Thread 2842604

If you could pick ONE book to take out on your hike, what would it be?

>>2842604 (OP)
karma sutra

>>2842604 (OP)
One of my grandpa's Zane Grey novels.

>>2842604 (OP)
Freedom of the Hills or SAS survival guide.

>>2842606
it's kama sutra, numbskull

and it's not that great of a read, you clearly have never looked at it before

"The Year of the Hare" by Arto Paasilinna.

Plot from wikipedia cause i cant summarize things: "It tells the story of Kaarlo Vatanen, a frustrated journalist, who, after nearly killing a hare with his car, turns away from an unhappy and unwholesome life. On an impulse, Vatanen abruptly abandons his urban lifestyle, job, and wife, in exchange for the freedom of the road and the wilderness, living off his cash savings and casual employment, all the time accompanied by the hare which he has nursed back to health and kept as a pet. A year of unlikely encounters and adventures ensues, during the course of which Vatanen repeatedly runs afoul of the law and conventional mores but manages to stay afloat thanks to the help and understanding of other sympathetic free spirits."

The Holy Bible. All the rest of you niggas are heathens.

What else? Only the best book ever written.

The one I'm reading right now.
Why would I take more than one?

>>2842669
Don't be stingy niggy share with the class

>>2842627
thanks prajwald

50 shades of grey, there's like 50 books in one package

>>2842604 (OP)
All that the rain promises and more

I'm almost done with Lonesome Dove, and I'd like to know how it ends, so probably that.
My second pick would be The Arabs - A History, which I'm set to read next.

>>2842604 (OP)
Probably invisible cities
It is small and doesn't really mean anything but offers a lot of avenues for creative pondering

>>2842604 (OP)
The relevant flora book for the area

>>2842604 (OP)
Doesn't matter because in the end I would leave it at home to save weight.

this is quite a confronting read, especially when camping out in spookie New England woods

>>2843312
>what book would you bring
>erm, no book because le weight
Then why answer? This is why people call UL a bunch of faggots.

>>2843312
https://youtube.com/watch?v=V1c3yNCRn18

Obviously my travel journal

A dichotomous key to the flora of the region.

Schizoid Phenomena: Object Relations and the Self, Guntrip
You don't want to be here forever bros

>>2842604 (OP)
I've been reading "My Part in Germany's Fight", which is seemingly a translated record of Goebbel's diary from 1933. I suppose I'd take that with me. It's just getting to the good part, where the party's detractors in power start to flake and unjust restrictions on their actions are lifted.

>>2842604 (OP)
The Bible.

>>2842604 (OP)
"What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well."

>>2842604 (OP)
"The art of worldly wisdom", sometimes "The art of discretion" or "A hand oracle" by Baltasar Gracian. A priest from the 1600s offers advice on how to deal with society and its retards. Witty, sharp, smart, cunning, constantly reminding you why society is shit.

"The Penguin Guide to Symbols" by Chevalier and Gheerbrant. Encyclopedia of symbols, stars, colours, gods, habits, trees, animals, numbers,... and how they were interpreted throughout the ages by different civilizations.

Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man. A 23 yo kid came up with the ideas of equality, free will and self-determination of mankind. Founding "father" of Humanism, written in Florence, Italy, 1486.

I unironically bring “Leaves of Grass” with me sometimes. Whitman puts me in an /out/ mood like nobody else

>>2842662
This.

>>2842662
You cant even read it in the original Koine Greek how would you know whose a heathen

Marcion was right

>>2842662
>>2844443
Which version, edition, revision of the edited word of man do you prefer?

>>2842604 (OP)
Ashley Book of Knots. Endless cordage-based entertainment.

>>2842604 (OP)
Mein Kampf

>>2842604 (OP)
usually something in the aphoristic tradition sort of nature poetryindigenous mythology. this is a good collection of ainu myths

this

>>2842604 (OP)
It is such a great read.

>>2842604 (OP)
Ive enjoyed reading pic related.
>A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros

>>2844667
I thought it was terrifying, particularly the story about the guy who loaded a nuclear warhead in his truck just to show his girlfriend that he could disarm it.
On the other hand, there's something very human about seeing how even the people in charge of potentially world-ending weapons can be fucking retards who have scraped by with way more luck than what makes sense.

>>2844895
It's absolutely hair-raising, lol. I'd love to read a Soviet equivalent to this. Imagine what must've been going on there.

>>2842668
Good pick, it has a certain charm that’s lacking in the Lord of the Rings books. But I might just be a smooth brained retard.

Impeachment of man by savitri devi.

>>2845028
It had more of a whimsical tone for sure, I'm pretty sure tolkein wrote it for a younger audience and then LOTR for more mature readers.

Pic related

Into the wild, of course. Why the religious Bible when you can have a real outdoors bible?

>>2845296
This is the /out/ Bible as far as I am concerned. Recommended for anyone who goes into the actual backcountry far away from civilization

>>2844546
NTA, but I read the NIV.

>>2842662
the ramblings of some desert rat have ZERO relevance to any of living in the north. keep your nonsense to yourself

>>2842604 (OP)
"cry of the kalahari"
im a slow reader, taken me 3 years to get halfway through it, and thats a good thing in a way i dont pick up books unless im seriously bored and then reading just a few pages makes my day and get my mind flowing. i can make a book last years this way.

>>2845505
>342 pages total

This makes it sound like you have actual mental retardation. I could finish that book in literally one day.

>>2844546
Editions arent that important to me, but Im currently reading LSB as thats supposedly very conservative and literal in translation. But I also like NIV because of David Suchets narration of it.

>>2842604 (OP)
I thought about this question for an hour before realizing that you said HIKE. I do not need a book on a hike, but I'd go for some Andrzej Sapkowski's the Witcher. Just for the 'on the road' stuff and wholesome stuff, it's a combination of lighthearted and contemplative, romantic. Goes well with a campfire and hot mug for sure.

>>2845884
Oh and monsters. Any creepy stuff gets points, and some of the monsters in the witcher are my kind of spooky, like the lesser vampire that falls in love with the beauty-and-the-beast guy.

>>2842604 (OP)
for me its
>Seashore Life of the Northern Pacific Coast

Big Yum Yum: The Story of Oggie and the Beanstalk

>>2842604 (OP)
William Blake, Songs of Innocence/Experience.

Nice: >>2844452

>>2843254
good taste

Why one book? Take an e-reader, one of those that last weeks on battery.
With SD card, you can have some 30 books.
Have fun reading.

>>2846618
cringe.

>>2842604 (OP)
Poetry
For me, Hermann Hesse

>>2846618
I do like my Kobo, to the point of being angry with regular books if I don't like the font or the size of the letters, but there's something different about a book when you're outdoors. Once it's too dark to read, and you have to choose between lighting a lantern or putting the book down to go to sleep, it feels so much more like living in the now. Disconnecting from technology, as it were.

>>2844546
KJV because it pisses people off the most
The modern versions only exist so that Roman Catholics could get rid of the KJV's usage by most denominations

>>2842619
she does not have sex with the bear in that ive read it

>>2845508
Now I don't know shit about that book, but pretending that a page is a page is retarded anon.
There's books where you can read thousands of pages with ease and there's books where a single chapter can take ages to get through, especially very in-depth non-fiction books.

>>2847691
Obviously I know that and said it with that in mind
why didn't you think of that, sherlock

>>2842604 (OP)
Gaze upon my highly pretentious bookshelf.
Sadly most of these aren't well suited for taking /out/, either due to their subject, size and weight, or because you have to concentrate too much to enjoy them.

Some that would be fun to read on a hike though:
- The alchemist (short, easy to read, fun)
- Faust I (very short, interesting)
- Meditations (Yes i know the reddit book. It's decent though and would fit well while /out/.)
- Siddharta (Short, easy to read, fun, topical to being /out/)
I also like a lot of post dystopian fiction, but it's a bit of a waste to read those while hiking, they're better suited for at home reading, as are the more academic books.

>>2842604 (OP)
Wisdom in your hands.

Leaves of Grass has been my go to:

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Here a great personal deed has room,
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it.)

Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

>>2847828
The art of war is more applicable to today

>>2847868
I'm convinced, getting it now.

>>2847868
my dad made me throw out my copy of leaves of grass because he said it was a marijuana reference

>>2847883
He was wrong about the weed but right for making you throw it out. It probably would have made you gay. Whitman was a notorious homosexual and all his writing is faggy shit.

>>2847884
qrd

>>2847884
i already knew he was gay when i got it, my dad ddnt though..

>>2842794
This is the best answer, unless you need to bludgeon an attacking bolete; then you need a hard cover self defense issue copy of Mushrooms Demystified.

>>2847894
Notorious is a strong word. There are writings and facts about his life that suggest he was bisexual or gay. His book was scandalous when it came out because it talked a lot of the beauty of the human body, sex, and sensual pleasure in, for the time, lurid terms. He actually got fired from his job at the Bureau of Indian Affairs because his boss read his book and found it filthy, but it’s pretty tame by today’s standards.

Excerpt from A Woman Waits for Me:
Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,
In you I wrap a thousand onward years,
On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,
The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls, new artists, musicians, and singers,
The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,
I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,
I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you interpenetrate now,
I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,
I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death, immortality, I plant so lovingly now.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz

I can post faggots who got it right too. It doesn't make Alan Ginsburg less of a power bottom Jew.

>>2847872
Not the anon you answered to, but I found the art of war to be mega overrated. It was relevant and great at the time, but it's really basic by modern standards.
Meditations is certainly easy to read too, but I found it gave me a lot more stuff to actually think about.