Here are 51 books that The Twenty-Ninth Day fans have personally recommended if you like
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You might say I have a love-hate relationship with the Amazon. As a journalist, I’ve been reporting from the rainforest since 2013, and I spent six years working on a book about an Amazonian tribe, often spending weeks a time at one of their villages. It’s not an easy place: hot, wet, insect-ridden. It can also be dangerous, what with all the loggers, prospectors, and sundry other outlaws. But I came to appreciate the singular beauty of the forest, truly a marvel of nature. And I loved befriending Indigenous people who understood the world in a radically different way, and led me to question my own, Western assumptions.
I devoured this one, and not only because the subject matter is close to my heart. As a writer, I learned a lot about craft here. It was a master class in weaving history—both natural and human—into a propulsive narrative.
It was also a model for relying almost exclusively on written sources to bring long-forgotten scenes to life in the most vivid way possible.
In 1912, shortly after losing his bid to spend a third term as American President to Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt with his son Kermit, a Brazilian guide and a band of camaradas set off deep into the Amazon jungle and a very uncertain fate. Although Roosevelt did eventually return from THE RIVER OF DOUBT, he and his companions faced treacherous cataracts as well as the dangerous indigenous population of the Amazon. He became severely ill on the journey, nearly dying in the jungle from a blood infection and malaria. A mere five years later Roosevelt did die of related issues.…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
There is something magical about rivers, always coming around an upstream bend and then disappearing below. I was drawn to them at an early age, wading up creeks, looking for fish, frogs, and birds...full of surprises. I morphed into canoeing as a boy scout, and it has turned out to be a major axis of my life. Overnighters with my family and students have been little vacations in themselves. River adventures are unique for the peace and quiet they offer, their whitewater risks and silent swamps, and the beauty of a diving osprey or a rainbow...all of which are described in my book Downstream Toward Home.
This book covers the most famous canoe trip of them all: John Wesley Powell's courageous exploration through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. No one knew what the Grand Canyon was like; no one had ever run it, and no one even knew where it ended. What I particularly liked about the book is the way it is written, a genuine thriller, and as a reader, I am right there in the boats with Powell and his small crew, most of whom had never been in a boat before…to say nothing of the most dangerous water in America. Another big plus is that the narrative draws on the diaries of three of the members, so I am reading the complaints and hardships from several sources.
Rather, miraculously, they built their own boats and then plunged into the "unknown." Major Powell took the lead boat, and the fact that he…
Drawing on rarely examined diaries and journals, Down the Great Unknown is the first book to tell the full, dramatic story of the Powell expedition.
On May 24, 1869 a one-armed Civil War veteran, John Wesley Powell and a ragtag band of nine mountain men embarked on the last great quest in the American West. The Grand Canyon, not explored before, was as mysterious as Atlantis—and as perilous. The ten men set out from Green River Station, Wyoming Territory down the Colorado in four wooden rowboats. Ninety-nine days later, six half-starved wretches came ashore near Callville, Arizona.
There's almost nothing better than getting in a canoe, putting your paddle in the water, and pushing out into a current that will carry you away. As someone who grew up on the Mississippi River, and who has spent much of my life canoeing, I always love a good river journey. And when I can't take one myself. I love going vicariously with someone else, like with these books.
I always think of the canoe as an escape, a refuge, and an adventure. But for Dick Contant, who lived out of his canoe, it was a different kind of refuge: An escape from the world that was too complicated to navigate.
I first read about his story in the New Yorker. But when he disappeared, I wanted to know the rest of his story, which McGrath fills in as best he can in this book. This is a different kind of canoe journey, but well worth the ride.
'Brilliant, clear, and humane' Elizabeth Gilbert
'Miraculous and hopeful' Emma Straub
Riverman: An American Odyssey uncovers the story of an extraordinary man and his puzzling disappearance, and paints a picture of the singular spirit of America's riverbank towns.
'The peace of mind I found, largely alone, on that white-water mecca convinced me that life was capable of exquisite pleasure and undefined meaning deep in the face of failure. The experience itself is the reward.' Dick Conant
On his forty-third birthday, Dick Conant, a golden boy who never quite grew up as those around him expected, stepped into a homemade boat…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
There is something magical about rivers, always coming around an upstream bend and then disappearing below. I was drawn to them at an early age, wading up creeks, looking for fish, frogs, and birds...full of surprises. I morphed into canoeing as a boy scout, and it has turned out to be a major axis of my life. Overnighters with my family and students have been little vacations in themselves. River adventures are unique for the peace and quiet they offer, their whitewater risks and silent swamps, and the beauty of a diving osprey or a rainbow...all of which are described in my book Downstream Toward Home.
Six experienced American whitewater kayakers took on what was perhaps the last river few had ever seen, and no one had fully run. It ran down from the high mountains of India, and their timing could not have been worse. After two weeks of heavy rain, even the upstream section was over its banks and running at near-turnpike speed.
The skill levels of these six men were at the top of the game. They had won awards in kayak competitions, and had run everything difficult they could find in North America. I have no love of kayaking. Rather, I enjoy sitting higher in a canoe where I can see things over the banks around me, and can always bail-out and swim if I flip. However, at least for me, canoeing this water at this level would be suicide.
Similar to the Grand Canyon at the time of Powell, it ran…
Running through the southwest corner of Tibet, the Tsangpo River is the last and most dangerous uncharted whitewater passage. It is also a place of extraordinary beauty, coursing through snow capped mountain ranges and ripping through verdant jungle. It is no wonder that local legend has this place as the sacred site of Shangri-La. And according to kayaking legend, the Tsanpo Gorge is the Holy Grail of rafting. In October 1998, a team sponsored by National Geographic set out to conquer it. En Route, they found that NG had also sponsored another team whose descent was timed just after their…
I’m often asked if my Worst-Case Scenario books are serious or humorous. And my answer is always the same: “Yes!” While inspired by pop culture and the survival situations we see again and again in movies and on TV, the information in my books is real. I spend a lot of time seeking out experts to interview—the people who actually have done this stuff—and then distilling their survival wisdom into the form you see in the books. As humans, we want to be prepared for life’s twists and turns. Even if it’s, you know, when the aliens arrive. I’ve been a survival writer and humorist for 25 years and I ain’t stopping now!
Two decades ago, I was preparing for my first book promotion trip to Australia and New Zealand. I asked my (Aussie) publisher to recommend two books to learn more about Australia and its history.
The first was In A Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson, which I had heard of. The second was Cooper’s Creek, which I hadn’t. It’s a stunning, scary, edge-of-your-seat short history about an expedition in 1860 that set out from Melbourne into the vast, empty, broiling interior of the country, with the mission to find a route to the lush northern coast. Needless to say, things didn’t go as planned.
The book is taken from first-hand accounts by the explorers, and is novel-like in its dramatic twists and turns.
In 1860, an expedition set out from Melbourne, Australia, into the interior of the country, with the mission to find a route to the northern coast. Headed by Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills, the party of adventurers, scientists, and camels set out into the outback hoping to find enough water and to keep adequate food stores for their trek into the bush. Almost one year later, Burke, Wills, and two others from their party, Gray and King, reached the northern shore but on their journey back, they were stranded at Cooper’s Creek where all but King perished. Cooper’s…
I’ve had a lifelong passion for all things Arctic that began in childhood as I devoured many tragic tales of doomed Arctic explorers. This fascination later merged with concern for human impacts on this fragile ecosystem. Though I hate the cold and suffer from vertigo, I participated in the 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition that sailed Svalbard’s western shores. Among other experiences, I witnessed a massive glacier calving and walked on an ice floe. Determined to fully absorb Svalbard’s setting for my creative work, I spent two subsequent residencies in Longyearbyen—one in the dark season and one as the light returned—and I signed on for another expedition to circumnavigate the archipelago.
I’d rank this novel in my top five of all time, not just as a great survival story.
This book is a post-apocalyptic fantasy novel set partly in Antarctica, a meditation on human existence, and a page-turner with keen attention to beautiful writing. Its characters grapple with essential, existential questions such as: How are we connected to the world? What happens when those last connections are broken? What is the nature of loneliness, of love? Is survival alone enough reason for living?
I’ve read this novel several times, and though I know the arc of the story and the fate of its characters, I come away each time with insights into what it means to be alive. A bonus: it’s one of the few novels I know of set in Antarctica.
From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between.
The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
My interest in healing and nature stems from a very particular source—my own search for answers in the wake of my wife’s premature death in 2007. I’d read somewhere that loss often either engulfs someone or propels them forward, and I didn’t want to end up in the former category, particularly as I had a young daughter to look after. So this list represents an urgent personal quest that started years ago and still continues to this day. The books have been a touchstone, a vital support, and a revelation—pieces in the jigsaw of a recovery still incomplete. I hope they help others as they’ve helped me.
I love the grittiness of this—an account of a walk along the South West Coast path, when terminal illness and poverty haunt the walkers and everything is in a state of flux.
It doesn’t glamorize the walk; it’s often uncomfortable with lots of biting wind and pouring rain. At times, there are even threats from others they come across who are sleeping rough. Overall, it’s a description of nature at its most raw and authentic.
Although we glimpse moments of inspiration and beauty, I like the fact, as well, that it doesn’t have a big, blowsy Hollywood ending—at the close, the future appears uncertain, although there is a definite sense that a new energy has been discovered.
It ends on a simple, perfect moment as the author describes her and her husband as “lightly salted blackberries hanging in the summer sun” and adds significantly that’s “all that is…
"Polished, poignant... an inspiring story of true love."-Entertainment Weekly
A BEST BOOK OF 2019, NPR's Book Concierge SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARD OVER 400,000 COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE
The true story of a couple who lost everything and embarked on a transformative journey walking the South West Coast Path in England
Just days after Raynor Winn learns that Moth, her husband of thirty-two years, is terminally ill, their house and farm are taken away, along with their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South…
I love the quirky, restless Pacific Northwest, also known as Cascadia, my home bioregion. Nonfiction is my jam, but I enjoy stories both unreal and real (stealing and tweaking Oregon author Ursula Le Guin’s use of the terms). I’m also an avid hiker. I’ve often wondered how I could provide folks heading here to hike the 400-mile Oregon Coast Trail (another passion of mine) with my personal book list introducing them to this landscape and its history, human and natural. Here is a start.
Charlotte Drummond is a sort of anti-Carrie Simpson: same era, but fictional and feminist, living on the lower Columbia River. She joins a search for a girl lost from a remote logging camp and discovers more than she bargained for. There’s so much to love in this quiet novel, mainly the vivid and unflashy rendering of landscape and unfolding of memorable characters.
In 1905, a cigar-smoking, feminist writer of popular adventure novels for women encounters Bigfoot in Molly Gloss’s best loved novel—“never has there been a more authentic, persuasive, or moving evocation of this elusive legend: a masterpiece” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
Set among lava sinkholes and logging camps at the fringe of the Northwest frontier in the early 1900s, Wild Life is the story—both real and imagined—of the free-thinking, cigar-smoking, trouser-wearing Charlotte Bridger Drummond, who pens dime-store women’s adventure stories. One day, when a little girl gets lost in the woods, Charlotte anxiously joins the search. When she becomes lost in…
Twenty-one years ago, I moved off the grid. As a city-dweller who didn't even go camping, I'd never considered myself a country woman, but I felt called to the woods. I wanted to learn practical skills like how to split wood and bake bread, and I wanted to reduce my carbon footprint. Now, because of our lifestyle, we don't run microwaves, toasters, or dishwashers, and it’s been 20 years since I’ve had a clothes dryer. Living this way has changed me. My relationship with the environment has evolved over the years, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning about the different ways experiences in nature can help us humans to grow.
Although set in a near-future America, I related to the way these two sisters had to live, conserving electricity and resources, running a generator, and always having to think carefully about whether to drive the 30 miles into town. Most haunting to me were the scenes where Eva, a dedicated dancer, practiced over and over an audition routine without the benefit of music, having to rely on the soundtrack in her head.
These two women were at the precipice of their adult lives, just beginning to actualize their talents, when they experienced a societal collapse. As the reader going along with them, it made me think about priorities, relationships, and who I would be without modern technology.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Set in the near-future, Into the Forest is a powerfully imagined novel that focuses on the relationship between two teenage sisters living alone in their Northern California forest home.
Over 30 miles from the nearest town, and several miles away from their nearest neighbor, Nell and Eva struggle to survive as society begins to decay and collapse around them. No single event precedes society's fall. There is talk of a war overseas and upheaval in Congress, but it still comes as a shock when the electricity runs out and gas is nowhere to be…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I’ve been fascinated by wild and lonely places since early childhood. Growing up in a small village, there were plenty to choose from. Foraging and an interest in the medicinal properties of plants grew out of that fascination, and later brought me to survival guides and the concept of survival itself. Hostile places, historical skills, and wilderness experiences all have a hold over my imagination. The notion of being prepared for humanity’s decline is something I find endlessly intriguing. Can such a thing be prepared for? What form will our destruction take and how does this affect the methods we need to survive it? I’ll probably keep reading and writing about it until we have an answer.
A non-fiction account of one office worker’s yearlong attempt to survive in Alaska. As someone who finds non-fiction quite dry and hard to read, this book is the best of both worlds. It has the detail of a true account with the wit and humor of fictional story. This book gives me something that former SAS professionals and hardened explorers cannot; the experiences of an everyday man, trading his desk job for a log cabin in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.
Guy Grieve's life was going nowhere - trapped in a job he hated, commuting 2,000 miles a month and up to his neck in debt. But he dreamed of escaping it all to live alone in one of the wildest, most remote places on earth - Alaska.
And just when he'd given up hope, the dream came true. Suddenly Guy was thrown into one of the harshest environments in the world, miles from the nearest human being and armed with only the most basic equipment. And he soon found - whether building a log cabin from scratch, hunting, ice fishing…
