A challenge - please suggest a book for my dh

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He's bookless at the moment and getting restless - apparently none of the many unread books in the house will do. He claims to not want a novel - he wants "a ripping adventure yarn based on truth" and extra points will be given for the inclusion of food and or fishing. To give you some more clues , other books he has enjoyed are everything by Mark Kurlansky, Into the Heart of Borneo by Redmond O Hanlon and Waterlog by Richard Deakin.

I know it may sound cliched but what about Bernard Cornwell? They are adventures, based on historical truths and very accurate. There are some modern ones of his too that are very good.

The Gift of Rain is a great book. Set in Penang at the time of the Japanese invasion. It's a great story!

Oh I was going to suggest Life of Pi but I see it's already been done.

He could try the John Simpson autobiographies - they are a great read and my DH loved them. He's a foreign correspondent with the BBC and they talk about all the places he's been too. The first one about his childhood isn't so good but the others are good especially ''A Mad World, My Masters'' or something like that.

'Birdsong' Sebastian Faulks?

Passage to Juneau - Jonathan Raban

Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts. here

Ostensibly, an autobigraphy, (heavily embroidered I feel). Action-packed, rollicking good yarn. Yet to meet a bloke who has read it, who doesn’t love it.

Try Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, non fiction but reads like fiction, review on www.doindubai.com

Child 44 Tom Rob Smith also unputdownable, sequel The Secret speech also worth reading

Oops that is one that hasn't been reviewed on the site yet, but will be soon, sorry

Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint Exupéry The pilot and philosopher recounts several episodes from his years flying treacherous mail routes across the Sahara and the Andes. is beautiful.

Not fiction, but:

Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrer
Ill Met by Moonlight, W. Stanley Moss

Obviously distressing at times, but possibly up his street, are the memoirs of Graves & Sassoon (though Sassoon's are more "fictionalised"):

Goodbye to all that, Robert Graves
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man & Memoirs of an Infantry Office, Siegfriend Sassoon

HTH.

Oh, of course, and Roald Dahl's autobiographies: "Boy" and "Going Solo".

Not sure about specific titles but it sounds as though you need to look at the travel writing section of any bookshop or website. My favourite travel writers are Sara Wheeler and Dervla Murphy, not sure how much either write about food though.

Oxfam has just released or is releasing an anthology of travel writing, OxTravels - bits from 32 writers (including the above as well as Tim Butcher and lots of others). I've just read a review copy and there's a few I would like to follow up

Can I plug a website I write reviews for (I'm not the owner, just one of 100 or so minions?) - get him to look through the Travel and other non fiction sections of that and see if anything takes his fancy!

I think he might like the Thor Heyerdahl "Kon Tiki" and "Ra" expedition books. They are quite old but still very good fun and true.

This one is v good and has a whale in it! :)

How about something on polar exploration? Cherry Garrard's is good - no fish as I recall but lots of penguins!

is he techy? I found this in a charity shop

www.amazon.co.uk/Perfect-Thing-Steven-Levy/dp/0091910099/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306426692&sr=8-1

Lots of Ripping Adventure Yarns in Tim Cahill's collections of articles written (I think) for travel and outdoor magazines. The books have names like "Pecked to Death by Ducks" and "A Jaguar is Eating My Leg" in tribute to pulpy adventure yarns of yore. The set-ups are contrived, in that he seeks out extreme peil rather than coming across it naturally, but the writing is great.

Robert Twigger writes about expeditions and ploys too, some based on natural history, although the one I like the most is about training in martial arts with the Tokyo riot police - "Angry White Pajamas"

Delve back to Ernest Hemingway?

Has he read Agent ZigZag or Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre? my DH enjoyed those.