I read Into Thin Air many years ago.

Same, a great book.

I've read a few of the authors other books; "Under the Banner of Heaven", "Where Men Win Glory" and "Into the Wild" all really good.

 

It does. I’m about 20% in so far. I feel compelled to read books about the black experience. Some of my closest college friends were women of color, and they got me started with fictional books like The Color Purple. Last year I read The Souls of Black Folk and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. They’re never “enjoyable” reads, but they are good books and I believe it’s important to read them anyway. I am positive that if it ever became legal to own a certain flavor of human again, there’s a subset of the population who’d be all over that shit immediately.

Not one of my main genres, but I mix in a few. Some good ones I’ve read that are at least somewhat related:

• The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wikerson - I assume you may have read this because it was so huge; if not, I’d put it at the top of your list. Also by her, Caste is on my list.
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (fiction) - I hardly read any fiction, but this one could be real. Also by him, The Nickel Boys is on my list.
• The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs - spoiler is right there in the title, so you know what you’re getting yourself into.
• A Fever in the Heartland by Tim Egan - the KKK domination of Indiana in the 1920s; I just posted about this one recently, it’s a must-read.

Spam

The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
by Simon Winchester

This book looks at the history of our improvements in precision. Each chapter covers a new technology that required a higher level of precision than was previously attainable, and explains how and by whom it it was achieved. They are sequenced chronologically and in order of increasing precision requirements, from steam engines to automobiles to aircraft to spacecraft to microprocessors, among others along the way. I enjoyed this book immensely, having spent my adult life working in engineering and industrial manufacturing environments. I recommend it especially to anyone with a similar background, or otherwise mechanically minded. I’d say that’s very helpful but not necessarily essential, if the subject matter seems interesting. He treads a reasonable balance between avoiding boring those who are knowledgeable on the concepts, and avoiding overwhelming those who are not. There are certainly some cases where he crosses the line in one of those directions, but he has a difficult task considering the content. He does a good job describing each of the technologies in detail, but some of it can be tough to follow and visualize unless you’ve seen it with your own eyes, or at least something similar. It would be great as a documentary series, to show you what he’s talking about, because much of it is hard to describe adequately in words.

On a side note: for anyone who reads a lot of non-fiction, there are far too many books with a subtitle along the lines of “How ____ Created the Modern World.” This one is certainly justified, but still.

I finished Touching the Void. It was good. Awe-inspiring, really. Joe Simpson is a fucking beast.

Short version of this true tale: Two guys climb a mountain. On the way down one of them falls and breaks the shit out of his leg, then falls from a great height into a crevasse. His partner believes he is dead and continues down the mountain, but the bastard SURVIVED. This tough son of a bitch somehow manages to climb out of the hole with one working leg, then hops and crawls all the way back to the camp over the next few days.

It is a crazy story. In the epilogue, he talks about having six surgeries on the leg so far, and despite what doctors told him, not only is his leg functional again but he is back out there CLIMBING MOUNTAINS ffs.

There's also a documentary/drama film by the same name that keeps true to the events. The two men narrate the tale during the movie, so you get insight into what they were thinking and how they were feeling, just as you do in the book. I do not remember being quite as grossed out by descriptions of the broken leg during the movie as I was during the book. Talk of scraping bones and twisting gristle.... /gag.

 

It is a crazy story. In the epilogue, he talks about having six surgeries on the leg so far, and despite what doctors told him, not only is his leg functional again but he is back out there CLIMBING MOUNTAINS ffs.

 

Common story but I cannot even imagine. People are just wired differently; if that’s what you do, that’s what you do. All the disastrous 19th century expeditions I read about—guys are stranded near death in the middle of the ocean or stuck in polar ice, for like a year. They somehow make it home just barely alive, and soon enough they get right back to it.

Stephen King has a new book coming out in May.  You Like It Darker is a collection of 12 short stories.

I have always loved King's short fiction, and, in fact, often prefer his short stories to his novels.  He tends to be more unapologetically bleak with the short stuff.