FalconGuides just announced the first 12
titles in a new line of interactive outdoor guides the company developed in
partnership with Inkling, a platform for interactive learning.
For the price of the download, readers get
expert content optimized for iPhone, iPad, and Web, with features that bridge
the gap between apps and ebooks: slideshows with high-res images not found in
the print editions, guided visual tours, hyperlinks, and smart search that makes
it quick and easy to get to the information you need, from a list of dog-friendly
hikes to a river name. Hiking guide
users can give tips to other readers and share trail notes on washed out bridges, best photo ops, bees nests to watch out for, or anything else. An animal tracks feature lets you click through a series of questions that narrows down which animal tracks you’ve spotted based on pattern, shape, and size. Rock climbing instructional guides have stop-motion animation
illustrating specific techniques.
When journalist David Walsh, the chief sports writer for the
Sunday Times and the author of From Lance to Landis and LA Confidential, needed
a title for his new book about the 13 years he’s spent trying to expose
Lance Armstrong’s doping, he took to Twitter. “Thinking about title
for this last book on LA, have not come up with anything. So okay it's over to
you - 1 or 2-word title, 3 or 4 max,” he said.
Responses came streaming in. Some were
good. Some made little sense at all. Walsh kept a running tab of his
favorites and responded to them. Here’s a short list, including the tweet announcing the winner, Seven Deadly Sins.
On Thursday, Banff announced that Fire Seasonwon the Grand Jury Prize in its 2012 book competition. Written by Philip Connors, who quit his job at The Wall Street Journal to work on a fire lookout for eight seasons, the book quickly gained an impressive slate of reviews when it was released earlier this year. In our May issue, Bruce Barcott offered his opinion. "In short, it's one of the best books to come out of a government gig since Ed Abbey turned a ranger's wage into Desert Solitaire," he said.
Banff gave the book its Grand Jury Prize for a number of reasons.
"The winner of the Grand Jury Prize was for all three of us judges the
outstanding book of the 2012 Banff Mountain Book Competition. Nothing
else came close in terms of literary quality, human oddity, and that
indefinable element of surprise present in all the very best writing. We
loved this book," the judges wrotes. "The persona, the character as it comes through in his
book of the author, his humor and odd sagacity, his sharp and lucid
gift of natural observation, the fascinating perspective he gives on the
ecology of wildfire, charmed and informed us. Also, since he went to
school in Missoula, he can almost be claimed as Canadian, Montana being
more like here than down there. Of all this year’s authors, here’s the
one with whom we felt we’d most like to share a beer."
"His book will surely be accepted into the outdoor and environmental literary canon as one to be ranked with Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac and ornery old Ed Abbey’s Desert Solitaire," they continued. "It’s the account of a former Wall Street Journal writer’s sojourns through several summers at a fire-lookout post in the Gila Wilderness Area of southwest New Mexico: If there's a better job anywhere on the planet, I'd like to know what it is."
If you still need another opinion, consider this one from Outside senior editor Grayson Schaffer: "The gushing, here, over Philip Connors's book is well deserved," he said on Facebook. "Must read."
I've included the other winners below. Click on the award to read feedback from the Banff Mountain Book Competition Jury, and on the title to buy the book.
The Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival is an annual gathering of the biggest names in adventure and environmental writing and filmmaking. This year, attendees can climb with Conrad Anker, sip coffee and chat with Fred Beckey, attend a session on pitching National Geographic magazine, and learn how to pack from Gerlinde Keltenbrunner—all in between book sessions that include whisky tastings.
The 2012 book competition includes 18 finalists in four major categories: adventure travel, mountain and wilderness literature, guidebooks, and mountain image. Roughly 50 readers whittled the entries down over the summer to their favorite books. On November 1, the festival will announce the $1,000 winner in each category and the $2,000 grand prize for the best book of the year.
If you have time on your hands and a little money to burn, the festival takes place in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, from October 27 to November 4. You can pick up copies of the books at the festival and maybe track down a few of the authors. Just in case your schedule doesn't allow for such a jaunt, we've included a list of the finalists below, with links to their books on Amazon. And here's a link to The Whisky Exchange too, just in case you want to read like they do in Banff.
