Outside editors square off with top 25 book picks

Outside magazine tells us it’s picked its top 25 adventure books of the last 100 years. Wow, they must have old editors. OK, just kidding. The best part, however, is eavesdropping on the staff’s email “debate” not only over which book should be on the list and where they should be, but also over what the heck “adventure” means. We like some rather pithy words by columnist Mark Jenkins: “Great to have this email debate over books. Gives everybody a chance to square off and throw solid punches from the shoulder (without anybody really getting a bloody nose). Clearly I’m arguing from someplace in left field. But I think I’ve figured out why. It’s the word adventure. Throughout my life I have resisted the incessant watering down of this word, despite the fact that it has been so successfully co-opted by Madison Avenue. Adventures in shopping. Adventures in hairstyling. It’s like calling computer manuals and used-car newsletters literature. Perhaps W. Safire (the old bastard) would agree with me on this one. Call me atavistic, call me a throwback, hell, call me a miscreant, but I happen to like the actual definition: ‘an undertaking involving danger and unknown risks.'” Anyway, for some truly entertaining reading, go to the email debate yourself: http://web.outsideonline.com/cgi/WebX?128@^22818@.ee6be47
And we’ll betcha readers will start chiming in now. By the way, the best all-time No. 1 book, according to Outside? Wing, Sand and Stars, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.