Recommended Books

These are in no particular order of preference. I appreciate recommendations.

• The Mountains of My Life - Walter Bonatti The reflections of one of the world's seminal mountaineers.
• Narcissus and Goldmund - Hermann Hesse Thanks to Tom McCarthy for the recommendation.
• Butcher's Crossing - John Williams An overlooked classic in the Western genre.
• True Grit - Charles Portis Read it in one sitting.
• Border Trilogy - Cormac McCarthy My favourite trilogy, a glimpse into life at the frontier in a literal and emotional sense.
• The Friendly Orange Glow - Brian Dear The essential telling of how cyberculture began.
• Collected Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges The most important Spanish-language writer to be translated into English.
• From Third World to First - Kuan Yew Lee My favourite policymaking book.
• The General in His Labyrinth- Gabriel Garcia Marquez Wonderfully uses contrast throughout to unearth the realities of leadership.
• Heat - Bill Buford An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany!
• Scoop - Evelyn Waugh A timeless insight into journalism.
• Shah of Shahs - Ryszard Kapuscinski Everything by Kapuscinski is brilliant but this is my favourite.
• Ways of Seeing - John Berger The book that taught me how to appreciate art.
• Tiepolo Pink - Roberto Calasso Recounts the life and time of Giambattista Tiepolo, an overlooked Italian Renaisssance artist.
• Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl A book I return to.
• The Tiger - John Vaillant A fascinating story about a hunt for a man-eating tiger in Siberia.
• Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut Extremely quotable.
• The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway His best book and probably the place to start with Hemingway.
• Full Tilt - Dervla Murphy The book responsible for my love of travel writing.
• The Old Patagonian Express - Paul Theroux The book that captures all the complexities of the Americas.
• The Places in Between - Rory Stewart A sympathetic overview of Afghanistan.
• The Lives of the Artists - Giorgio Vasari A great reference for the people behind some of the Renaissance's greatest achievements.
• Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino A masterfully written book that explains man's fascination with cities.
• The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiessen Somehow Matthiessen gives a glimpse of Tibet's magic.
• The Hunters - James Salter The greatest novel about war.
• Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth - Buckminster Fuller This book gives some measure of Fuller's genius.
• The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco My favourite detective story.
• Typhoon and Other Stories - Joseph Conrad Wonderfully reveals all the sea can symbolise and reveal about the human mind.
• The Bridge on the Drina - Ivo Andric
Succinctly captures all the complexity of the Balkans.
• Independent People - Halldór Laxness The pinnacle of Nordic literature and a feat of translation.
• The Complete Essays - Michel de Montaigne The seminal work behind one of the most powerful forms of writing.