What are the best books about or set in, the desert?
Pedro Paramo.
cliche but blood meridian had some great desert descriptive imagery
Dune (now a major motion picture)
>>25158677Nonfiction but The Great Plains by Walter Prescott Webb i think has sections on America's desert regions.
Frozen Hell
>>25158677The best books are actually all about or set in cities.
Death Comes For the Archbishop
>>25158731I said DESERT not TUNDRA >.>
>>25158677Corndog Zen? At least it has a cactus.
>>25158805Tundras are deserts, el tardo.
>>25158817Dipshit
>>25158738Silence, urbanite scum
>>25158677Teachings of Don Juan
>>25158677The Bible
>>25158820>Tundras qualify as a type of desert—specifically "cold deserts" or polar deserts—because they are characterized by extremely low precipitation (typically less thanannually). While they do not have hot, sandy landscapes, their aridity, cold temperatures, and limited moisture availability for plants place them in the same category as traditional deserts.
>>25158875The Bible is set literally everywhere.
>>25158877Don't care, pig. You knew what I meant.
Blood Merdidian
Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
>>25158677Don Quixote
>>25158881It’s not set in my local tesco
>>25158875Bible isn't literature
>>25158805Most of Antarctica, including the setting of the book, isn't tundra. It's just polar desert.>>25158892If you meant badlands, say badlands. Not my fault you can't speak English.
Desert Solitaire
>>25158677Temptation of St Anthony
>>25158677Which desert?If you are talking about the American Southwest McCarthy is the goat. BM/Border trilogy has some great stuff. Desert Solitaire and Monkey Wrench Gang by Abbey are excellent as well. House of Rain is nonfiction but absolutely captivates you in the mystery of the Anasazi. I really like Water Knife by Bacigalupi but it kind of fundamentally misunderstands the hydrology of the Phoenix area.I love southwest. I would move to Flagstaff in an instant if the jobs paid well and the housing market there wasn't cunted. Stuck in LA sadly.
>>25159863>BM/Border trilogy has some great stuff.They did my boy John Grady dirty. All he wanted was his teenage blue-eyed senorita and to ride horses.
>>25159863Nice desert bro.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
>>25159863>Stuck in LASozz, lol
>>25158824I hate cities too, but this is true.
>>25160264Ghastly
>>25158677Canticle for Leibowitz
>>25158677From "My Confession" by Samuel Chamberlain>The scenery as we approached Parras was grand and often magnificent, high craggy mountains, deep canons, wild fearful passes which a dozzen determined men could have defended against our army for hours. Little or no resistance was offered to our advance. The Guerillars contented themselves in hanging around our flanks and rear and they served to keep our column well closed up. Woe to the unfor- tunate soldier who straggled behind. He was lassoed, stripped naked, and dragged through clumps of cactus until his body was full of needle-like thorns; then, his privates cut off and crammed into his mouth, he was left to die in the solitude of the chapperal or to be eaten alive by vultures and coyotes. Such were the daily acts of the Guerillars. Paso el Diablo is a strange freak of nature, a pass or canyon through the Sierra Madre, about nine miles north of the City of Parras. The pass was evidently of volcanic origin; vast rocks lay piled up in Titanic heaps of the most grotesque shapes, with layers of pumice stone in different places. It was expected this place would be strongly defended, and General Wool dispatched Colonel Yell’s regiment of Arkansas Cavalry to seize and hold it, if possible. They found the place undefended, and they encamped here until the Division came up. It was a wild fearful looking place, and I wondered, as we defiled through its narrow limits between the overhanging rocky walls, at the criminal apathy of the Mexican authorities. Ten men with crowbars by one hour's work could have rendered it impassable for days. But no obstacles were thrown in our way and our army, with its immense trains of waggons, passed through in safety and encamped at the Hacienda el Abuja, five miles beyond.
^cont.>I afterwards heard a tradition connected with the Pass which I call the Legend of San Patricio and the Devil. >His Satanic Majesty, while roaming around the world seeking whom he might devour, came to Parras to tempt a certain holy padre, Patricio by name, who bore the reputation of being a saint of the first water. The devil offered the holv Father long life and the sole proprietorship of a gold mine. in exchange for his soul. San Patricio accepted the bargain on two conditions: first, that the Devil should do the mining, second, that the gold should be sprinkled with Holy Water! His Satanic Majesty, who was undoubtedly fuddled on the rich Parras wine, agreed to the terms, and in the company of the good padre proceeded to this part of the Sierra Madre and commenced operations. A shaft was sunk, and gold soon reached and large quantities thrown out. The good Father threw on the Holy Water, with so much zeal that some of it flew into the pit and fell on the satanic miner! The effect was wonderful! With a howl of baffled rage and infernal malice, the Devil sprang through the mountain to his subterranean abode, leaving the saintly Father in possession of his soul, gold and long life, and Parras with a new pass through the mountains, shortening the route from Monterey two hundred miles.
>>25159984You're about 30 minutes and 2000 feet in altitude away from God's country (and tourist hell).Northern Arizona is like that. South of Flagstaff and you're in Sedona. If you go north of Flagstaff and you're in volcanic hills with lava rocks everywhere. Its really cool.
Okay... but what are the best books that are like that Simpsons episode about the Guatemalan insanity pepper though? Basically magical southwestern desert sheeit?!
>>25160928Anon... That's just The Teachings of Don Juan...
>>25158677Reading this right now. I 2nd Arabian Sands by Thesinger, too.
Glad to see desert solitaire mentioned
>>25158677Not a book, but one of my absolute favorite short stories:"In the penal colony" by Franz Kafka
