John Warren
New member
The first book that put the "adventure bug" in me was Hatchet by Gary Paulson in grade 5
Books that shaped your outlook on adventure or manhood.
- Thread starter Shane Limbeck
- Start date
-
Join our community of outdoor enthusiasts! Subscribe to Field Ethos Magazine to unlock full forum access and connect with fellow adventurers sharing their stories, tips, and experiences.
If you are already a subscriber, log in here.
csmcclain
Member
Came here to say My Side of the Mountain. 10 year old me read that book 20+ times and decided that there was still adventure to be had.
twodogoutdoors
New member
I think a good one that needs to be mentioned is Wild at Heart by Jon Eldridge. Maybe a bit dated now, but sums up manhood very well. Every man needs a battle to fight, a beauty to rescue, and an adventure to live. Pretty counter culture thoughts around the turn of the century (2000, I just like saying “turn of the century” to make me sound wise)
csmcclain
Member
Six Years with the Texas Rangers.
The author is riding the open range by 19, fighting Comanches and rustlers. 19 year olds now think it’s cruel and unusual punishment to pay their own cell phone bill and rent.
Read it in my early 20’s and decided it was time to toughen up and do hard things.
The author is riding the open range by 19, fighting Comanches and rustlers. 19 year olds now think it’s cruel and unusual punishment to pay their own cell phone bill and rent.
Read it in my early 20’s and decided it was time to toughen up and do hard things.
yankoa
New member
When I think back to the novels that shaped me as a boy, my choices stray far from some of my fellow literary purists. I didn’t read Hemingway cover to cover until I was well into my 30s …and truth be told, I always found more marrow in Jim Harrison’s rugged grit…long, carry-on sentences and all. What we grow into is forged in our earliest reading - and I couldn’t swallow the usual adolescent fare the teachers pushed on me.
The first was My Side of the Mountain - I read it a dozen times as a kid and just figured I’d live in a tree someday like Sam Gribly.
Then came Call It Courage - it taught me for the first time bravery not as fear’s absence but as the choice to face it. It was so simply told but no other novel has instilled more of a visionary fever dream in my mind’s eye really since.
The Cay - I read in fifth grade. A story of isolation and survival; tremendous moral depth spun as an adventure’s guise.
But the novel (or to be more precise, novella) that still steadies my compass is Harrison’s Legends of the Fall. I’ll take a hit for not mentioning anything Hemingway but, for me, Harrison satisfies the purpose of picking up a novel in the first place. And Legends has it all, the Montana wilderness, war and battle, it has the bond of family and brotherhood; sex and betrayal, the complicated father/son relationship and the not always perfect dynamic which makes up that sum total of events between birth and death which we call Life.
The first was My Side of the Mountain - I read it a dozen times as a kid and just figured I’d live in a tree someday like Sam Gribly.
Then came Call It Courage - it taught me for the first time bravery not as fear’s absence but as the choice to face it. It was so simply told but no other novel has instilled more of a visionary fever dream in my mind’s eye really since.
The Cay - I read in fifth grade. A story of isolation and survival; tremendous moral depth spun as an adventure’s guise.
But the novel (or to be more precise, novella) that still steadies my compass is Harrison’s Legends of the Fall. I’ll take a hit for not mentioning anything Hemingway but, for me, Harrison satisfies the purpose of picking up a novel in the first place. And Legends has it all, the Montana wilderness, war and battle, it has the bond of family and brotherhood; sex and betrayal, the complicated father/son relationship and the not always perfect dynamic which makes up that sum total of events between birth and death which we call Life.
Last edited:
One of my favorites:
Wild: The life of Peter Beard: Photographer, Adventurer, Lover
Peter lived one hell of a life…. He didn’t give a bakers fuck. His life was one long adventure…. He lived the dream in Africa, got more ass then a toilet seat and partied when partying was actually cool.
His house in Montauk is just up the road from where I live, and ended up being his final resting place. One late afternoon during the Covid lockdown, he wondered from his backyard into the woods and died next to a stream in thick briars… A local guy found him a week later on his way into to hunt one of his tree stands…
https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Peter-B...1767032651&sprefix=peter+beard,aps,158&sr=8-2
Wild: The life of Peter Beard: Photographer, Adventurer, Lover
Peter lived one hell of a life…. He didn’t give a bakers fuck. His life was one long adventure…. He lived the dream in Africa, got more ass then a toilet seat and partied when partying was actually cool.
His house in Montauk is just up the road from where I live, and ended up being his final resting place. One late afternoon during the Covid lockdown, he wondered from his backyard into the woods and died next to a stream in thick briars… A local guy found him a week later on his way into to hunt one of his tree stands…
https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Peter-B...1767032651&sprefix=peter+beard,aps,158&sr=8-2
jgrahamwilson
New member
JRQ
Member
Bet!
JRQ
Member
I feel ya, CB…
Fucking English teachers always out there stifling the next would be literary Nobel Prize winner.
Then this little beauty would be a close 2nd place?
My issue with Faulkner is Faulkner.
badgererickson
Member
The Sun also Rises, done. Men, their women, drinking and bullfighting.EVERYthing by Mark Twain, Marcus Aurelius, and Dr. Phil/Oprah book clubs. You're in the enemies lair...
fred
New member
Where Rivers Change Direction by Mark Spragg
This is a book of memoirs and essays by Spragg who grew up in remote Wyoming in the early 1960s. His father owned a dude ranch where the guests were “New Jersey gas station owners, New York congressmen, Iowa farmers, judges, actors, plumbers, Europeans who had read of Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull and came to experience the American West… They came to us to fish, and hunt, and ride.”
Manhood is a theme, as Spragg had a competence with survival in the natural world from an early age, and an assortment of wranglers, woodcutters and handymen to measure himself against. When he was fifteen and his brother fourteen, they were able to lead multi-day packtrips by themselves, the guests initially wary (“...wondering why they were being sent into the mountains with only boys”) but then impressed and won over by their competence in the array of activities of horsemanship, setting up (and later striking) camp, cooking a dinner, saddling the stock, etc.
Spragg’s prose is gorgeous. “It is easiest for me to remember the land. I close my eyes, and the heat of midsummer swells through me. I see tar-black butterflies at work in the meadows along the Shoshone River, the grasses come thick in seedheads…. I can step my memory onto the backs of the big boulders and hear my boots scruff against the black and rust and corn-yellow lichens that covered them.”
I've bought about half a dozen copies over the years to give to friends.
This is a book of memoirs and essays by Spragg who grew up in remote Wyoming in the early 1960s. His father owned a dude ranch where the guests were “New Jersey gas station owners, New York congressmen, Iowa farmers, judges, actors, plumbers, Europeans who had read of Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull and came to experience the American West… They came to us to fish, and hunt, and ride.”
Manhood is a theme, as Spragg had a competence with survival in the natural world from an early age, and an assortment of wranglers, woodcutters and handymen to measure himself against. When he was fifteen and his brother fourteen, they were able to lead multi-day packtrips by themselves, the guests initially wary (“...wondering why they were being sent into the mountains with only boys”) but then impressed and won over by their competence in the array of activities of horsemanship, setting up (and later striking) camp, cooking a dinner, saddling the stock, etc.
Spragg’s prose is gorgeous. “It is easiest for me to remember the land. I close my eyes, and the heat of midsummer swells through me. I see tar-black butterflies at work in the meadows along the Shoshone River, the grasses come thick in seedheads…. I can step my memory onto the backs of the big boulders and hear my boots scruff against the black and rust and corn-yellow lichens that covered them.”
I've bought about half a dozen copies over the years to give to friends.
dsbarb
Member
A book that inspired me to get outside and explore my local deserts and mountains was "The Lonesome Gods" by Louis L'Amour.
In terms of my time in the military, I cannot say enough about Tom Clancy's books and "Fields of Fire" by James Webb.
I'm struggling to think of any book that shaped my path to manhood other than those above. I read a lot but nothing else in that vein comes to mind.
The most-enjoyable books I've read are "The Passage" and its two sequels. I read The Passage on a vacation and could not put it down. My family was a bit pissed at me because all I wanted to do was read the damn book.
Actually, I just thought of one more, "Catch 22." That book taught me about the inanity of the US military and that shit will not always make sense.
In terms of my time in the military, I cannot say enough about Tom Clancy's books and "Fields of Fire" by James Webb.
I'm struggling to think of any book that shaped my path to manhood other than those above. I read a lot but nothing else in that vein comes to mind.
The most-enjoyable books I've read are "The Passage" and its two sequels. I read The Passage on a vacation and could not put it down. My family was a bit pissed at me because all I wanted to do was read the damn book.
Actually, I just thought of one more, "Catch 22." That book taught me about the inanity of the US military and that shit will not always make sense.
