I agree with all of the above (where I know the book, which is a lot of them), except Stick and Rudder which I have never been able to finish. I cannot bear his attitude of “I’m a good ol’ boy, what do those college educated idiots know?”.
I’m currently reading a lot of airship history and would recommend as a very inspiring aviation read Dr Eckener’s My Zeppelins. The English translation is rare and expensive but this company does a cheaply produced facsimile:
http://www.caliverbooks.com/bookview.php?ihcp2rvf5qcias5mvmiqi22qr4&id=13910
I would love to know whether his rather delightful style is from the original German or from the translation.
At the moment I am reading “Flight of Passage” by Rinker Buck. It is a about two brothers(one of them is himself) renovating a Piper PA-11 and flying it across the US. He is a very good writer and it is inspiring to read.
dirkdj wrote:
I can very much recommend James Albright’s four books,They’re all very good. But I am a bit surprised at his description of the US Air Force as more or less a madhouse. Was it really as bad as he says?
He changed all the names and merged some personalities into one. From what I saw during my time in the BelgAF, I don’t think he added one bit to reality.
Just finished Digital Apollo. It’s a more high level look at the programme, but still with loads of fascinating detail.
I got about 3 pages into Stick and Rudder, but gave up: I didn’t like the tone.
Fate is the Hunter in my opinion is one of the best aviation books. It’s a good story, but more importantly very well written.
It’s rare I find flying books that are worth reading. Novels are usually based on the author’s popular perception of flying, probably from seat 10A of a B747, and are full of misconceptions or lack believable detail, e.g. “jumped into the Russian fighter jet and took off”. Autobiographical type books are usually dry, and even the most interesting life can be made boring by bad writing, e.g. ‘I did this, I went there…’.
Not really GA, but a stocking filler from Christmas, and worth reading: The Shepherd, a short story by Frederick Forsyth.
An RAF pilot flies a de Havilland Vampire home from West Germany on Christmas Eve. Over the North Sea, at night, he suffers a total electrical failure, a spinning compass, then finds fog covering his destination. Not somewhere anyone wants to be, especially pre-gps. The procedure is to fly in triangles over the coast until someone notices on radar and sends an interceptor. Doesn’t sound very promising, and whether this actually worked is key to the story.
It’s only 120 pages, half of which is illustrations, so a quick read. It’s quite atmospheric; the pilot might be young, but in 1957 there is still the shadow of WWII. The ending is eventually predictable, but getting there is some beautifully written prose which brings the cockpit to life. Despite being written in 1975 it reads well, and apart from over dramatic ‘dived’ instead of ‘descended’ it’s believable from a flying point of view. According to the back cover Forsyth soloed a Tiger Moth at 16 and was the RAF’s youngest fighter pilot at 19.
Yes; a wonderful story, by a great writer.
I am told by my “GF with 3000 books” 
the plot has been used in various other stories but it is still a great read.
The Shepherd is a great read but I prefer the spoken version – the Alan Maitland version is often considered to be the best –
About the most iconic aircraft of them all. A superb narrative by John Nichol of stories told by the men who flew the Spitfire:
https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Spitfire/John-Nichol/9781471159206
