Climbers
M. John Harrison's novel about climbing in northern England — the obsession, the relationships it destroys, the moments of transcendence on gritstone. Not an adventure story — a literary novel that happens to take place on rock. One of the best novels ever written about climbing.
Menlove: The Life of John Menlove Edwards
Jim Perrin's biography of the brilliant, tormented Welsh climber who pioneered some of the hardest routes in Britain in the 1930s and '40s. Edwards was a psychiatrist, a conscientious objector, and a closeted gay man. He took his own life at 52. Perrin writes about him with devastating empathy.