Research reading madness

What I've read recently:

Wallace Stegner's essay collection The Sound of Mountain Water (on being a western writer)

Breaking Point by Glenn Randall (on climbing Mt McKinley) (It's bizarrely out of print!)



The Sourdough Expedition by Terence Cole (on the first group to reach McKinley's North summit in 1910) (They dog mushed from Fairbanks!!!) (I think this was in print for 15 minutes. SIGH.)



My Life of High Adventure by Grant Pearson (one of the early superintendents of Denali Park). (Yes, he also climbed McKinley.)



Mt McKinley: The Pioneer Climbs by Terris Moore (are you detecting a theme?)

"Up the Black to Chalkyitsik" essay by Edward Hoagland (from Hoagland on Nature which I promptly ordered a copy of from Powells) (used - no new copies in print?!)

The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx ed by Alex Hunt (this just made me want to read The Shipping News again. And again.)

And many essays/articles on Don Sheldon, Ernest Hemgingway, Annie Proulx, Denali climbing, glacier flying, and accidents in mountain passes. I've read a lot of news stories from the late 1920s and early 1930s when aviation was nearly always mentioned on the front page of Alaskan newspapers (which is really pretty cool). I also read several essays in American Alpine Journal and Alaska History and more back issues of the Explorers Club Journal and OUTSIDE and CLIMBING then I care to mention. (It is so easy to get sucked into articles that have nothing to do with my research but are fun to read!)

I am presently surrounded by stacks of photocopies all demanding some sort of organization which will happen later this week or I shall be buried in chaos. The most important page however in my BOOK book (the book where I take notes on the WIP) is the one outlining several chapters. I have direction on eight chapters and hints of several more (not to mention several accident reports to dive into which will likely fill in any gaps that develop).

Fifty pages are due to my agent by September 1st. I am finally feeling like they will be fifty GOOD pages. What a relief!