50 Good Bicycle Books

Let me start off with a few disclaimers.

This is not an exhaustive list. There are lots of good books about bicycles out there. This list started with me scanning my shelves and saying "Oh that was a good book... and that one... and that one... and then I started quizzing friends in real life and on Twitter and Google+. And then Amazon has this "people who liked X also liked Y" feature that can lead to all kinds of cool things. I finally drew an arbitrary line at 50. If your book or your favorite book isn't on the list, it sure doesn't mean it's not great.

I gave up at categorizing the list. Some books are how-to and some are history. There are books about touring and racing. There are kids books on the list and some biographies. There's at least one novel. A lot of books could fit in more than one category. So I just present the books in alphabetical order by title.

I don't describe the books, but each title links to an Amazon page with description, reviews, etc. If you hate Amazon and want to support your local bookshop, go find these books at your local store. I am an Amazon Affiliate so if you do wind up buying one of these books on Amazon after clicking a link from here it will not cost you anything extra but about 6% of the purchase price goes to me. That's the main way I keep the bits flowing through this blog, so if you choose to do that, thank you very much.

Finally, if you have some great bike books that I've missed, post them in a comment here or email those titles to me at kentsbike(at)gmail.com. If I get enough good stuff, I'll compile a second list.

Here's my list of 50 Good Bike Books:

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100 Years of Bicycle Component and Accessory Design: Authentic Reprint Edition of The Data Book by Noguchi-san

A Dog in a Hat: An American Bike Racer's Story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium by Joe Parkin

Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook: Worldwide Cycling Route & Planning Guide by Stephen Lord

Anybody's Bike Book: A Comprehensive Manual of Bike Repairs by Tom Cuthbertson

Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride by Peter Zheutlin

Ascent: The Mountains of the Tour De France by Richard Yates

Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne

Bicycles & Tricycles: A Classic Treatise on Their Design and Construction by Archbald Sharp

Bicycle: The History by David Herlihy

Bicycling Science by David Gordon Wilson

Bicycling The Pacific Coast by Vicky Spring and Tom Kirkendall

Bike Cult: The Ultimate Guide to Human-Powered Vehicles by David B. Perry

Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling by BikeSnobNYC

Bike Touring: The Sierra Club Guide to Travel on Two Wheels by Raymond Bridge

Boy Racer: My Journey to Tour de France Record-Breaker by Mark Cavendish

Cycling's Golden Age: Heroes of the Postwar Era, 1946-1967, The Horton Collection text by Owen Mulholland, foreword by Eddy Merkcx

Fallen Angel: The Passion of Fausto Coppi by William Fotheringham

Franklin Rides a Bike by Paulette Bourgeois

Gracie Goat's Big Bike Race by Erin Mirabella

His Finest Hour by David Neuhaus

Into Thick Air: Biking to the Bellybutton of Six Continents by Jim Malusa

It's All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels by Robert Penn

Joyride: Pedaling Toward A Healthier Planet by Mia Birk

Lance Armstrong's War: One Man's Battle Against Fate, Fame, Love, Death, Scandal, and a Few Other Rivals on the Road to the Tour de France by Daniel Coyle

Major Taylor: The Extraordinary Career of a Champion Bicycle Racerby Andrew Ritchie

Miles from Nowhere: A Round the World Bicycle Adventure by Barbara Savage

Momentum Is Your Friend: The Metal Cowboy and His Pint-Sized Posse Take on America by Joe Kurmaski

Paris-Roubaix: A Journey Through Hell by the sportswriters of L'Equipe

Park Tool BBB-2 The Big Blue Book of Bicycle Repair - 2nd Editionby C. Calvin Jones

Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities by Jeff Mapes

Racing Through the Dark by David Millar

Sally Jean, the Bicycle Queen by Cari Best

Slaying the Badger: LeMond, Hinault and the Greatest Ever Tour de France by Richard Moore

Take a Seat: One Man, One Tandem and Twenty Thousand Miles of Possibilities by Dominic Gill

Team 7-Eleven: How an Unsung Band of American Cyclists Took on the World - and Won by Geoff Drake

The Art of Cycling: A Guide to Bicycling in 21st-Century America by Robert Hurst

The Art of Wheelbuilding: A Bench Reference for Neophytes, Pros & Wheelaholics by Gerd Schraner

The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills by William Saroyan

The Complete Do-It-Yourself Bike Book: Everything You Need to Know to Fix, Maintain and Get the Most Out of Your Bike by Mel Allwood

The Dancing Chain: History and Development of the Derailleur Bicycle by Frank Berto

The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles: Craftsmanship, Elegance, and Function by Jan Heine

The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance by David Herlihy

The Man Who Loved Bicycles: The Memoirs of an Autophobe by Daniel Behrman

The Rider by Tim Krabbe

The Spring Classics: Cycling's Greatest One-Day Races by Philippe Bouvet and others

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

Tillie the Terrible Swede: How One Woman, a Sewing Needle, and a Bicycle Changed History by Sue Stauffacher

Tomorrow, We Ride by Jean Bobet

Travels with Willie: Adventure Cyclist by Willie Weir

Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way) by Sue Macy

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Keep 'em rolling,

Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson
Issaquah, WA USA

In Search of #6: A Review

If In Search of #6 was a worse book, I wouldn't be posting this bad review. You should understand that this book only cost me a dollar to suck into my Kindle and I bought it because it is about bicycle touring and it promised to be humorous. I enjoy bicycle touring and various types of humor and the reviews on Amazon were quite positive so I traded my dollar for many screens of words. In the time since I downloaded the book, some kind soul posted a review with the title "I want my dollar back." I have to confess, I don't care about my dollar, but I do wish that I could get my time back. The book is not bad enough that I stopped reading it and it does in fact contain some rather humorous prose that led me to continue plowing through redundant pages of wandering narrative, untethered in time and filled with tedious details.

In reading In Search of #6 I learned that Damon likes his friend Ben and likes that Ben hauls the heavy BOB trailer. I learned that neither of them can plan very well and they are surprised by mountains and towns that exist on maps but not in real life. I learned that Damon finds #6 at the start of the trip and spends virtually all of the trip missing her and he devotes many pages to this topic, which I'm sure he finds fascinating. By the end of the book I conclude that Damon would probably be quite amusing to chat with for an hour or so but after surviving a whole book with the man, I can only conclude that Ben is a saint for not crushing Damon's skull with a rock somewhere around Mt. Rainier and then making the whole thing look like an accident.

In the prologue to the book Damon suggests that readers tell their friends about the book and post reviews. He says "it doesn't have to be a positive one, in fact too many positive reviews make me suspicious." Damon, I'm here doing my bit to make you less suspicious.

Now I should make it clear that there is some very funny stuff in this book and many folks will probably find the tale well worth their time. But that wasn't the case for me. I want my time back.

Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson
Issaquah WA USA

Be Brave, Be Strong by Jill Homer: A Review

Be Brave, Be Strong is a book filled with pain, doubt, anger and angst. It also contains wonderful descriptions, breathtaking beauty and relentless determination. It is Jill Homer's story of her experiences leading up to and racing the 2009 Tour Divide, a 2740 mile mountain bike race from Banff, Alberta to the US/Mexican border. It's a hell of a ride and a hell of a read.

Those familiar with Jill's popular blog or who have followed the Tour Divide online may think they know the story contained in Be Brave, Be Strong, but the book casts this huge undertaking in the most personal of terms. Jill tells the tale as only she can, through her eyes and experiences. And she's not afraid to make herself look bad. She judges people harshly, faulting person A for being too helpful and person B for doing to little and she stews over this person being too talkative while another is too distant. With the Divide as grand backdrop she pedals and slogs through snow and mud and isolation even when she is unsure of what she's ultimately seeking.

Those looking to Be Brave, Be Strong for practical advice on Divide racing will probably be disappointed, although it does contain some great advice on the use of wax-covered cheese wheels and Sour Patch Kids as race fuel. And ultimately the distance and time and mud overwhelm even the most obsessive self-examination and critique and at the end of the trail perhaps we find that the trail is just beginning.

Review: More than a year with the Amazon Kindle

First off, let me repeat my standard Amazon disclaimer. I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you go to Amazon via some link of mine and buy anythingfrom them within 24 hours, some of your purchase price goes to me (about 6% on average). It doesn't cost you any more to buy the item but instead of all the money going to some big faceless corporation in Seattle, some of it goes to a bike riding guy in Issaquah, WA. And by the way, everybody I know who works at Amazon has a face as well and if Amazon is big and successful it seems to have something to do with them being pretty damn smart.

But, I digress. Expect a lot of digressions ahead. For your first digression, you can read the review of the Kindle I wrote back in March of 2010. Everything I wrote there still holds true and if you read that I won't feel the need to repeat the things I've covered there.

I'm still totally happy with my Kindle. It's a handy damn piece of technology that just plain works. Yep, newer ones are out now that do a bit more stuff or do the existing things better. And yeah, the price has dropped. Right now, if I busted or lost my Kindle, I'd replace it with aGraphite 6" Kindle 3G+Wi-Fi. If I wanted to save a few bucks, I might get the version that's a bit cheaper because it displays ads on the screen-saver. You can read hundreds of reviews of the various flavors of the Kindles on the net but everything I'm going to mention in this review relates to stuff that I've done with my older Kindle.

The first thing to understand about a Kindle is that it makes it super easy to carry a lot of virtual books with you. Going on vacation or a bike tour or headed to the coffee shop or the dentist's office? Bring a Kindle an you can have the latest 1000 page best seller, some essays from Emerson, a pulp stories from the 1950s, the book from a South African novelist that won't see print in the US for another 6 months...you get the idea. Of course Amazon's store makes it really easy to buy stuff for the Kindle but you can also load up on free books from sites likehttp://mnybks.net/ or http://m.gutenberg.org/.

The Kindle can make reading both more private (if you want) or more public (if you want). On the subway, reading your Kindle, nobody knows if you're reading Gibbon's Decline & Fall of the Roman Empireor the latest story of teen vampires from Stephanie Meyer. But, if you're one of those people (like me) who likes to share interesting lines you find in a book or jot down notes, the Kindle total has that aspect of reading down. Not only can you highlight text and jot notes, but you can share those notes and highlights via Twitter. Again, this is something you can do, but you don't have to do. But via Twitter I've learned of new writers, found new books and generally broadened my reading experience.

Here's an example. I'm a fan of William Gibson and I follow him on Twitter. He goes silent when he's working on a new book, but once the manuscript is in the hands of the publisher or he's out on a book tour he's out there tweeting away. So I knew when Zero History was coming out last fall and I pre-ordered it on my Kindle and it appeared magically there (because we're living in the freakin future, folks). And I completely enjoyed it and tweeted out some excerpts and maybe some folks followed those links and bought some more copies of Bill's book. Good for Bill. BTW, it's a damn good book.

At various times William Gibson raved about the novels of Lauren Beukes and while her paper novels at the time were not for sale in the US, I was able to get the Kindle versions for less than $5 each and I was blown away by her way with a story. BTW, Lauren recently won the Arthur C. Clarke award for Science Fiction for her novel Zoo City, so I guess I wasn't the only one blown away.

Of course I've found some duds in my Kindle reading but another neat thing with the Kindle is that you can download samples from most books to get a feel for them. Also, many authors are releasing their out-of-print backstock titles on the Kindle for free or at low prices to help drum up demand for their newer titles. And small, indie authors are publishing straight to the Kindle. Some of these books are very good and about 70% of the sale price goes to the author. I took a $3 chance on indie author Ray Doty and bought Out of the Black. For the price of a cup of fancy coffee I got a great thriller and Ray made a couple of bucks.

Reading on the Kindle is great. Battery life is terrific and I hear the battery life is about twice as good on the new ones. The new screen is supposed to be even crisper but the screen on my Kindle is a joy to read on even in full daylight. Another advantage of the Kindle is that you can pick a comfortable font size, so if you want all your books can be large print books. The Kindle doesn't have a backlight and while reading lights are available, I sometimes use a headlamp. More often for night reading, I actually usually use the Kindle software on my ARCHOS 32. There is also free Kindle software for iPhones, iPads, Droids, PCs and what have you. The neat thing is that the software keeps your place in whatever you're reading, no matter what device you are on. Whenever I switch between devices, Amazon keeps track of where I am. (And yes, that is kind of creepy!)

While the Kindle is, first and foremost, a book reader, there are some handy apps and services you can access via the "experimental" web browser. My 3G Kindle has free wireless connection to the internet and yes, it's really free. I've paid for my Kindle and I've paid for books I've bought, but I've never had to pay anything to access the net via my Kindle. And that's a really handy thing.

Here are a few useful Kindle sites:

http://www.kindletwit.com/ -- This site lets me browse and post to Twitter via my Kindle.

http://kindlefish.t15.org/kfishdx.html -- This site uses Google to translate between various languages.

http://maps.google.com/m/directions -- A simple link to the Google Directions.

There are also some handy applications and games available for the Kindle, costing anywhere from $1 to $3. I've found Notepad, Easy Calculator and Calendar Pro to be worthwhile and both Christine and I are hooked on the word game Panda Poet.

In the year-plus that I've had my Kindle, it's gone with me on various bike trips, tours to the backwoods and trips to Portland. When Christine and I went to Lopez Island last fall, our Kindles went with us. The Kindles have held up fine and are still going strong.

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson

Issaquah WA USA

Jackfruit by David E.X.N. Nghiem: A Review

Disclaimer: I was provided a review copy of Jackfruit by the author at no charge.

Why we do what we do is one of the core questions in the heart of each of us. In the case of David Nghiem, he finds himself drawn to Latin America with his bicycle on a journey that he chronicles in his bookJackfruit. An engineer by training, Nghiem has experiences and finds evidence that contradict the common views of history and technology. His attempts to find meaning in symbols, to visit ancient sites and to learn how the people of today live in this part of the world, form a narrative of highs and lows and some questions that remain unanswered. While this book may be too mystical for some, I have no doubt that it is a sincere representation of the author's experience.

Nghiem describes the terrain, the hardships, the artifacts and the people, but the bulk of the story is carried on in conversations. In Peru, for example:

"Why did you come here David?"

I looked at him. Ernesto now had a strange, searching, expression that I hadn't seen before on his face.

"You know, that's the same question my father asked me before I went. I told him - I told him that I didn't know. I just had to go."

Ernesto smiled. "It is always that way. The legend of Paititi is that only those who are selected may see the city. Otherwise, it appears and disappears at will, confusing those who are not worthy. It is for those who come here beyond their own will."

Beyond their own will? What the hell... I started to get a strange buzz up my back. It's the kind of feeling I would get whenever something major was up.

"David, do you think you are the "Escogido'?"

"Escogido?"

"The name the old Quechua woman called you was Acclhaska. Do you know what it means?"

"It means searcher, right?"

"No... it means 'Chosen One'."

At times Jackfruit certainly reads like an episode of the X-files, with unexplained lights and electrical storms whipping in from nowhere the instant a magical talisman is accidentally destroyed. But, to extend the X-files comparison, Nghiem is more a skeptical Scully than a willing Mulder who wants to believe.

While Nghiem goes to interesting places and has some interesting conversations, in too many places his writing is awkward. Nghiem has a knack for including too much detail in some places and not nearly enough in others. I know, for example, how many times he had to run to the bathroom one night, but I have no idea of the contents of his panniers. In trying to convey an idea of the size of the 200 ton stones of the temple ruins at Sacsayhuaman, Nghiem writes the following:

To present a relationship, the US aircraft carrier Nimitz weighs about 97,000 tons, the battleship New Jersey is 15,000 tons, a typical destroyer class ship is 5-7000 tons, and a 4 story nuclear reactor can be 670 tons.

Despite the mind-numbing level of detail in that sentence, I reached the end of it with no real idea of the size of those stones. Perhaps a good old-fashioned comparison such as "big as a house" would've been better in this instance.

While some paragraphs are smothered in detail, in other places the book reads as if vital bits of information have been left out. One night, after encountering "Dead, hacked opened, mutilated and gutted bodies of dogs, at least eight or nine of them laid on the road, and their guts were all over the place", Nghiem makes it to a hostel. That night "the woman's warning, and the memory of the dead dogs haunted me." While a few paragraphs earlier I'd gotten a flashback of Nghiem's parent's experiences in Vietnam, I vainly flipped back through pages looking for the woman's warning. I never found it.

I have no reason to doubt Nghiem's veracity when recounting the local people's distaste for various vile practices of the World Bank and the U.S. government, but perhaps too many of the books 400 odd pages are spent in diatribes against imperialist corporations. What hostility there is towards gringos is never expressed towards Nghiem, however. He makes friends and works very hard to learn Spanish after an amusing and awkward experience with a young woman in Peru. At the beginning of the book, he knew only about 80 words of Spanish, but by the end, he is fluent.

The best parts of Jackfruit are the people. Nghiem is befriended by the man who designed Thor Heyerdahl's boat, the national bicycle champion of Honduras, Peace Corp workers and a remarkable boy with Down's Syndrome. The true friendships Nghiem forms shine through in the pages of Jackfruit.

Jackfruit is not a how-to manual that will tell you how to tour Latin America and there are far more questions asked than answered within it's pages. It is by no means a perfect book, Nghiem is still more an engineer than a writer and despite some strong scenes and moving passages, the book feels unfinished. But all our journeys ultimately only take us a bit further along the road and we are not here to be perfect, but to be human. At it's core, Jackfruit is a very human story.

You can read more reviews of Jackfruit on Amazon and you can read more about Jackfruit and David Nghiem's latest adventures at:

http://davesnewadventure.com/

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson

Issaquah WA USA