Hi all, my coworkers and I are in a book club and every three months we submit suggestions that are loosely based on a theme. While I have some ideas for this quarter’s theme, would love to have ideas for great books I haven’t already read.
The theme is “away from home” and the books can be any genre, fiction or non-fiction.
by aft1083
2 Comments
“Less” by Andrew Sean Greer for something funny and poignant.
No Picnic on Mount Kenya by Felice Benuzzi.
I recommend this regularly because I feel that it’s one of the best non-fiction books that no-one has heard of.
The author was interned in Kenya during WWII, and realising he can’t escape the camp to return home to Italy, he and his friends decide to escape the camp in order to climb nearby Mount Kenya, with homemade climbing equipment. They leave a note in the camp promising to return in 3 weeks.
Also, I’d suggest Mountaineering in Scotland by WH Murray because of the story of how it was written:
>He then spent three years in prisoner of war camps in Italy (Chieti), Germany (Moosberg, Brunswick) and Czechoslovakia (Marisch Trubeau Oflag VIII-F). While imprisoned, Murray wrote a book entitled Mountaineering in Scotland. The first draft of the work was written on the only paper available to him – rough toilet paper. The manuscript was found and destroyed by the Gestapo. To the incredulity of his fellow prisoners, Murray’s response to the loss was to start again, despite the risk of its loss and his physical condition being so poor from the near starvation diet that he believed he would never climb again. The rewritten work was finally published in 1947
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._Murray
It’s a testament to his love of the mountains of his home, and the lengths he went to write about them when he couldn’t get home.