Yesterday, Natalie texted me while I was finishing my day at the office:

Do you need anything from Thriftbooks? I need another $9.50 for free shipping…

So I said I needed a copy of Herrar’s The White Spider. She replied she needed to spend $5 more; what else did I need? I looked at my list (the list) and typed back: “Minus 148° by Davidson.”

So Natalie got free shipping on me. And I suppose I got free shipping, too, on two titles I was going to buy regardless.

The list in question was the one I was updating earlier in the day during my lunchtime. It’s the Long-Short List I keep a link to on my Climbing Classics page.

I was finally making some dramatic changes to the Long-Short List of candidates for climbing classics after a prolonged holding pattern for a little over a year.

I pulled off all the books on Alaska and mountain-adjacent nature writing that I wanted to read for personal edification and added those to my growing personal list. I also removed some recent titles that I like but believe it’s too soon, for now, to call theme potential classics. In all, I moved 57 titles to other lists.

I left on three or four fiction titles, like The Ascent of Rum Doodle, though I am not sure that they will stay. Fiction is probably a separate category, but I don’t have a fiction list yet. And even then, I don’t think I will classify it as a list of classics of mountaineering fiction. It might just be the best of mountaineering fiction. I don’t know, we’ll see.

I currently have 47 books on the list. Well, that’s enough progress for now.

Have a Merry Christmas, happy holidays, a good rest of your week, and a great 2025.

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