Happy Camper: An Essential Guide to Life Outdoors Book

This is undoubtedly the best camping book I've ever encountered. I do a lot of hiking and paddling and The Happy Camper is helpful and encouraging and will make you happy while you're being bitten by mosquitoes. This book has beginner to intermediate advice on every camping topic: gear, camping with kids, camping with dogs, campsites, solo camping, scary animals, weather, orienteering, deciding who to go with, first aid, and lots more. All topics are helpfully illustrated with pictures of Mr. Callan and his friends doing silly things with canoes. Everything else aside: It's not boring. Too many camping books are thick tomes with extremely detailed written instructions on how to light a gas stove or choose the best route on a topo map. That would be helpful if you were to bring the thick and heavy book along with you to the wilderness and use it as a reference out there, but it's better to have a general of what you're doing before you go and bring along one of those skinny Backpacker magazine publications or a knowledgeable friend as a reference. (This book is not thick, but it is heavy because of photos, and should be carried along on camping trips only with serious forethought.) The Happy Camper, with its short, clear instructions, will give you the confidence to start camping or go a little bit farther.

(Kevin Callan is a Canadian, so the information in The Happy Camper is most pertinent to people planning to camp in boreal forest with lakes.)