Book picks similar to
I, Tarzan: Against All Odds by Jean-Philippe Soulé


we-love-memoirs
adventure
memoir
voracious-readers-only

A Fly on the Ward


Michael K. Chapman - 2012
    A collection of humorous hospital stories and events as witnessed by a frequently incarcerated patient and told from a patient's point of view while secured and gagged in a hospital bed.Stories and tales from a lifetime of hospital admissions, showing that hospital life as a patient is not all doom and gloom.

This is Gail


Gail O'Brien - 2016
    In 2008, inspirational surgeon Chris O'Brien published his bestselling memoir of his battle with brain cancer, NEVER SAY DIE. But he wasn't the only person in the O'Brien household with a powerful story to tell. Since Chris passed away in 2009, his wife Gail has gone on a journey of her own: from a busy surgeon's wife and mother of a picture-perfect family to a widow in her mid-50s, grieving not only her husband but also her son Adam, who died as a result of epilepsy a short time after Chris's death. Yet in the midst of her grief, Gail discovered resolve and strength deep within herself. When Chris was alive, Gail was the woman behind the great man. But after his death, she stepped forward to make her own mark on the world. While coming to terms with both a public and private loss, Gail took on Chris's legacy as steward of the Chris O'Brien Lifehouse cancer centre, navigating the often bruising politics of boards and committees to ensure his vision was realised. She also went back to work as a physio after being out of the workforce for 20 years, while still holding her shattered family together. She reinvented herself and found that she could survive and even thrive in a world without her soul mate. A moving, inspiring, deeply poignant and often joyous story of family, love and loss - and ultimately, about finding your purpose in the world.

Tuscan Dreams at the Cornish Confetti Agency


Daisy James - 2020
    The Cornish Confetti Agency is heading to Tuscany!Why not join Lexie as she co-ordinates Isla and Nico’s wedding in gorgeous Florence?

Last Flight Out: True Tales of Adventure, Travel, and Fishing


Randy Wayne White - 2002
    Now Randy's back in Last Flight Out, a brand-new collection of essays keeping us up to date on his latest excursions.Randy White is a "mover" and has no time for people who can't keep up. Join him as he dives in the infamous lake called the Bad Blue Hole on the desolate Cat Island in the Bahamas. Search for the perfect hot pepper in Colombia, and closer to home, go raccoon hunting in Pioneer, Ohio, where the hunted almost always outsmart the hunters. Get in the ring with Shine Forbes, an eighty-year-old fighter in prime condition and Ernest Hemingway's former sparring partner, and go on a secret mission to steal back General Manuel Noriega's bar stools. Though he rarely finds what he's looking for-such as the half-human, half-alligator creature known as "Gatorman"-he cultivates his unique ability to revel in the unique and comical situations of each exotic trip.From a jungle survival school in Panama to a week at a professional wrestler's training camp, White leaves the reader mesmerized by the potential of undiscovered places and the promise of endless adventure in unfamiliar territory. An icon of the new breed of thick-skinned, high endurance travelers, Randy White is the real deal.

The Discovery


J.T. Cross - 2012
    Search and rescue specialist Luc Moon is tasked with the impossible: finding the boys on his own.During the search, Luc discovers clues to a remarkable lost world, a world hidden deep within a forgotten valley. Now in a life-and-death struggle, Luc―and those closest to him―must survive against legendary creatures and a ruthless billionaire determined to keep the discovery to himself.

Synchronicity


Michaelbrent Collings - 2021
    Off the grid, out of sight of the authorities. Hoping to escape a terrifying secret; to outrun what he has seen and what he has done. Kane is an assassin who, with the help of the Machine, possesses the ability to assume the identity of anyone he wishes. He can strike without warning, and kill without mercy. Stronger than a dozen men, faster than sight itself, he can be anywhere, anytime.When Book catches Kane’s eye, he discovers the world is even more dangerous than he knew. Book must ally himself with people who, like him, know that Kane is on the verge of remaking the world in his image.But how do you know who to trust, when the man who wants you dead can be anyone he pleases? How can you fight for the ones you love......when you can’t even believe who you see?

Aftershock: One Man's Quest and the Quake on Everest


Jules Mountain - 2017
    The odds of surviving his type of cancer were one in five; the odds of dying on Everest are one in sixty.But just as he reaches Base Camp in April 2015, the giant earthquake in Nepal sets off an avalanche that will kill 21 . Jules is within touching distance of his life's ambition and is now faced with an agonising choice about his next move.Aftershock is a heart-stopping eyewitness account of the deadliest day in history on the world's most iconic mountain. It is also an exploration of the choices we make in life, and throws up difficult questions about how logic and compassion can be affected by altitude and extreme stress.

Rainbow Diner: a memoir


Astrid Arlen - 2019
    Mother saved black widow spiders and the homeless. Brother Benny was Astrid’s immutable compass. He kept a straight face, his eyes glazed. All Benny wanted was to stay in one place.With all hell breaking loose, will Astrid and her beloved little brother navigate the ’70s and ’80s and survive childhood?

Residency: Blundering along with imposter syndrome (Playing Doctor, #2)


John Lawrence - 2021
    This candid autobiography will demystify medical education and inspire you. Equal parts heartfelt, self-deprecating humor, and irreverent storytelling, John takes us along for the ride as he tracks his transformation from uncertain, head injured, liberal-arts student to intern, resident and then medical doctor.

Living Dangerously


Ranulph Fiennes - 1988
    Ranulph followed his father's path into the Royal Scots Greys. After that came the SAS, from which he was dismissed for blowing up an American film set at the idyllic Cotswold village of Castle Combs, then two vicious years as a volunteer fighting communist insurgents in Oman. Then began the series of expeditions for which Fiennes is best known and which caused The Guinness Book of Records to hail him in 1984 as 'the world's greatest living explorer.' Up the White Nile in a hovercraft, parachuting onto Europe's highest glacier, forcing his way up 4,000 miles of terrifying rivers in northern Canada and Alaska, overland to the North Pole and to the ends of the earth, across the world's axis-the Transglobe Expedition-which took ten years from conception to completion. He writes here too about his attempt to reach the North Pole without dogs or motorised equipment, beating the world record by 300 miles, his determination to find the lost city of Urbar in the Arabian desert and, finally, his extraordinary journey across the Antarctic Continent via the South Pole. Living Dangerously is a remarkable testament from a remarkable man.

The Wild Side of Alaska


Donna Morang - 2013
    However, this is only the beginning of her lifelong dream of hunting and fishing in the Last Frontier of Alaska.She will take you to the Brooks Range, north of the arctic circle, where she and her mate hunt for dall sheep, come face-to-face with a grizzly bear that wants to eat them, and an angry moose trying to trample her hunting partner.Return to the Brooks Range to live with Donna, her mate, and one-year-old daughter in a cabin deep in the wilderness while mining for the elusive gold. Live an authentic life in the Bush of Alaska (The Bush is a term Alaskans use to describe regions of the state not connected to civilization) where she bakes her own bread, has no electricity, no running water, and wolves try to eat her baby.Fish along side her in the famous Katmai and Resurrection Bay, or do some crazy dip-net fishing for salmon at Chitna, Alaska. Catch a few grayling, salmon, or northern pike,and float the Delta river where she almost lost her life.Fly in small airplanes over the Brooks Range to view forest fires waiting to trap them in the wilderness, or hold on tight as they cruise over the majestic Prince William Sound to land on Hinchinbrook Island, and hunt for Alaskan brown bear.Return to the new life-style in the wild and wooly north after the discovery of oil, and the not-so-civilized changes to the Last Great Frontier of Alaska. As author David VanDyke says, "The Wild Side of Alaska will pull you in and keep you laughing, crying and gasping at the amazing true story of one of the last real American frontier women. You won't want to miss this down-to-earth tale of woman versus wilderness.

A Lap Around Alaska: An AlCan Adventure


Shawn Inmon - 2017
    Join author Shawn Inmon and his twenty year old Subaru Outback on his epic solo road trip through British Columbia, Yukon, and Alaska. Part personal odyssey, part travel memoir, take an expedition into one of North America's last remaining wildernesses. If you dream of packing up your four-wheeler, your snow boots and camera, and setting off to explore the wilderness, A Lap Around Alaska will give you a rare glimpse into the Land of the Midnight Sun, of moose, bear, and bald eagles, of monumental glaciers and scenery so staggering it brings tears to your eyes. If you hunger for adventure and want to discover untouched beauty and to experience the majesty of the pristine North for yourself-Shawn saved the passenger seat just for you. This book also includes two bonus memoirs of life in Alaska in the 1970s-My First Alaskan Summer and My Matanuska Summer.

One Year Lived


Adam Shepard - 2013
    I don't hate my job. I'm not annoyed with capitalism, and I'm indifferent to materialism. I'm not escaping emptiness, nor am I searching for meaning. I have great friends, a wonderful family, and fun roommates. The dude two doors down invited me over for steak or pork chops--my choice--on Sunday, and I couldn't even tell you the first letter of his name. Sure, the producers of The Amazing Race have rejected all five of my applications to hotfoot around the world--all five!--and my girlfriend and I just parted ways, but I've whined all I can about the race, and the girl wasn't The Girl anyway. All in all, my life is pretty fantastic. But I feel boxed in. Look at a map, and there we are, a pin stuck in the wall. There's the United States, about twenty-four square inches worth, and there's the rest of the world, seventeen hundred square inches begging to be explored. Career, wife, babies--of course I want these things; they're on the horizon. Meanwhile, I'm a few memories short. Maybe I need a year to live a little." FROM THE PUBLISHER: During his 29th year, spending just $19,420.68, less than it would have cost him to stay at home, Adam Shepard visited seventeen countries on four continents and lived some amazing adventures. “It’s interesting to me,” he says, “that in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Europe, it’s normal for people to pack a bag, buy a plane ticket, and get ‘Out There.’ In the U.S., though, we live with this very stiff paradigm—graduate college, work, find a spouse, make babies, work some more, retire—which can be a great existence, but we leave little room to load up a backpack and dip into various cultures, to see places, to really develop our own identity.” Shepard's journey began in “the other Antigua”—Antigua, Guatemala—where he spent a month brushing up on his Spanish and traveling on the “chicken bus.” During his two months in Honduras, he served with an organization that helps improve the lives of poor children; in Nicaragua, he dug wells to install pumps for clean water and then stepped into the ring to face a savage bull; in Thailand, he rode an elephant and cut his hair into a mullet; in Australia, he hugged a koala, contemplated the present-day treatment of the Aborigines, and mustered cattle; in Poland, he visited Auschwitz; in Slovakia, he bungee jumped off a bridge; and in the Philippines, he went wakeboarding among Boracay’s craggy inlets and then made love to Ivana on the second most beautiful beach in the world. His yearlong journey, which took two years to save for, was a spirited blend of leisure, volunteerism, and enrichment. He read 71 books, including ten classics and one—slowly—in Spanish. “If you can lend a hand to someone, educate yourself about the world, and sandwich that around extraordinary moments that get your blood pumping, that’s a pretty full year,” Shepard writes. Can everybody take a year to get missing? “Maybe, maybe not,” he says, “though that’s not really the point. I’m just concerned that some of us are too set on embracing certainty. We want life to be cushy and regimented, but that’s not how we can create a lasting impact on our lives or the lives around us. There’s only so much you can learn in the classroom. Sometimes you have to get out there to experience it, to touch it, to feel it, to see it for yourself. It’s fascinating the perspective we can gain when we step out of our bubbles of comfort, even just a little bit.”

Frederick: A Story of Boundless Hope


Frederick Ndabaramiye - 2014
    When Frederick faced those same genocidaires a few years later, he noted the machete that hung from the right hand closest to him and wondered if his would soon be added to the layers of dried blood that clung to the blade. Either way, young Frederick knew that he wouldn’t be able to carry out the orders just given to him, to raise that blade against the other passengers of the bus, regardless of the race marked on their identity cards.That bold decision would cause Frederick to lose his hands. But what the killers meant for harm, God intended for good. The cords that bound him served as a tourniquet, saving his life when his hands were hacked away. This new disability eventually fueled Frederick’s passion to show the world that disabilities do not have to stop you from living a life of undeniable purpose. From that passion, the Ubumwe Community Center was born, where "people like me" come to discover their own purposes and abilities despite their circumstances.Through miraculous mercy and divine appointment, Frederick forgives those who harmed him and goes on to fully grasp his God-given mission. In this extraordinary true story of forgiveness, faith, and hope, you will be challenged, convicted, and forever converted to a believer of the impossible.

Ashwatthama vs Parashuram: The Immortal Force


Gunjan Porwal - 2022
    A secret Nazi experiment in the Wieliczka salt mine of Breslau goes wrong, annihilating the entire research team.Decades later, at the foothills of Dhauladhar ranges, the immortal warrior Kripacharya is brutally attacked by a mysterious beast and goes missing. His peer Vyasa, the old sage, tasks Parashuram to find and bring their fellow immortal back.As Parashuram adjusts himself to this new world and uncovers the plot, he crosses path with an old nemesis, one who not only matches him in power and intellect, but also in ferocity.Ashwatthama.Parashuram has to race against time, and Ashwatthama, to unravel the conspiracy behind Kripacharya’s disappearance to protect not just their identities, but also something much larger at stake, something which has the potential to change history forever.