Go on an adventure with these books!

March 20, 2019

When the snow starts to fall, I grab an adventure book. I’m not sure why wintry weather makes me think adventure. Maybe it has to do with dreaming of being in a warm place, like in “The Lost City of Z,” or the opportunity to have an adventure that I will never be able to experience like in “The Martian.” Oddly enough, most of my adventure reading tends to be about surviving in the wilderness, like the escaped prisoners do in “The Long Walk” or Douglas Mawson’s amazing fight to survive in the Antarctic in “Alone on the Ice.” Sometimes learning about another person’s life as they tackle their dreams, as in “Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube,” where the author describes what it’s like to be a woman learning to run sled dogs and survive in the Arctic allows me to vicariously have experiences and learn along with the author. History definitely holds many adventures, whether on the high seas in “Master and Commander,” or leaving home uncertain where you will end up, like Sarah Graves, in the book “The Indifferent Stars Above,” when her wagon train makes a fatal decision that will end with the deaths of nearly everyone in the Donner Party. Maybe it has to do with courage; being courageous enough to face these adventures head on and learning what hardship really means.