What are you reading?

[HikesInGeologicTime]

Can anybody recommend good mountain-based romance? Preferably with a female protagonist. Spring always gets me antsy for love.

Nonfiction or fiction? For nonfiction, I recently read Karen Auvinen’s Rough Beauty, a memoir of her time living in the mountains above Jamestown. The romance doesn’t really come in until late in the book, but her background is in poetry, so the whole book feels like a romance with the Rockies. Though be warned, if you’re as susceptible to pet deaths as I am, you may find yourself bawling your eyes out in a Salt Lake City restaurant and insisting to everyone giving you concerned looks that it’s just allergies, goldurnit!

As for fiction...uh...maybe someone else can help? Most of the narrative works I’m drawn to are the kind that give me nightmares for months afterward. :/

[disentangled]

Can anybody recommend good mountain-based romance? Preferably with a female protagonist. Spring always gets me antsy for love.

Here you go.

as a counter-feminist feminist..... oh f**k it..... nevermind.

[Brian Thomas]

I am currently reading The Uninhabitable Planet: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells, writer for the New Yorker magazine and just published six weeks ago, about halfway through the book now. If I had to describe the book in one word I would say bleak, the first line of the book reads "It is worse, much worse, than you think." Of interest from the book is that it is estimated that 85% of all energy related carbon released into the Earth's atmosphere has occurred since 1945, and that an estimated 50% has been released in just the past thirty years. A U.N. projection states that there will be 200 million climate refugees by the year 2050. Another key quote "The assaults of climate change do not end at 2100 just because most modeling, by convention, sunsets at that point. This is why some studying global warming call the hundred years to follow the "century of hell."

Related to mountaineering the book also predicts that on the climate's current course, the European Alps will transition into a climate that more resembles the Atlas Mountains of North Africa.

Barring any significant breakthroughs in carbon capture or related technologies, yes it is probably worse, much worse, than you think. I used to work for NREL in Golden, and the amount of money that was poured into that place ($17 billion of 2009 Recovery Act funding), with not much to show for it, would sadly suggest that yes, in fact:

It's all about lining pockets with dineros.

The book does not mention the Green New Deal (still churning through Congress at time of publication, and rejected by the Senate last week) but if its proposal or that of a related bill to retrofit every existing building in the United States for energy efficiency becomes law, and is actually funded, they will need to hire a few million electricians to do all the work. And pay them, but not without every one of those taxpayer dollars passing through the hands of multiple administrators and accountants (what I did when I worked at NREL) before it actually translates into sparkies standing on ladders swapping out incandescents and fluorescents for LEDs. I'm a sparky now, so yeah, I would like some of those dineros too

It's a great book so far, not like reading a science textbook, very engaging, if apocalyptic, prose. Doomer porn at its finest.

[seano]

I am currently reading The Uninhabitable Planet: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells,

I've only read some online excerpts, but if you love mountains, I would recommend reading this and/or taking the time to go visit a glacier soon. The Alps would be almost unrecognizable to someone born 100 years ago; the Swiss Alps lost 1/40 of their glaciers just last summer.

[timisimaginary]

yeah, well, according to the guy sitting next to me at Jiffy Lube this morning, it's all because of sunspots. his friend from NASA told him so.
same friend told him earth's only got 37 years left, so i guess there's no need to worry about global warming after all.

[NM_Hiker]

Ghost Wars by Steve Coll
Calculus by James Stewart

Why? because they were in the free bin at the local library

[disentangled]

well, if you're including math.... i've been reading Algebra II with my kiddo ....and the 1040 tax instruction booklet.

[Hungry Jack]

Cadillac Desert (Marc Reisner) - fascinating and colorful history of water development in the American West; generally the history of the BuRec when it rose to prominence as the most powerful agency in the Federal Government before it (literally) went a dam too far (Teton Dam).

The Emerald Mile (Kevin Fedarko) - Grand Canyon river rat Kenton Grua decides to run the Grand Canyon in a wooden dory (like Powell used) during the great runoff flood of 1983. Glen Canyon Dam nearly failed and the BuRec crapped itself when the spillways started crumbling from cavitations as flows reached 100,000 cfs. Grua and two compatriots ran the 280 miles in 36 hours, and lived to tell about it. They flipped once in Crystal Rapid, a constriction area that had turned into a real monster with 30 foot haystacks and holes that could swallow a big raft.



This video above highlights conditions in the canyon during the flood. There is a great sequence of still photos starting aroud 26:30 that show a 38 ft rubber raft made hapless in Crystal Rapid. The river was probably around 75,000 cfs when it caught this raft in a hole, and chewed it up and spat it out like a bag of Doritos. Observers on the shore reported hearing "gunshot" sounds while the photos were being taken. This was the sound of 3" nylon straps holding the pontoons to the steel frame being snapped like old rubber bands.

The two videos below are two parts of a 30 minute documentary on the flood.



A Man Called Intrepid (William Stevenson) - Canadian business man Bill Donovan developed a spy network as war was spreading across Europe to help Britain and the US combat the Nazis. Lots of anecdotes about Churchill and Roosevelt working feverishly behind the scenes as the US public was opposed to entering the conflict early on.

Prisoners of Geography (Tim Marshall) - The world's great political conflicts of today as told through geographical maps. Very enlightening. If you like this type of stuff, Robert Kaplan is another writer on this subject worth reading.

[davebks]

started reading Jim Davidson's book. It's worth a read. I learned about Everett Ruess. Very interesting story. I am going to get some books on that guy next.
Jim's own story is a good one to read as well. Very similar to any other person who loves the mountains, etc, and the crazy stuff we get into. Of course there's sadness as well.

[Ulla]

'End of the rope : mountains, marriage, and motherhood'
by Jan Redford
https://www.janredford.com/

[Ulla]

This is another good one I read recently:

'Where Rivers Change Direction'
By Mark Spragg
http://www.markspragg.com/WhereRiversCh ... ction.html

I also read his books, 'An Unfinished Life' and 'The Fruit of Stone.' Both also very good.

[Wentzl]

I am currently reading The Uninhabitable Planet: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells, writer for the New Yorker magazine and just published six weeks ago, about halfway through the book now. If I had to describe the book in one word I would say bleak, the first line of the book reads "It is worse, much worse, than you think." Of interest from the book is that it is estimated that 85% of all energy related carbon released into the Earth's atmosphere has occurred since 1945, and that an estimated 50% has been released in just the past thirty years. A U.N. projection states that there will be 200 million climate refugees by the year 2050. Another key quote "The assaults of climate change do not end at 2100 just because most modeling, by convention, sunsets at that point. This is why some studying global warming call the hundred years to follow the "century of hell."

Related to mountaineering the book also predicts that on the climate's current course, the European Alps will transition into a climate that more resembles the Atlas Mountains of North Africa.

Barring any significant breakthroughs in carbon capture or related technologies, yes it is probably worse, much worse, than you think. I used to work for NREL in Golden, and the amount of money that was poured into that place ($17 billion of 2009 Recovery Act funding), with not much to show for it, would sadly suggest that yes, in fact:

It's all about lining pockets with dineros.

The book does not mention the Green New Deal (still churning through Congress at time of publication, and rejected by the Senate last week) but if its proposal or that of a related bill to retrofit every existing building in the United States for energy efficiency becomes law, and is actually funded, they will need to hire a few million electricians to do all the work. And pay them, but not without every one of those taxpayer dollars passing through the hands of multiple administrators and accountants (what I did when I worked at NREL) before it actually translates into sparkies standing on ladders swapping out incandescents and fluorescents for LEDs. I'm a sparky now, so yeah, I would like some of those dineros too

It's a great book so far, not like reading a science textbook, very engaging, if apocalyptic, prose. Doomer porn at its finest.

Apocalyptic porn is pretty good. That is why I checked it out. But here is a telling paragraph. Take it for what it is worth, because the author did not give a reference:

"Since 1950, much of the good stuff in the plants we grow - protein, calcium, iron, vitamin C, to name just four - has declined by as much as 1/3, a landmark 2004 study showed. Everything is becoming more like jund food. Even the protein content of bee pollen has dropped by a third."

Really? Whole Foods or McDonalds, does not make a difference. Everything is . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88LBkZwvXQ0