Touching the void
Touching the Void is a 1988 book by Joe Simpson, recounting his and Simon Yates's disastrous and nearly fatal climb of the 6,344-metre (20,813 foot) Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in 1985.
Stats for nerds
9recommend
14mentions
13people
2010–2024years
71% recommend29% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Good list! Some of my favorites:
- The Shining Mountain by Pete Boardman (one of my favorite of all books, two pretty normal guys doing something absolutely epic)
- Everest: The Cruel Way by Joe Tasker (maybe history's single greatest suffer-fest, incredible).
- Touching The Void by Joe Simpson (I avoided reading this for such a long time, because it's something of a cliche, but it's actually great).
- Seven Years in Tibet in Heinrich Harrer (It's hard to know how reliable this is, and it's a bit of a tall tale, but it's absolutely not the book I expected it to be going in).
- Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer (Bite-sized bits of great outdoor writing). "Into Thin Air" is a good read too.
The "classic" I disliked was Herzog's Annapurna. It just seemed so mechanical, and so missing the joy of exploration that makes the best of these books so fun to read.
- When I read Annapurna: First Conquest of an 8000-meter Peak many years ago I was blown away by the story which was both a huge victory in that era of mountaineering but also a personal tragedy for Herzog. This book together with Touching the Void and Eiger Dreams by Jon Krakauer are very captivating books even if you are not so much into mountaineering.
However, I have later read True Summit: What Really Happened on the Legendary Ascent of Annapurna by David Roberts which provides a different perspective on the Annapurna expedition.
And to reply to the grandparent post: Joe Simpson has written a number of books and while they are not specifically about safety culture they often touch on the ethics and dilemmas of high altitude climbing just as Touching the Void did by telling a story where the rope was cut.
- 1.The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
2.Looking for Alaska
3.Blindness
4.Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival
5.The Martian
6.Never Let Me Go
- "Touching the Void" is another great climbing/mountaineering book that is well worth the read. I have not seen the movie adaptation yet, so I cannot comment on its quality.
- If you enjoyed Into Thin Air, you must also read Touching the Void.
- I'd like to recommmend Touching the Void, an amazing mountaineering/survival story. Was also made into a movie that the author of the book seems to have favorable opinion of.
