What are you reading?

[wolfy]

Pretty much the way I feel, too. 

[PetrifiedWood]

Don't forget Bradford Angier if you're into well established mid 20th century outdoor survival authors. "How to Stay Alive in the Woods" easily ranks up there with Olson's book, but applies better to most of the non-desert areas. In my area, Olson's "Outdoor Survival Skills" is particularly relevant, but it would have been better titled "Great Basin/Southwest Region Survival Skills".

Also, a really good book is "Mountaineering, the Freedom of the Hills". This book is continuously updated and is like an instruction manual for mountaineering. It has tons of great information on how to dress, selecting proper footwear, what to pack, how to deal with cold temperatures and rough terrain. It has a lot of good survival information in it, but it's focus is more on how NOT to find yourself in a survival situation in the first place. It should be on every outdoor enthusiast's bookshelf, IMO.

http://www.amazon.com/Mountaineering-Freedom-Hills-8th-Edition/dp/1594851387

Forgot to mention, it's full of some awesome knots as well.

[wolfy]

Agreed!  That's why I like the McPhersons better than the rest.....just more relevance for my area.

[Unknown]

Medicine for Mountaineering:and Other Wilderness Activities is another of similar quality PW.

Maybe I should check my additions vintages and see whats been updated.

[Draco]

Finished Wheel of Time series.  So now I have a #bookhole in my life.     When you have been reading something like that for so long it does kind of feel weird that it ended. 

[wolfy]

Just won a copy of THE WRECK OF THE WHALE SHIP ESSEX for $3.47 on eBay.....it was the inspiration for Melville in writing MOBY DICK and Ron Howard's inspiration for the movie made from Nathaniel Philbrick's IN THE HEART OF THE SEA.

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=lpa6BwAAQBAJ&source=productsearch&utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=PLA&pcampaignid=MKTAD0930BO1&gl=US&gclid=CJHptOzs4ckCFQd3MgodtaUNhg&gclsrc=ds

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=roXy5kT34j4C&source=productsearch&utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=PLA&pcampaignid=MKTAD0930BO1&gl=US&gclid=CMH3w7Hv4ckCFWJrMgodLUcOTw&gclsrc=ds

[wsdstan]

I just finished two books. 

Private Theodore Ewert's Diary of The Black Hills Expedition of 1874.  Edited by John M. Carroll and Dr, Lawrence Frost.

Ewert's account from his diary entries of the 1874 expedition led by Custer into the Black Hills.

The second is "Diary of an Early American Boy" by Eric Sloane.  A fictionalized account of life in the eastern United States.  The basis is an actual diary from 1805 that was found in an old house.  Sloane weaves an interesting account of the daily life throughout the seasons of Noah Blake.  Excellent resource for how they made some items and how they used water power. 

Next up is "Deadwood, The Golden Years"  by Watson Parker.  An historians account of Deadwood South Dakota from 1876 to about 1925.  I saw this book at a flea market and opened up to see what the text was like.  I turned it to a page with this on it: "She was real tall and built like a busted bale of hay".  That was one contemporary comment about the famous Calamity Jane.  I gotta read this I said to no one in particular.

[PetrifiedWood]

Just won a copy of THE WRECK OF THE WHALE SHIP ESSEX for $3.47 on eBay.....it was the inspiration for Melville in writing MOBY DICK and Ron Howard's inspiration for the movie made from Nathaniel Philbrick's IN THE HEART OF THE SEA.

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=lpa6BwAAQBAJ&source=productsearch&utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=PLA&pcampaignid=MKTAD0930BO1&gl=US&gclid=CJHptOzs4ckCFQd3MgodtaUNhg&gclsrc=ds

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=roXy5kT34j4C&source=productsearch&utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=PLA&pcampaignid=MKTAD0930BO1&gl=US&gclid=CMH3w7Hv4ckCFWJrMgodLUcOTw&gclsrc=ds

Melville's Moby Dick is available free from Gutenberg Project, if you don't mind reading electronically. A lot of people might already have read it as a school assignment.

[PetrifiedWood]

Right now I am reading the second book in Matthew Bracken's "Enemies" trilogy.

http://www.amazon.com/Enemies-Foreign-Domestic-Trilogy-Book-ebook

[wolfy]

Melville's Moby Dick is available free from Gutenberg Project, if you don't mind reading electronically. A lot of people might already have read it as a school assignment.

Call me Ishmael, but I read MOBY DICK for a book report when I was a freshman in high school.....I tried reading books on a Kindle and the iPad, too, but it's just not my cup o' tea. 

[PetrifiedWood]

Melville's Moby Dick is available free from Gutenberg Project, if you don't mind reading electronically. A lot of people might already have read it as a school assignment.

Call me Ishmael, but I read MOBY DICK for a book report when I was a freshman in high school.....I tried reading books on a Kindle and the iPad, too, but it's just not my cup o' tea. 

It took me a bit of getting used to. But using the kindle app for Android, I set the color to sepia and turn down the brightness all the way, then adjust the font size. I have read thousands of pages on my tablet this way. I still like a good book for its relative permanence. It doesn't need batteries or any learning beyond the ability to read. But the cost savings and convenience of E books is compelling.

For things like reference materials and how-to books, I like to have a hard copy that will work in a power outage. I like recipes in electronic form since I can print it out and take the page in the kitchen where it can get splashed with oil, tomato sauce, and all the other pitfalls in the kitchen without damaging my only copy.

Another advantage E books have is that they don't make your fingers cramp from propping open a thick springy paperback for hours at a time, especially if you like to hold the book in one hand to have another hand free to sip a drink, snack, etc.

Besides if you can read B&B on a tablet comfortably, a book is an easy transition. 

[Draco]

I don't mind the Kindle app for the phone and I used it for years.  I owned a Kindle in the past but thought it was heavy compared to the phone and my old paperwhite one had no light so you had to have a booklight to read in bed.  Well about 6 months or so ago I thought I would give the new generation of paperwhite kindle at go.  I love the new ones.  Super light and lit with LED from the edges so it shine on the device and not in your face.  Of course the paperwhite only uses power when pages are changed and what the LEDs use so it only needs charging every couple of weeks.  I have gotten so I like the Kindle better than any other way to read. 

Starting the prequel book to Song of Ice and Fire.  It is really three short stories from the author.  Really wish the next book would get released in this series.   

[Carson]

I got an iPad Mini 2 earlier this year and can easily read again. My eyes had gotten bad enough I read certain words as others, made reading difficult as I had to go back over that sentence so it would make sense. The iPad cleared that up, no more problems and I can devour books now like I used to. I can read in a dark tent and there is an ocean of free literature out there to read and several ways to do it.

They added the Retina screen display on the iPad mini version 2 and it is dazzling. The iBooks reading app is wonderful. You can change the font, text size, 4 background colors from white to sepia to gray to black. And it holds thousands of books. You browse books on various sites through the iPad browser, Safari, get your book and it is ready to go in seconds. I can set it up in various positions with the Otter Box Symmetry case/stand I got for it. It does a lot of other things too but I use is for reading mostly and won't be going back to paper books. 

[Trekster]

Right?

Finished Wheel of Time series.  So now I have a #bookhole in my life.     When you have been reading something like that for so long it does kind of feel weird that it ended.

[wsdstan]

I always felt that way when I would finish Lord of the Rings.  Even after I read it for the 6th time.

[Orbean]

"The Voyageurs" by Grace Lee, a history of the French Canadians who hauled fur out of the northwest and trade goods back.

Also the Joe Pickett series by C.J. Box a series about a game warden in Wyoming who always finds himself in the middle of crimes and has to solve them.

Wes

I really enjoyed that book, the voyageur. The song lyrics are neat.

[wsdstan]

I have read some of the Joe Picket game warden books.  Some are pretty interesting.  Box writes well most of the time but his last book about crime in the oil fields of North Dakota was pretty bizarre. 

[MnSportsman]

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1015


I am enjoying it. Some info in the cracks & crevices about that life long ago.

[wolfy]

Classic!

[wsdstan]

i am reading a brochure report title "The Mallory myths and Mysteries:  The Mallory Clothing Replica Project" by Mike Parsons and Mary B. Rose.  it is the report The Mountain Heritage Trust in the United Kingdom made on the discovery of George Leigh Mallory's body on Everest in 1999 (Mallory and Irvine died on Everest in 1924) and the retrieval of parts of the clothing and the pair of boots he was wearing on his summit climb.  The Trust paid for the replication of the clothing he was wearing and it led to the subsequent wearing of the clothing by a few people whilst they were on Everest.  Two of them in a climbing environment and one at a base camp.  The replication process is quite interesting and does provide some interesting conclusions about the effectiveness of the cotton, wool, silk, and leather items that were used.   

I have been interested in this for a long time and while I read a lot of material about it before; this information comes from the people who actually replicated the clothing which is much more complicated that I realized.  The clothing also has a lot of usefulness for what we do in the colder months and has led to some changes in my winter attire. 

[Draco]

Just finished One Second After.   Too easy of a read.  Not to be insulting but it seemed like the professor either dumbed it down or has questionable writing skills.  It was lacking in technical accuracy.  This history professor at a military academy does not know the difference between a magazine and a clip?  They found old crank telephones for communications?  Did they not have any ham radio operators in this community?  I bet over half our guys have either old microwave ovens or homemade Faraday cages where they have a radio or two stored there in case of a EMP event.  The editing errors were rampant.  The biggest con was the lack of character development.  Sadly I just did not care about any of the characters.   

What I liked about the book was the demonstration of the difficult decisions you have to make in triage.  That was timely for me was we just went through that training last week as part of CERT.  I think the author did an excellent job of demonstrating what a community would go though if suddenly all supply lines were cut off.  The health and food issues were well described and I believe accurate.  In the tradition of Walking Dead they had to fight off a group called the Posse who of course were cannibals.  Again this is where the author shines as I believe he gave a realistic view of what a battle like that will be like.  So many of these book have the small group of survivors killing all the bad guys.  Not the case in this book.  I think another positive point was the protagonist was an intellectual middle of the road conservative that did not come across as a paranoid delusional nut case like so many do. 

All in all I think it is a worth while read just don't expect too much in the writing and the take away is the logistics issues they had. 

[wolfy]

It is a haunting tale, though.....I couldn't get it out of my head.       The general population resorting to cannibalism is not totally out of the realm of believability, either.  WWII era populations under siege, like the winter campaign of the Nazis against Stalingrad, saw evidence supporting the commonality of the practice.  It's, for sure, a last resort, but a lot more common than we normally hear of, or talk about. 

I just read an account of cannibalism among the men in the lifeboats after the sinking of the whale ship, Essex.  Recently, the Uragayan soccer team stranded in the mountains after the plane crash.  Probably a lot more instances than we ever hear about.

[PetrifiedWood]

Just finished One Second After.   Too easy of a read.  Not to be insulting but it seemed like the professor either dumbed it down or has questionable writing skills.  It was lacking in technical accuracy.  This history professor at a military academy does not know the difference between a magazine and a clip?  They found old crank telephones for communications?  Did they not have any ham radio operators in this community?  I bet over half our guys have either old microwave ovens or homemade Faraday cages where they have a radio or two stored there in case of a EMP event.  The editing errors were rampant.  The biggest con was the lack of character development.  Sadly I just did not care about any of the characters.   

What I liked about the book was the demonstration of the difficult decisions you have to make in triage.  That was timely for me was we just went through that training last week as part of CERT.  I think the author did an excellent job of demonstrating what a community would go though if suddenly all supply lines were cut off.  The health and food issues were well described and I believe accurate.  In the tradition of Walking Dead they had to fight off a group called the Posse who of course were cannibals.  Again this is where the author shines as I believe he gave a realistic view of what a battle like that will be like.  So many of these book have the small group of survivors killing all the bad guys.  Not the case in this book.  I think another positive point was the protagonist was an intellectual middle of the road conservative that did not come across as a paranoid delusional nut case like so many do. 

All in all I think it is a worth while read just don't expect too much in the writing and the take away is the logistics issues they had.

I wonder if wrapping a radio completely in aluminum foil would suffice for a faraday cage? I read somewhere that a steel gun safe is a pretty good RF Shield.

[Draco]

It has to be grounded.  If so then I bet a gun safe would work just fine.  When I first saw someone use a old microwave I thought that was genius. Yes it is intended to keep those microwaves in but it also keeps them out. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Trekster]

I have a huge old "Faraday cage" (microwave) that I keep in an outbuilding. I still need to put my radios in it but I don't have any to spare. It would be a great place to stash anything "sensitive" in any variation. Unlikely that anyone would find it there and unless the cold outdoors kills the batteries anything put in it should last decades. Out of curiosity, do large scale, severe EMP or HEMP events fry batteries or just wiring and circuitry?

[PetrifiedWood]

I have a huge old "Faraday cage" (microwave) that I keep in an outbuilding. I still need to put my radios in it but I don't have any to spare. It would be a great place to stash anything "sensitive" in any variation. Unlikely that anyone would find it there and unless the cold outdoors kills the batteries anything put in it should last decades. Out of curiosity, do large scale, severe EMP or HEMP events fry batteries or just wiring and circuitry?

I think it really depends on the sensitivity of the circuitry. For example, in order to suffer damage from an EMP, an electronic device needs to "receive" the energy in the same way you receive radio signals. So some simpler, more robust circuits like a very simple vacuum tube amplifier containing no transistors might survive an event that was powerful enough to destroy a cell phone. This would be particularly true if it was unplugged and disconnected from any external wiring that could act as an antenna to "receive" the EMP energy.

The longer the wires (and traces on the board) in a given circuit, the more sensitive it will be to external RF sources because the wires and traces act as antennas. If you've ever seen a circuit board for a bluetooth device, there is always a "squiggly" trace on the circuit board that is the actual bluetooth radio antenna, as an example. Much of this can be mitigated with chokes and filters, but if the source is strong enough, no amount of filtering can completely exclude it.

Surrounding the device in a metal enclosure protects the contents because the metal enclosure conducts the energy better than the contents, particularly if they are insulated from the enclosure.

[NewEnglandBushcraft]

Well, I finished my latest Bernard Cornwell acquisition, part of the Saxon Tales series, "The Last Kingdom"...first book in the series, I think. I have 2 others, "Sword Song" and "The Burning Land", which I have read many times over. Brilliant author if you like history and a touch of fiction.

[Draco]

I have a huge old "Faraday cage" (microwave) that I keep in an outbuilding. I still need to put my radios in it but I don't have any to spare. It would be a great place to stash anything "sensitive" in any variation. Unlikely that anyone would find it there and unless the cold outdoors kills the batteries anything put in it should last decades. Out of curiosity, do large scale, severe EMP or HEMP events fry batteries or just wiring and circuitry?

My guess is most batteries would be okay.  However the popular charging devices made by companies like Anker have more circuitry in them for the USB connections.  I'm pretty sure those would be useless.  I don't see how any led acid car type battery or even the sealed type would be affected. 

From my reading EMP on a large continent size scale is still pretty theoretical.  Of course all the experts thought RSA public key/private key encryption was unbreakable until Snowden taught us otherwise.   

[Yeoman]

I've only read his Sharpe's series. I may have to have a gander at some of his other historical fiction.

These days I'm reading a biography of David Cornwell (no relation I'm aware of). He's better known as John Le Carr?.


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[Draco]

Well, I finished my latest Bernard Cornwell acquisition, part of the Saxon Tales series, "The Last Kingdom"...first book in the series, I think. I have 2 others, "Sword Song" and "The Burning Land", which I have read many times over. Brilliant author if you like history and a touch of fiction.

Thanks I'm adding that to my wish list.  Looks pretty good.  I like history but don't really know a lot about British history.  Well I went through a Guy Fawkes phase at one point.    

I have been reading Benjamin Franklin An American Life by Walter Isaacson.  He repeats himself a lot and it is not a fast read.  However it is very enjoyable and a very good analysis of Ben's accomplishments and failures.  Right up until the war he was hoping that the King would see fit to make Americans on equal ground with Britain's.  I am about 2/3 through it.  It is one of those books I don't read everyday so I have been on this one a while. 

[NewEnglandBushcraft]

Well, I finished my latest Bernard Cornwell acquisition, part of the Saxon Tales series, "The Last Kingdom"...first book in the series, I think. I have 2 others, "Sword Song" and "The Burning Land", which I have read many times over. Brilliant author if you like history and a touch of fiction.

Thanks I'm adding that to my wish list.  Looks pretty good.  I like history but don't really know a lot about British history.  Well I went through a Guy Fawkes phase at one point.    

I have been reading Benjamin Franklin An American Life by Walter Isaacson.  He repeats himself a lot and it is not a fast read.  However it is very enjoyable and a very good analysis of Ben's accomplishments and failures.  Right up until the war he was hoping that the King would see fit to make Americans on equal ground with Britain's.  I am about 2/3 through it.  It is one of those books I don't read everyday so I have been on this one a while.

Sounds interesting...I have quite a few books written about the Founders. It's funny how much stuff isn't mentioned in high school history class, let alone in college.

The Saxon Tales series are based around the Dark Ages time period in Anglo-Saxon Britain (which would later become AEnglaland and then England as we know it today). Bernard did an excellent job writing them, as he diverts into both the Anglo-Saxon and Dane and Norse side due to the past of the protagonist. I shan't spoil it, but I will say that Bernard receives a lot of praise from George R.R. Martin .

[Orbean]

Just finished Captain James Cook by Richard Hough and Compass A Story of Exploration and Innovation by Alan Gurney. The book about cook was great, definitely recommend. The compass book was a little slow but I learned a lot

[Orbean]

Well, I finished my latest Bernard Cornwell acquisition, part of the Saxon Tales series, "The Last Kingdom"...first book in the series, I think. I have 2 others, "Sword Song" and "The Burning Land", which I have read many times over. Brilliant author if you like history and a touch of fiction.
[/quote

I love reading Cornwell, great writer

[CaneCreek]

Matthew Bracken's "Enemies" Trilogy

CaneCreek

[RDStone]

I'm reading: Give Your Heart To The Hawks - A Tribute To The Mountain Men by Winfred Blevins.  There are some embellishments from some other accounts I've read, but he has a nice style.  Those were some tough guys for sure.  I kind of like coming back out of the woods to my nice warm dry home after a hike or backpacking trip - guess I'm a sissy boy!  That months on end stuff would have to do some growin on me.

[zammer]

Got two on the go, first one is a re-read of James Mitcheners Chesapeake, and the other is the book mentioned the other day called A life wild and Perilous by Robert M. Utley

Got both sides of the Country covered...lol

[wsdstan]

I picked up a copy of "Crazy Weather" by Charles L. McNichols.  Written in 1944 the preface says it is a little bit like a modern version of Huck Finn with an interesting Indian boy the central character.  We shall see.

[Draco]

currently I am a book and a half deep into the Sword of Truth series.  Anyone else read this one? 

[Carson]

I'm going to start this book later in the evening.



Longitude by Dava Sobel

Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day―and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives and the increasing fortunes of nations hung on a resolution. One man, John Harrison, in complete opposition to the scientific community, dared to imagine a mechanical solution―a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking, and opens a new window on our world.

[wolfy]

That's a great book.....you'll love it!

[Orbean]

I am picking up a copy asap. Thank you for the recommendation

[wolfy]

There's a PBS/BBC movie on Harrison's quest to build a successful chronometer that is very well done.

[Carson]

I'll have to check out that movie Wolfy. I'm about halfway through the book Longitude and it is very good, short but good.

[woodsorrel]

There's a PBS/BBC movie on Harrison's quest to build a successful chronometer that is very well done.

I remember when this came out.  I enjoyed it immensely!

  - Woodsorrel

[PetrifiedWood]

I just had sort of a silly thought that applies to reading.

At some point in history, there were so few books actually "published" that it was possible for a scholar to have real all of them. With the advent of the printing press, books became far more common. However, it must have been theoretically possible to have read all of the published books for at least a short time after the press was invented. I wonder how long it took for the number of different books to outpace the amount of time it would take to read them all based on a person's life expectancy at the time?

[Draco]

By the time Gutenburg invented the printing press there were a lot of monks copying the books buy hand.  I have no idea how many had been written by then but before that there were scrolls and we know from the dead sea finds there were a lot of them. 

In my mind the greatest invention of mankind was the printing press.  Without which our revolution would have probably never have happened.  It was the easy access to information via newspapers and pamphlets that made America great.   Very few places would a person have been allowed to author and distribute something like Thomas Paine's Common Sense.

In my mind fire was always there and the wheel was pretty much too.  It was Gutenberg's press with moveable type that brought access to information to people of the middle class and it was Ben Franklin's library that brought it to everyone. 

[Orbean]

I believe the three greatest inventions of all time are the printing press, an accurate time piece and accurate maps.

[jontok]

currently I am a book and a half deep into the Sword of Truth series.  Anyone else read this one?

I read some of those. good books, but i quit a little bit into book 7 or 9 (can't remember which) because he basically uses the same formula for the books over and over again... You'll see what I mean...


I've been on a sci-fi bender... I re-read the Omega Force series, and have just finished the Black Fleet trilogy and the two Reaper Inc books.
Now I'm on book two in a collection (kindle) that's called Gods and Mortals.
I like those collections from Kindle because there is always one or two books in there that are good enough to warrant getting the rest of the series.

[Orbean]

Just finished  Blood and Thunder, The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West. Excellent book, not only a biography of Carson but also explains the political climate of the time and how it related to the opening and settling of the west. Particularly interesting to me because my family has lived in northern NM and were among the first Europeans to settle the area ( I come Basque and French stock).

Also finished Over the Edge of the World written by Laurence Bergreen. It is a good read detailing Magellan's circumnavigation of the world.

[wolfy]

I just finished a translated copy of EXPLORING WITH FREMONT.  It was written in German by a gifted young cartographer (in diary form) by the name of Charles Karl Preuss.   Preuss was employed by John Charles Fremont on his 1st, 2nd, and 4th expeditions into the Oregon Territory and areas covering California, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah and almost all of the area west of the Missouri River.  Preuss was able to finally produce an accurate map of the newly discovered Oregon and California trails, the correctly proportioned relationship of all the rivers, mountain ranges, deserts and passes......no more 'educated guesses' on the maps.

Most of these old diaries can be pretty boring, but I must say, this one is the most entertaining of any that I've read.  Preuss constantly gripes about the food and camping conditions.   Did you know that the head is the tastiest portion of a dead mule?

His opinion of Fremont is pretty telling, too.  He complains about the stupid moves and quirks that Fremont displays in his everyday decision making, etc. 

Guides, Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, and Old Bill Williams are discussed at length.....very interesting highlights into each man's skills and weaknesses. 

I had to get it through inter-library loan, but if I ever get a chance to buy a reasonably priced copy, I WILL own one.

Portions of Preuss' mapping efforts are available for viewing at bottom of this page..

http://www.longcamp.com/preuss.html