Discussion: Best books in Orienteering

Hello Attackpoint.

Does anybody know which are the most intresting books in orienteering. I am talking about fiction and educational. I have read a few but nothing really that interesting if you arent a beginner.

This one is a classic crime story. I haven´t read it though...
Most of the educational books I know about would be in Swedish (unless the odd one has been translated).

There is a Hardy Boys mystery story based on orienteering, #75 in the 'Case files' series; called "No Way Out":
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/531183.No_Way_...

One of the multitude of scandinavian noir genre starts with an orienteer discovering a body. In this case fiction is no stranger than fact.

Crowood Sports Guide - Orienteering by Carol McNeill is the best current guide in English for everyone from beginner to expert.

Older (late 1970s) are 2 books by Wilf Holloway: Modern Orienteering Training (a good text for advanced orienteers), and Murder at the 14th Control - fiction.

Related to noir genre bodies - A few years (decades) ago, a Finnish mapper came across a body while working in the US on a map. Fearing what might happen to him if he went directly to the police, he waited till he was back in Finland to notify the authorities by sending them a O map with the bodies' location marked with an X (man made object). It turned out to be a murder victim and I believe he came back as a witness for the trial that ensued.
Anyone recall or have more details?

@simmo
Wilf has republished all his books. They are now available for reorder direct from him
http://wilf-holloway.de/prices/
With "Modern Orienteering Training" and "Murder at 14th control" his on the top authors both educational and fictional

For instructional books above the beginner level the two best in English that I found were/ are Orienteering: Skills and Strategies and Orienteering: Training and Performance.
Both were written by two Canadian orienteers from back in the 1980s. They are most certainly out of print now but two years ago I found the links to PDF copies somewhere on line and downloaded copies.
They are worth the search.
I know you say Canadian orienteers: how good could the books be? They were good writers and the books are generously illustrated. The authors were Ron Lowry and Ken Sidney. Their list of resource material acknowledges drawing on th wsork of Carol, Wilf and others mentioned above.
Well in the interest of full disclosure in one of the books you can see younger versions of such present day orienteering luminaries as Sara Mae Berman, Sharon Crawford (and myself) as well as Oivind Naess and the Hammer. Well okay the Hammer was younger but he hasn't changed.
Added: in one of the books Hammer is listed as responsible for the cartography. Eugene Mlynczyk is the illustrator for both books. Both these guys are still around orienteering today, still great guys.

I'm currently reading and enjoying Wilf Holloway's "Autobiographical Orienteering Anecdotes" (2014). Just as named, a collection of short reminiscences about a variety of his orienteering experiences. Laugh out loud funny in some places ("Emitting Endeavours" comes to mind), a little boring in others; overall, a good read. (Of course, YMMV.)

Any idea as to where to find PDFs of Orienteering: Skills and Strategies and Orienteering: Training and Performance.
Links?

I think Orienteering Canada may have PDF versions of them.

A book produce by OUSA has quite a bit of information, beginner through intermediate sections and lots of educational materials for teachers.
https://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Orienteering-Sk...

Brian,
I have print and pdf copies of both those books. I don't know how I got the pdf. It was 2 1/2 years ago and soon after I could not find them on line for free any more.
The copyright is owned by Orienteering Ontario or at least it was back in 1985.
If you work out a deal with them I'll gladly send you copies of the files.

Brian, Gord - I'm pretty sure Orienteering Canada worked out an agreement with Orienteering Ontario on the question of copyright. It was me that had the PDF done locally a few years ago of at least one of the two, at OC's request (they had put out a call to see who had a copy of the books), and with them having provided confirmation of OO's okay. Not sure if I still have the PDF file or proof of that okay, but I will look.

I would appreciate copies.
There’s a 2015 AP thread stating that copyright was worked out and the book PDF files were posted online but those links are not working.

Orienteering Ontario owns the copyright and obtained author permission to share the PDFs online for free. Anyone is welcome to share their copy of the PDF or book as long as it is shared for free.

Btw big thanks to Upnorthguy, who generously refused reimbursement for getting his copy of "Orienteering: Training and Performance" scanned professionally so Orienteering Ontario could upload it. And thanks to Charm for her magic method of shrinking large PDFs!

Unfortunately, a number of links were lost when the Orienteering Ontario website was moved to a new platform this year so the books aren't posted online right now (along with many other things). Since there is interest, I'll make it a priority to get the two books uploaded and I'll provide the new links in this discussion.

Brian,
I would send you the PDFs right now but as luck would have it I'm downloading a major file of Lidar information on to the computer that has them. Says I'll be able to do it in about an hour but I'll be asleep by then.
Stay tuned.

Karl Marx Capital. It will show the bearing to all those who are lost or disoriented

As always in orienteering, the task was more challenging than it appeared! Wix, our new website platform, will only link to PDFs of 25 MB or less but these files are around 35 MB. So I've put them on Google Drive and linked to that from our training page. (See the bottom.) Please report back to let me know if it's working for you. Thanks.
https://www.orienteeringontario.ca/train

Outstanding! Many thanks for quickly reposting the two books.

Thanks for the nudge. :) It needed to happen eventually.

I take a little issue with your intro to the books on your (excellent new) website:
"Although these books by published by Orienteering Ontario in the mid-1980s are outdated, they are still used around the world to teach orienteering concepts. Thanks to authors Ron Lowry and Ken Sidney for allowing us to share them here."

The books may be out of print. Some things amy have changed such as a Norcompass has become a thumb compass and the ways of measuring heart rates have adapted to new technology etc the books are far from outdated.
For one small example to illustrate a bit of instruction I want to do on holding and orienting a map to the terrain I have not been able to find better, simpler illustrations than theirs.
​

Good point; I’ll think of gentler language. The books were published in 1985 and 1989, and they look that way with their black and white photos - Hammer before he was legal to drink, vintage HR monitors, etc. That’s why it was determined to be too big a job to update the book and print a new edition, especially since the original materials were not passed down over the years. But the orienteering concepts are still relevant, which is why Orienteering Ontario tracked down the authors for permission to share the books for free.