• The forensic medicine depicted in Patricia Cornwell's mysteries.
  
• The creepy and quirky plots conjured up by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.
  
• The excellent characterizations of homicide detectives in John Sandford's Prey series.
  
• The wonderful and slightly paranormal situations that Repairman Jack finds himself in in F. Paul Wilson's series.
  
• The well respected bibliographical works by Ramon Adams entitled The Rampaging Herd and Six-Guns and Saddle Leather .
  
• The fantastically researched work by the classic historian J. Frank Dobie, including The Mustangs .
  
• Secretariat.
  
• Cunninghame Grahams now classic Horses of the Conquest , detailing how the horses of the Spanish Conquistadors gave them their victories.
  
• Try walking at 14,000 feet above timberline.
  
• Most of Galen Rowell's earlier works, including:
  
  • High and Wild
    
  • In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods
    
  • Mountains of the Middle Kingdom
    
  • Mountain Light
  
  
• Beryl Markham's memoir: West With the Night .
  
• Smoke Blanchard's memoir Walking Up and Down in the World .
  
• Antoine De Saint Exupery's memoir Wind, Sand and Stars .
  
• Thomas McGuane's two works full of essays: Some Horses and The Longest Silence . Also, read his An Outside Chance .
  
• William Nack's My Turf: Horses, Boxers, Blood Money, and the Sporting Life . Where else are you going to learn about the sick notion of there being hitmen who take out horses? Also, read his short essay Pure Heart .
  
• Dennis Lehane's gritty series featuring the PI duo beginning with A Drink Before the War . Before he wrote Mystic River (yes, the movie), he wrote that series.
  
• John Darnton's two or three good books.
  
• Paul Garrison's riveting maritime thrillers.
  
• Mark Sullivan's excellent The Purification Ceremony .
  
• Are you good at riding a horse? It usually takes about 500 hours in the saddle to begin to get the feel, that True Unity so to speak, as professed by Tom Dorrance and Ray Hunt. You should be able to feel and be in rhythem with each footstep of the horse. Read Ray Hunt's Think Harmony With Horses .
  
• Read In the Heart of the Sea and learn about the awful but true story which inspired Melville's whale.
  
• Learn about Coronado and his Cities of Gold. You can read Dobie's Coronado's Children , or you could read Douglas Preston's Cities of Gold or you could read William's The Mysterious West , a Six-Guns book. This book also discusses the sinking of the Mollie Stevens and her load of eighty tons of silver into the Owens Lake, now dry. Speaking of Owens Lake, go to Lone Pine and the Alabama Hills. You've already seen the Alabama Hills countless times in movies.
  
• Go to an aviation museum.
  
• Go skin diving or snorkeling.
  
• Read Clive Cussler.
  
• Read Tess Gerritsen's medical thrillers.
  
• Absolutely and most definitely read Robert McCammon's epic tale of a witch hunt in the Carolinas called Speaks the Nightbird .
  
• While most of you have read Dan Simmons' science fiction, have you read his horror and general fiction? Do so now.
  
• Study the Cowboy Artists of America.
  
• Learn about the Lisp program called AARON. Also, learn about the Lisp program called SWALE. Certainly interesting. Roger Schank has a book called Tell me a Story and it discusses how our knowledge of stories is what really contributes to our knowledge, period.
  
• Pick up a book on Gilcrease Museum.
  
• Become a collector - of old things, not new.
  
• Learn about Manzanar. It's just up the road from the Alabama Hills.
  
• I'm turning around and looking at my library some more...
  
• Read Jeff Long: Descent and Year Zero
  
• Ever read Jack Vance?

• Study the works in the Anshutz Collection, and read the book Painters and the American West .
  
• Look at the sketches by Tom Lea and read his classic The Hands of Cantu .
  
• Look at N. C. Wyeth's art, and the work of his contemporary, Frank Schoonover.
  
• You may know of Jimmy Buffet as a musician, but did you know he's done some interesting writing about something else that he does a lot: flying sea planes and flying boats around the Carribean, namely a Grumman Albatross custom fitted with all the necessities.
  
• What would it take to fly a Consolidated PBY across the North Pole? It's got a 3,000 mile range, those big radial Pratt and Whitney engines guzzling the aviation fuel and burning the oil like crazy...
  
• Have you read David Brin's Glory Road ? How about his Earth ?
  
• Concordia, Pakistan. Unbelievable.
  
• The mountain cirque which sits at 12,000 feet below Third Needle, Day Needle, Keeler Needle, and Mount Whintey. Nothing but stark white granite rising vertically to the crest: totally silent, not a stir in the air, nobody for miles, no vegetation, a deep high altitude blue sky, kind of scary, lonely, isolated, a room with 2,000 foot walls, God's own throne room, and then an August afternoon thunderstorm rolls in, like Armageddon it is, crescendo upon crescendo, the explosive Fist of God hammering down on you, no mercy from the huge mountain world all around you, no escape, high and wild...
  
• Watch a cutting competition. Quarter horses will charm and enchant you.
  
• Talk to people.

• And of course, Fred Hirschmann''s wonderful photo book entitled Bush Pilots of Alaska.
  
• He also did a large format photography book entitled Rock Art of the American Southwest featuring petroglyphs, some rather beautiful and extravagent ones, not to mention somewhat hidden. The ancient ones in the Coso region near China Lake (just south of Owens Lake where the Mollie Stevens is) depict deer.

quote: Original post by Kertap
Books:
Wheel of time