Reading Mountaineering Club

On this page:
Personal Accounts
Instruction
Guides to England
Guides to Wales
Guides to Scotland
Other Guides
Maps

The RMc Library

The club possesses a sizeable collection of books and guides which are available for any member to borrow. If you are a member and would like to borrow any of the books listed below then contact Paul Williams by email or phone (number in Membership Card). If you have any books on climbing or mountaineering that you no longer need then why not donate them to the club ? Just drop a line to Paul. If you are searching for a book but can't find it anywhere, then why not send an email to the club email list and see if someone is willing to lend it to you !

Personal Accounts

A book of travellers' tales - by Eric Newbury (Picador, 1985)
An anthology of writings about travelling. The writings span the globe and has samples from 430BC to the 1980s

Climbing Free - My life in the vertical world - by Lynn Hill (Harper Collins, 2002)
This is a personal account of Lynn Hill's climbing life and her famous first free ascent of The Nose on Yosemite's El Capitan

Dark Shadows Falling - Joe Simpson (vintage, 1997)
Simpson explores the morality of mountaineering and how this has been affected by commercialism

Everest Kangshung Face - by Stephen Venables (Pan, 1991)

Feeding The Rat - Profile Of A Climber - by Al Alvarez (1988)

Happy Climbing Tells No Tales - by Judith Brown (Open Montain, 2007)

Learning to Breathe - Andy Cave (Hutchinson, 2005)
Highly recommended !
The following is taken from the review on the planetFear web-site (http://www.planetfear.com)

Learning to breathe is the highly acclaimed autobiography from Andy Cave that follows his life from the pits of South Yorkshire to the summits of some of the most impressive, and technical, peaks in the world.

Living through the strikes of the mid-eighties - the guilt, the broken friendships, the poverty - Andy continued to indulge his passion for climbing, and in 1986, after much soul-searching, he quit his job as a miner in order to take up mountaineering professionally. In the Himalaya in 1997 Andy achieved one of the hardest climbs ever recorded on one of the steepest and most difficult summits of the world - the north face of Changabang. Seventeen days later, he and two of his teammates - his best friend had already perished in an avalanche - crawled into basecamp, frostbitten and emaciated.

His account of this terrifying experience provides a dramatic climax to this extraordinary story. Learning to Breathe is, first and foremost, a lively and humorous memoir, written with energy and insight, about two very different groups of men, each navigating equally inhospitable worlds. Finally, on a larger scale, it is an examination of our ability to draw on inner strengths and the strengths of others.

My Life As A Mountaineer - by Andrei Heckmair (Victor Gollancz, 1975)
Autobiography of a Bavarian mountaineer, translated by Geoffry Sutton.

Native Stones - A Book About Climbing - by David Craig (Flamingo, 1987)
Personal account of climbing around the world.

PsychoVertical - by Andy Kirkpatrick (Hutchinson, 2008)

Sherpa Tensing - Man of Everest - by James Ramsey Ullman (Severn House, 1975)
An excellent autobiography of Sherpa Tensing. He and Hillary were the first men to ever reach the summit of Everest in 1953.

The Climb - Tragic Ambitions on Everest - by A.Boukreev and G.Weston DeWalt (St. Martins 1997)
A personal account of the tragedy on Everest in May 1996 by legendary Russian climber, Anatoli Boukreev, who tragically died in an avalanche whilst climbing Annapaurna in winter just 18 months later. (1998)

The Climbing Game - by Walt Unsworth (Viking, 1984)
An anthology of Mountain Humour.

The Everest Years - A Climbers Life - by Chris Bonington (Coronet, 1986)
An autobiographical chronicle of his 4 expeditions to the worlds highest peak. (hard back and paperback copy.)

The Hard Years - by Joe Brown (Phoenix, 2001)
An account of Brown's childhood and some of his toughest climbs.

The Next Horizon - by Chris Bonington (Victor Gollancz, 1990)

The Shining Mountain - by Peter Boardman (Hodder & Stoughton, 1978)
The story of two men on Changabang’s West wall.

This Game of Ghosts - by Joe Simpson (Vintage, 1994)
The sequel to 'Touching the Void'. Simpson paints a vivid picture of his childhood, his climbing life and the climbing fraternity.

Tibet's Secret Mountain: The triumph of Sepu Kangri - C.Bonington and C.Clarke (Phoenix, 2000)
An account of the attempts to reach the summit of Sepu Kangri and the lives of the Tibetan people. (1999)

Touch the top of the world - by Erik Weihenmayer (Coronet, 2001)
The story of this man's life who is the first blind person to reach many of the world's highest mountains including Everest.

Touching the Void (book) - Joe Simpson (Vintage, 1988)
Simpson's account of his amazing survival after breaking his leg on the descent from Siula Grande. (1997)

DVD: E11 - The Hardest Traditional Rock Climb in the World - (Hot Aches Productions, 2006)
Watch Dave MacLeod attempting to becoming the first to climb an E11, 7a.

DVD: Jack Osbourne - Adrenaline Junkie (Clear Vision, 2006)
Watch Jack’s transformation from celebrity brat to rugged man as he climbs one of the most extreme rock climbing challenges, El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

DVD: Touching the Void - J.Simpson Film Four)
The film of Joe Simpson's book. (2004)

VHS: Hard Grit & Hard Plastic

Maps

English Lakes - Explorer Map (Ordnance Survey)
Lands End - Explorer Map (Ordnance Survey, 2009)
Snowdon - Explorer Map( Ordnance Survey, 2009)

The RMc Library

Personal Accounts

Instruction

Guides to England

Guides to Wales

Guides to Scotland

Other Guides

Maps