Are you as much of a bookworm as you are a high-flying athlete? We know just what that’s like, ‘cause we are, too! Here are a few of our favorite sky-themed reads to keep you flipping the pages on a weather hold. Make sure to bring your highlighters and post-its to the party!

Transcending Fear: The Doorway to Freedom

by Brian Germain

Brian Germain is a unique athlete indeed. As a World Champion skydiver, test pilot and psychologist, Brian Germain offers a unique perspective on the phenomenon of fear. No matter what your personal relationship to the heebie-jeebies, Germain’s adroit assessment of fear’s origins and solutions will help you in both your skydiving and your everyday life. The book covers lots of thrilling personal anecdotes over Germain’s expansive skydiving career, as well as plenty of current research on the subject and a range of excellent strategies for de-escalation.

Base 66: A Story of Fear, Fun, and Freefall

by Jevto Dedijer

In the bloodsport of BASE jumping, you get your “BASE number” by documenting your jumps from a building (“B”), antenna (“A”), bridge (“S,” for ‘span’) and cliff (“E,” for ‘earth’). Jevto Dedijer is BASE 66, or the 66th person to have successfully done so. BASE numbers are well into the 2,000’s now, so being a double-digit is a big deal. As #66, Jevto was in it on the ground floor, and lots of people around him were dying trying to figure it out.

BASE 66 is as true a story is as ever told in BASE: that is, a rollicking retelling of bad behavior, bad decisions, and beer. (There’s other stuff in there, too, but that’s what you’ll remember.) People die. People make friends for life. People do extraordinary things for breakfast and then do even more extraordinary things after lunch. It’s a fun read.

Sugar Alpha: The Life and Times of Senor Huevos Grandes

by Roger Nelson & Melissa Nelson

In this riveting read, skydiving legend Melissa Nelson-Lowe tells her uber-legend dad’s brilliant one-last-score story. The fact that this wild story is inarguably true makes it even more riveting and proves that truth is much stranger (and more page-turning, for the most part!) than fiction. Spoiler: If you didn’t know how much the skydiving industry owes to the drug-smuggling underworld, this information might come as something of a surprise.

Above All Else: A World Champion Skydiver’s Story of Survival and What It Taught Him About Fear, Adversity, and Success

by Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld

Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld survived the worst day in skydiving. One fateful day, the skydiving aircraft he was on crashed, killing 16 of the 22 skydivers on board. Critically injured, he woke up after six weeks with a broken neck, a fractured skull and collapsed lung, among other grievous internal injuries. With enormous effort and dedication, he recovered from those wounds to become one of the greatest competitive skydivers and coaches in the world. In this book, he tells his story and describes his techniques to achieve not just recovery but peak performance.

Mental Training For Skydiving And Life

by John Derosalia

Another peak performance handbook by a skydiving athlete/motivation and performance-enhancement specialist, Derosalia’s book is aimed at both skydivers and non-skydivers, though skydivers would probably benefit from it most. The book is written to deliver practical methods and techniques for designing realistic plans to achieve goals. It’s full of tools for cognitive optimization, teamwork, visualization and anxiety mitigation.

How’s that for a reading list? We’ll see you at our fast-fallin’ book club this weekend!