A good follow-up to *Walden * is Annie Dillard’s Pilgirm at Tinker Creek.
The last time I had way too much time on my hands I read Gravity’s Rainbow, and kept notes on each new character and his-her pseudonyms and connections as they came up so I was able to (get this!) follow along and understand what the hell was going on. Other good candidates for this anal retentive could be Neal Stephenson’s Baroque cycle. Or Umberto Eco.
I re-read it recently and it held up well. The only thing that bothered me when reading it as an adult was wondering what his family was thinking!
Industrial Society and Its Future?
I’m going to be hiking and passing through towns often. I’ll also have a partner and we’ll see plenty of other people along the way.
But since you were probably joking, :D.
Wow. I hadn’t thought about this book in damn near 40 years. Wow. Excellent bood.
Or do you say “book?”
Bood works.
Musashi - if you want a real samaurai book. really it’s about a poor kid in mediveal japan and his lifelong quest to hone his personal fighting skills. his quest goes through a lot of japanese countryside. it’s also epic length
My husband read my favorite book aloud to me. He was hooked and then we got another friend hooked also. The book is Trinity by Leon Uris. It is long, but a paperback edition wouldn’t be that heavy. It takes about 150 pages for it to get a grip on you, but once it does it is totally absorbing. It’s set in Ireland in the mid and late 19th Century. It’s about Ireland’s struggle for independence. I’ve read it three times now. It is beautifully haunting.
Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED - go for the gusto!
Hmmm. My experience is that hikers on the AT tend to keep it as light as possible. Maybe some Spiderman comics and a Chick tract?
Just joking. But have you considered an MP3 player and some books on tape? That way you don't have to settle for a single book. You'd probably need a solar charger, though. Might be nice to have some tunes on the trail as well.
If you want actual books, though, try Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin series. Six months should take you through the whole series, I would think.They aren’t all about that, and when they are, they mostly tend to focus on how the wars affected the Russian aristocracy.
I suppose the interminable part is in the eye of the reader, but Dostoyevsky, especially, had the capability of writing some incredibly true-to-life characters. Indeed, Friedrich Nietzsche once called him “the only psychologist from whom I had anything to learn.”
I still consider The Idiot (which, incidentally, has nothing to do with war) to be the best novel I’ve ever read.
I second this…long range hikers often do things like saw the handles off their toothbrushes to save weight. War and Peace and the like are not going to be welcome weight when you get down to packing everything you need for the trek.
Another thing is that if you stay at shelters, there’s often books people leave for the next hikers, etc.
I don’t really have a good book suggestion other than "Hollows, Peepers, And Highlanders: An Appalachian Mountain Ecology " . I would want to learn about the natural history of the forest and land.
I can see the ridge where the Trail is on (in the distance) from where I live near Lehigh Gap. When you make it to Pa, here is a local note. Ashfield Road ( a rough dirt road), crosses the trail North of the BakeOven Knob and before Lehigh Gap. ( This is the Lehigh Gap to 309 section). If you hike down this road to rt 895 this is a convience store with a deli at the corner in Ashfield. You can get a sandwich or pizza if you want a break from trail food. There is also a small post office.
What would be cool is if there was some way of knowing aprox when you pass, I could leave a book or two at the Bake Oven shelter?
take care
Forget weighty tombs (physical and intellectual). Having spent a lot of time with thru-hikers and on long distance hiking you want escapism. Most folks read mystery or adventure novels that have nothing to do with hiking. You really don’t have the intellectual reserves to tackle anything profound while on the AT.
And I’ve never met a thru-hiker who liked Bryson’s book. It’s a fun read, but it has nothing to do with the real AT.
I dunno . . . Part of the experience of the Trail is the absence of modern distractions and listening to the symphony of nature. I’ve never been on a really long hike, so maybe it gets old after a while and you start craving some rock, but I don’t think I would enjoy it.
Secondly, there are a lot of tactile pleasures which come from reading a book which can’t be replicated electronically.
My idea: Take along a dog, trained beforehand to function as your book pack mule.
Hey, how about one of my favorite recent reads, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer?
It’s a true story about a young man who decides to abandon society to live off the land in the wilderness, isn’t heard from for months, and is never seen again, until his decomposed body is found in a…
…oh. Never mind.
Two more from the big fat classic novel collection:
Moby Dick (which has a lot to say about the relationship between man and nature)
Les Miserables
What about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?
I second Into the Wild, one of my all-time favorite reads.
If you want another epic 6-month man-against-nature journey, but with different scenery, I recommend The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. It’s an account of the race to be the first to the South Pole. And it has penguins.
Some good follow-ups to Thoreau. (They’re also slim books that won’t weigh down your backpack too much).
McPhee, Uncommon Carriers. Short essays, one of which follows the route of a river journey Thoreau took with his brother, while poking some fun at Thoreau.
Pinder, North to Katahdin. Asks, why do people want to walk in the woods for 6 months, anyway? And pokes a little fun at Thoreau.
Abbey, Down the River. Funny, funny writer. Especially when he’s mercilessly poking fun at Thoreau.
And for light reading completely unrelated to Thoreau, how about a novel: Sick Puppy, by Carl Hiaasen.