As I have said many times, I prefer not to spend time reading new books on Mount Everest. The best stories on the highest peak ended in the 1980s. After that, commercial expeditions and their politics and the advent of social media has changed everything from base camp to the man-made and human debris on the mountainsides. New books about Everest are generally repetitive or trying to keep that pre-1980s allure, despite or in spite of the circus around Everest.

I am reconsidering my approach to Everest books for two reasons. First, because Everest is a significant portion of the mountaineering literature published. Sometimes it feels like half of the books on mountaineering and climbing are about Mount Everest. Maybe that’s understated. 2024 is the 100-year disappearance-versary of Mallory and Irvine, so perhaps the feeling of today’s titles are skewing things. And in that vein, while I disparage the new Everest books, readers like you are buying them and thereby encouraging publishers to take-up that Everest manuscript and make it a published book. I’m am thinking that you and the publishing world need some help to make better Everest books.

What stimulated this whole conversation within myself and to just be upfront with how I really deal with Everest was an email I received from Becca Parkinson of Manchester University Press. They are putting out a new Everest book. At the subject line, I was going to decline. Then, after some investigating and seeing all the contributors, including Wanda, why wouldn’t I read and review this book.

Second, and related to the first reason, I read several of them, darn it. I do. I get invited by a publicist or the author him or herself to review their book. I turn down most Everest books unless it meets some higher threshold of my curiosity. And I usually regret it too. But isn’t that still something you should hear from me?

I have written down in my notebook for The Suburban Mountaineer this statement: “No Everest. No sport climbing. No comp climbing. Only adventure and alpinism.” I bend the Everest one often and I broke the comp climbing once. I suppose I want to live up to this elitist “no this” standard, but it’s not realistic. Everest is there.

The best parts of adventure and alpinism are hard to find in newer books about Everest. Most of them feel the need to recount a recent tragedy, explain commercial guiding, and spend time justifying why they are doing this. They’re not committed or unapologetic to the reader. And the ones that are retelling history or books already written, well I blame the publisher more than the author.

So I am going to keep complaining about books about Everest. I will keep reading them as I choose to. And I will tell you if it’s worth reading, what was stupid, and why. I’ll also tell you when I find one you have to read. Promise. You deserve that.

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