My side of the mountain
A young boy relates his adventures during the year he spends living alone in the Catskill Mountains, including his struggle for survival, his dependence on nature, his animal friends, and his ultimate realization that he needs human companionship.
Stats for nerds
15recommend
21mentions
18people
2009–2026years
81% recommend19% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- My Side Of The Mountain is one of my favorite books of all time. I built so many forts inspired by that book :)
- My Side of the Mountain was one my mom got me that has really stuck with me. About a boy running away from home and living in a tree, so good -> https://shepherd.com/book/my-side-of-the-mountain
I loved Robin Hood, and at my local library, I found this amazing book called Bows Against the Barons by Geoffrey Trease. I highly recommend it as I loved it -> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1719399.Bows_Against_the...
Rifles for Watie was another one a librarian recommended me and I read in grade school and loved -> https://shepherd.com/book/rifles-for-watie
The classic Dragonlance Chronicles were amazing: https://www.amazon.com/Vol-1-3-Dragonlance-Chronicles-Set/dp...
I loved the Box Car Children, mostly book #1, but the rest were good.
Hardy Boys was also a series I adored, but I am not sure how they have aged.
My son is 7 and he is reading Harry Potter and just loving it. So I highly recommend that one. I didn't read it until college and it is one of my favorite series. She writes incredible characters and weaves them together so perfectly.
As I got to my teenage years... - Dirk Pitt's adventure books kept me reading all day. - Snow Crash really blew my mind. - Catch 22 stood out fo rme. - Atlas Shrugged and all of her books I liked (but not for the weird cult thing. - Classic Tom Clancy - Upton Sinclair The Jungle - Seismic impact on my view of the world. - Native Son in high school is something I think about to this day and bothers me. - From The Holy Mountain - Huge influence on me in my early 20s and where I ended up.
- There was another novel along the same lines I remembering liking as a kid called “my side of the mountain”
A story about a kid basically muddling through living ‘off-grid” before it was cool.
- My Side of the Mountain, The Hatchet, and Peak were like the trilogy of adventure books for our cohort I think.
- I blame my side of the mountain for me, sitting right now, in Breckenridge about to head out into the woods for the day.
Absolutely captivating book to read as a kid.
- They already have one, which was a partial inspiration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Side_of_the_Mountain
Required reading for 5th graders, imo.
At the end of the day, it's not much different than the thousands of people who hike the PCT every year. I just... didn't walk anywhere.
It was so long ago that I could no more get a book out of it than I could get a book out of "what I did last year." I just... don't remember the details. I remember admitting to myself that I could see ghosts and the moment I figured out why I saw them. I remember the day the air changed and I knew I could either stay another winter or leave. But most days were just, "fill the water, boil the water, make the food, mend the clothes, gather the firewood, tend the fire, sleep."
