Wilderness Library

[Pine Cone]

Now that my major building phase is done I have moved on to contemplations of things to put in our cabin.  I started thinking of putting together a small library of old fashioned books with those retro paper pages.  Any suggestions about what would be some good choices?  Expecting a mix of ages using them, so I will need so books to read to grandkids as well as teenagers and adults.

Thought I should start with a copy of Thoreau's Walden, mix in a Dan Beard book like "The Field and Forest Handy Book", a songbook or two (Rise Up Singing and the Bluegrass Songbook) to go along with the banjo or guitar I usually bring along, a field guide to the local flora & fauna, The Joy of Cooking, one of Lloyd Kahn's books (Shelter or the soon-to-be-published Little House Book), something by Mark Twain, and maybe a Louis L'amour western or two.

In this list crazy age, anyone got a top ten books-to-leave-in-your cabin list?

[Don_P]

something by Eric Sloane, a book on chip carving a couple of knives, compass and pine planks, some plant and animal guides, a foxfire book, as a kid I was always partial to fundamentals of blasting for farmers from Dupont, you'll probably have to find it in original 

[HoustonDave]

Try to find an affordable used copy of these at a used seller somewhere.  You will see them listed as "The Junior Classics" or "The Young Folks Shelf of Books"

I had them growing up, and my parents found two more sets for my sisters for under $50 a set each.  I read these things over and over.  Each book has dozens of stories of varying lengths.  The Three Little Pigs is pretty appropriate for a cabin in the woods eh?  

Note these are the original fairy tales, not the watered down Disney versions.



http://www.amazon.com/Young-Folks-Shelf-Books-Colliers/dp/B000CQYBVG

Ebay has a couple of dozen listings variety of conditions and prices, some vintage.

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=%22Junior+Classics%22&_sacat=See-All-Categories

[johnky]

Field guides and more field guides.  I've been using field guides for 40 years and I still find stuff that I have to look up.  Happens all the time.   There are some great field guides out there for just about everything.  Trees, mushrooms, bugs, birds, mud tracks, you name it someone has a field guide for it. 

Another favorite is the farmer's almanac.  They have some good general info on planting dates - they are never perfect, but they are fairly decent approximations that help with planning.

Walden by Thoreau was already mentioned but it has to be an instant hit for anyone reading it while nestled next to a fire in a tiny cabin. 

A couple other books I like to have around are "Where there is no doctor" and Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living.

A subscription to Backwoods Home - great stuff in there.  Plus a subscription to Playboy.  Just for the articles of course    Then again, you did say all ages, so maybe that's not the best suggestion for you.

If you have a lot of guests, I would recommend that you find a coffee table book that has fabulous photos of local attractions.  For instance, if you live in the Smokies, get one of those big coffee table books with pictures of waterfalls and beautiful landscapes in the Smokies.  Your guests will say "I want to go see this", and it can be a great catalyst to get people to want to go out and explore the local area.  If there isn't anything like that for your area, look for your State's official tourist book.  These can usually be ordered for free and it will be a book with lots of photos and cover each area of your state.  Here's an example - the Kentucky Official Visitor's Guide can be ordered for free from http://www.kentuckytourism.com/travel_tools/visitors_guide.aspx.  Your state probably has an official visitor's guide too.

Another idea for your guests are local history books.  I have some Kentucky history books that I leave laying around - books about Daniel Boone, the Cherokee Indians, "A New History of Kentucky" which has some cool maps.  Your area has local legends and stories, I'm sure.  These kinds of books can add great relevance and enrichment to yourself and your guests.  Reading these types of books out in the woods sorta puts everything in context and brings the past screaming into the present.

Great idea for a thread, thanks for posting this question. 

[dug]

I think it should include Jack London's "The Call of the Wild".

[MushCreek]

I like to keep around some of the classics. Sometimes if you're hemmed in by bad weather, you might pick up a book you might not otherwise read, and be exposed to some great literature. Things like War and Peace, Dr. Zhivago, Don Quixote, Anna Karenina, The Sun Also Rises, etc. You can usually get boxes of such books at yard sales cheap. Groups of short stories are good- Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Isaac Asimov. I also like books of local interest. Are there any books about the area where the cabin is? Visitors from out of town might like them, too.

[muldoon]

I have an incomplete set of Time Life books called the old west that was given to me by my mom a few years ago.  (I just found out today it was incomplete, seems I am missing 5 of them).  They are bound in leather and have stories, period art, and give detailed histories from the past.  I looked online to see if they were still available and it looks like you can still get them used from place to place.  From what I saw on amazon and ebay, the complete set of 26 books weighs like 60 pounds and goes for about 100 bucks. 

You might be surprised by what you find in them, seems life in the time period was heavily controlled by european bond holders, credit, debt and fraud.  The circle of boom and bust was on a much larger scale than what we have today.  Many of the political cartoons from the 1800s read like they were made today. 

[bayview]

   This may not be "wilderness" but, how some Mother Earth News magazines - The older ones before they got commercialized . . .   

   The Self-Reliant Homestead:  A book of country skills.

/.

[peternap]

If you can find them, copies of Field & Stream from the 50's and 60's.

Big Book of Boys Hobbies
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Big-book-boys-hobbies-Handicraft/dp/B00085SSG0

I read this book from the time I was old enough to read until I'd made nearly everything in it.
It's from another and much better era.

[peternap]

Oh...one other (Remember the movie Jeremiah Johnson) Here's the real story of John Johnson.

Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson
http://www.amazon.com/Crow-Killer-Liver-Eating-Johnson-Midland/dp/0253203120

[considerations]

The Foxfire books.

[zion-diy]

No collection would be complete without some Louis L'Amour books.

[Pine Cone]

No collection would be complete without some Louis L'Amour books.

My wife's mother had a small collection of her Louis L'Amour favorites that we inherited a few years ago after she passed away.  I haven't ever read any, so it must be time...

I had a timber faller who worked for me back in the early 1980's who failed his USFS driver's license test so he could read Louis L'Amour books while the rest of us chauffeured him from the ranger station to where we were working that day.  Took us college kids a while to figure out that we had been snookered by a good ol' boy


Ray, the timber faller, had started back with his brothers in the 1940's before the invention of the chain saw.  We once worked in a place that was all trees 30 to 50 years old.  He told us stories of what it was like when there was a logging town there...  One of the things I learned to look for was apple trees.  If you see an apple tree out in the middle of nowhere anywhere in the west you know someone once had a home there. 

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions so far.  I'm putting a order in with Amazon and will be visiting my local used book store ASAP.  

[rick91351]

No collection would be complete without some Louis L'Amour books.

My wife's mother had a small collection of her Louis L'Amour favorites that we inherited a few years ago after she passed away.  I haven't ever read any, so it must be time...

Pine Cone I vote for L'Amour, Zane Gray or Will James as well.  If it were me I also would include a copy of the Holy Bible.

About the apple trees.  There was a guy that showed up here in Idaho above Boise where our ranch is located.  He was reported to be from some eastern university and was actually tracking a shipment of apple trees that were sent up into the area in the late 1800.  More specific a hardy black apple.  He actually was able to connect with a tree or two from what I understand.  It was thought that cuttings were made and shipped back to the university.  It was sort of weird because the University of Idaho Ag School was not included nor the Elmore County Extension Agent.  While it certainly was not a covert black ops mission, there was certainly a lot of questions as to who and where he was really from.     

[rick91351]

Or you could get a Kindle or a Nook and that is like storing 2500 books on a 5" X 8" X 1/2" shelf.  So goes the publishing industry.       

[MountainDon]

   I never built a bookshelf because I buy very few books. I use the public library heavily, though. I have one of the oldest cards for our library; a charter member so to speak. They have more books than I'll ever be able to read. Mind you they have a lot I'm not interested in. However, they do sometimes take my "new book" suggestions and I get first dibbs on them.

[rick91351]

One of the Kindle gurus at work was telling me the other day that public libraries even loan electronic books.  End of late fees and damaged books, you check it out by down loading it and the end of two weeks it is locked out of your devise and someone else can check it out.

I own a Kindle and use it a lot but I still like my books. 

[considerations]

Robert W. Service - like "The Cremation of Sam McGee" etc.  He's hilarious and really fun.

[Squirl]

Robert W. Service - like "The Cremation of Sam McGee" etc.  He's hilarious and really fun.

I second that.  Maybe "To build a Fire" by Jack London too.

BTW, I just googled Kindle loan Library and there was a press released at the end of last month that said they wouldn't be allowing it for libraries. 

[dug]

Maybe "To build a Fire" by Jack London too.

Also a must include! Why not throw in "White Fang" as well? Hard to have too many of London's books.

Tom Brown's "A Field Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking" is a fun read, and useful.

I would consider some of Edward Abbey's work, the modern day Thoreau (say the critics). "Down the River" and "Desert Solitaire" are good representations, all Abbey books are great reads.

Kindle??? Never!