The Adventurer's Handbook

When it rains, it pours. Meaning, sometimes, you get what you need just when you need it. So to spread a bit of goodwill, I'd like to share one of the fun books I've read, with the hope that you'll enjoy it as much as I have.


The Adventurer's Handbook
by Mick Conefrey
published March 2006

This was one of those "impulse" buy books...those books you don't really look for, and don't really plan on buying.

At that time, I was in a bookstore looking for a slim light-weight book to buy so I can kill time while waiting for a flight. But as I was browsing through the bookstore, I came across this book and got intrigued by the title. Surely, it would be one of those boring self-help books ("life lessons" nga). But the magic word ("adventure") was there, so I gingerly took the book from the shelf and browsed through the pages.

The book is a collection of different anecdotes and stories from the glory days of Exploration. As Amazon.com describes the book, it is "a powerful punch of self-help, how-to, popular history, and humor....Mick Conefrey takes a new look at the larger-than-life tales of many famous American and European adventurers." The descriptions of the adventures are funny (and factual), there is tongue-in-cheek humor there, plus real life lessons on forming teams and planning ahead. What caught my attention then was the section on the difficulties that women explorers then encountered with regards to attire...how difficult would it be to hike up Everest in a skirt? There are numerous other anecdotes about explorations to the Antarctic, the numerous failed Everest expeditions, expeditions through the Sahara and the Australian desert. These are funny, insightful, and bite-sized stories that you can read and come back to again and again.