concerns the survival at sea efforts of the sailors from some of the stricken American ships and it is bone chilling however warm the tropical Pacific waters were they found themselves drifting through.

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I was surprised to not see any Jon Krakauer in here. Although he doesn't deal in end-of-the-world fiction, there is plenty of trouble you can find yourself in while adventuring outside the cities.

lauLMwn.jpg

Into the Wild - a great read about an intelligent youngster who leaves a promising college life and strikes out across the American west and eventually Alaska. And a stern warning about the perils of wilderness living. Also a decent movie.

Hoo boy, I remember on the original forum there was a thread about references you'd like to see, and I said it would be interesting to see a bus-turned-shelter somewhere. There were some pretty strong reactions to that -- some people really dislike McCandless and how he's become an almost cult figure.

Interestingly, around the time I posted that comment, Krakauer published a follow-up article that explains why McCandless died: he had been eating seeds from the wild-potato plant that his guide book said were fine, but they are in fact highly toxic. Krakauer thinks McCandless would have survived if not for those seeds.

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  • 3 weeks later...

(Moved to the right place)

Brian's Winter (The sequel to Hatchet)

I finally had a game where I Survived pretty well. Day 10 with extra bullets, meat and firewood. Any way some where in there the game reminded me of the book Brian's winter. I think it was finally having enough food to be able to explore for a full 2 days with out worrying about starving to death. Brian's Winter was the sequel to Hatchet. If you haven't read it I highly recommend it. It's a short but good read.

Just though I would share.

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  • 1 month later...

My favourite book about survival in the wild is Mountain man (1965), written by Vardis Fisher.

The famous film Jeremiah Johnson (1972) was based on this book.

It's a well-written romantic portrait of life in North American wilderness during the mid XIX century.

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I note his books haven't been mentioned yet, so I'll just drop Laird Barron's name here. He's written a few novels, but mostly he's known for his short stories: think Jack London crossed with H. P. Lovecraft. (Barron grew up in the Alaskan bush and it shows). It's muscular weird fiction that's concerned with the human condition as its impacted by everything not human (the land, beasts, worse-than-beasts) and much of it takes place in The Outdoors, particularly the PNW of North America. I'd recommend any of his collections but I think the latest, The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, would really appeal to TLD players. Certainly I've gone in my mind to certain Barron stories while playing so far. "Blackwood's Baby", particularly.

lefthttp://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91pz4-qhyOL._SL1500_.jpg

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I've always had a thing for postapocalyptic fiction so I've read One Second After, Lucifer's Hammer, etc. The Long Dark reminds me a lot of the various Gary Paulsen books (Hatchet, Mr. Tucket, Call Me Francis Tucket, etc) as well as other young adult fiction about wilderness / frontier survival like My Side of the Mountain.

I love Cormac McCarthy and have read all of his books. The Road is great and relevant because its postapocalyptic, but fans of The Long Dark might also like his western novels Blood Meridian and The Border Trilogy (All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain) which also deal a lot with day to day frontier survival.

Another great postapocalyptic read is A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller which covers several thousand years of society after a nuclear apocalypse:

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And of course for survivalists the army field manual FM 21-76 is indispensable:

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Y'know, this thread brings to mind something I've noted about the game so far, and that's the lack of books in pretty much all interiors. Plenty of shelves, no reading material. Now I know it would likely all go towards fuel for the fire, but still. I'm thinking that there could be a psychological element added to the game, where an hour warming yourself by the fire while reading something for entertainment could somehow boost your condition, mentally. The book in question wouldn't even have to be something awesome, it could be a silly Harlequin romance, but the act of reading and the brief escape from the reality of the situation you find yourself in, could be beneficial.

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I recently finished Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. It's not about survival, but it is about video games, game developers and the 70s and 80s (although it takes place in a dystopian future). I think anyone that grew up during or lived through those decades and has a general interest in gaming would enjoy it. Steven Spielberg is going to direct the movie adaptation.

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I have a fondness for Willy Vlautin's book 'The Free', which has some fine dream-like dystopian stuff. In this America, those who are unwilling to kill have a vivid purple bruise and are viewed by the rest of the population with unreasoning and violent hatred. One man and a woman with hidden bruises try to stay one step ahead of 'the Free' in a great post-apocalyptic American wilderness, who are essentially self-appointed death squads searching for the marked ones. All this is actually a dream suffered by an Iraq war veteran locked in a coma after a failed suicide attempt. The novel dips in and out of his sci-fi fantasy and also revolves around his carer, and his nurse, and their own personal struggles. It's a sometimes clumsy, earnest work but it has a raw power to it and some deeply felt characters. As ever with Vlautin's stuff, it's the little gestures that matter. Cooking a meal for someone else. Being there and listening to another's hurts.

One of his other books, Lean on Pete, features a kid who runs away with a racehorse due for the knacker's yard. He attempts to hike from Portland to Central Oregon to find his auntie, following the death of his father. It's a more polished affair and pretty excellent, though features no post-apocalyptic stuff it does not shy away from how hard things are on the road.

For a study of a society that has adapted well to endless cold, Ursula LeGuin's 'Left Hand of Darkness' is a tremendous work. And for my post-apocalyptic kicks I just love Earth Abides by George R Stewart, and The Death of Grass by John Christopher. Rather than being about a bummed out hippie's worst nightmare, The Death of Grass is something of a forgotten classic set in a world where all the grass has died from a viral strain. The lead character is offered a place of retreat to his brother's farm, which is in a remote valley in the North of England which wisely took to planting potatoes. He grabs his family and forms an alliance with a few others as they attempt to reach safety. One of his allies is an owner of a gun-shop he attempts to loot, and who is a fascinating portrait of a very dignified, efficient and polite psychotic who you'd want on your side. Unusually for a British science fiction novel, there's a lot of gun-play, but it is far from a power-fantasy and there's a lot of bitter sarcasm about romantic dreams of self-empowered feudal societies. It's pretty short too, and makes a great weekend read. Highly recommended, and makes you think what would happen if all the grass suddenly up and died on you.

The British government's plan to cope with the situation is magnificently chilling, and with typical British black humour, magnificently bungled as well.

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  • 3 months later...
9 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

That Ray Mears looks like an interesting fellow. Will have to check out some of his other work. Thanks for the tip on the book!

I have a few of his titles, some are considered bushcraft bibles, some more coffee table reads with travellers tales and glossy pics, I'm hoping this latest will be a solid mix of both.

He can be found all over youtube which is strange as the BBC are really strict with DMCA, definitely worth watching.

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  • 2 months later...
On 27-9-2014 at 3:40 AM, oversoul said:

Wow, what an awesome thread!

The Road - I cried. Yes I am an adult man and this book had me sobbing.

One Second After - buckets of salty rain. Again. [a rebuttal to the melt-down comment from an ex navy nuke - I think our civilian plants would safely shut down and cool down. The problem arise when decay heat cannot be removed...even when a reactor 'shuts down' it still produces heat based on it power history--higher powers for longer times means more decay heat. But our civilian plants accommodate this possibility with backup measures, some of which include natural circulation. TMI was a gross procedural mistake in which containment worked. Chernobyl was atypical poor Russian design. Fukushima was literally an act of God IMO.]

On the Beach - no tears but a great survivor tale and a clarion call to the risks of global war.

The others I have not read, but trust me--they are going onto my list!

I was surprised to not see any Jon Krakauer in here. Although he doesn't deal in end-of-the-world fiction, there is plenty of trouble you can find yourself in while adventuring outside the cities.

lauLMwn.jpg

Into the Wild - a great read about an intelligent youngster who leaves a promising college life and strikes out across the American west and eventually Alaska. And a stern warning about the perils of wilderness living. Also a decent movie.

Into Thin Air - a disastrous account of a Mount Everest expedition, includes some history of the mountain, and the science and biology of high altitude adventuring.

Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors - this is a non-fiction account of some naval action in WW2 that occurred peripheral to the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Small American destroyers and destroyer escorts assigned to escort carrier group TAFFY THREE found themselves engaging massive Japanese ships--including the YAMATO--in a desperate attempt to save their carriers. Anyway, why does this belong on this list? The last part of the book concerns the survival at sea efforts of the sailors from some of the stricken American ships and it is bone chilling however warm the tropical Pacific waters were they found themselves drifting through.

 

There is another book about the story of Chris McCandless. His sister, Carine McCandless wrote 'The Wild Truth' in 2014. Setting the story straight about what really happened.

Just bought the book and haven't read it yet.

https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Truth-Carine-McCandless/dp/0062325140

 

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