Reading tip

[Husky]

I don´t know how I became the way I am but it may have something to do with the fact that I have meters of bookshelf filled with stories of expeditions, travels and exploration.
Most of it is old and a lot of it is inhereted from my grandfather and I first read it as a teenager.
The thread about seamonsters reminded me that it is time to reread one of my favorites:

"The Brendan Voyage" by Tim Severin.
http://www.timseverin.net/books_brendan_voyage.html

As a young archeologist T.S. found an old account of a journey done by a monk, in a boat made of leather, to a land far west and back.
This together with seamonsters, burning islands and other stuff all together gave an impression of fiction, if only it wasn´t for lots of details usually not found in fictional stories...
Powered by an encounter with a corracle, to much coffee and the cheers "Its impossible!" he researches materials, methods and possibilities, builds a leather boat and sails it to northamerica.

This story contains everything I love from bushcraft and sailing to expeditions and myths, not to mention a real viking (even more real then Wayland) and tha fact that history is not always as we have been taught!

What is your favorite read in this spirit?

 

[sandbender]

What is your favorite read in this spirit?

Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger

"The southern Arabian desert, a quarter million square miles of sand (650,000 square kilometers), is now a place of oil wells and Land Rovers, but before the 1950s it was still known as the Empty Quarter, a place you entered only on camel and only as an Arab. Only a few white men had ever seen it, much less crossed it. From 1945 to 1950, the British Thesiger crossed it twice, living with the Bedouin, sharing their hard lives. His book is the classic of desert exploration, a door opening on a vanished feudal world."

A good selection of similar reads can be found on the 'National Geographic' magazines list of the 100 Greatest Adventure Books which can be found here.

 

[Tengu]

Ive read the Brendan Voyage.

I Still want to go to Ireland to see curraghs.

The book Im reading is `We cannot Fail` by G Powter.

Its an account of the fine line between adventuring and madness.

His last paragraph is very telling, He says that a true adventurer knows their place within the grand scheme of things. that they know the history and the culture and relevance of their area, and the landscape is not just a backdrop for their psychosises.