Mike wrote, "Many, are as you noted, narrations by good pilots with interesting stories told to not very talented writers. I've gritted my teeth while reading what should have been a wonderful story, but because of the inability of the author, the story became just another "Me and Joe went flying" story".
All too true, and what tripped my trigger to post this since none of you mentioned Nevil Shute. My favorite bush flying story is his 'An Old Captivity'. About half the book is fiction, and half true. The 'dream' sequences are true, based on historical documents, the rest fiction.
Most of Shute's 24 books involved aviation to some degree. By the time of his death in the 60's, he had become the best selling author in the English language, indicative of his general ability. But many people aren't aware that under his real name (Nevil Shute Norway) he was a damn good pilot and one of the best aeronautical engineers in the world, founder, CEO, and chief designer for Airspeed, Ltd. (one of the world's largest aviation design and manufacturing firms prior to WWII, responsible for the Oxford Envoy among other planes), and that he was initially chief calculator and eventually chief engineer for the R-100, the most efficient airship that ever flew. R-100 was built in direct competition with the disastrous R-101 and was embarrassingly better. Which may be one of the reasons that R-100 was scrapped after the wreck of the 101. Norway was on board on all but one of the flights that 100 ever made. His autobiography 'Sliderule' talks a lot about construction of the 100 and the 101 competition.
But back to his other books, 'An Old Captivity' was directly responsible for Parks Canada inviting me to fly up to L'anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland to work on the Old Norse settlement at Epaves Bay (two days each way from Olive Branch, Mississippi to St. Anthony, Newfoundland by Cherokee Six, loaded to the gills with folks, surveying equipment, and computer). I credit 'An Old Captivity' for inspiring our efforts and indirectly for our finding of a previously undocumented room in Hall 'F' at the old Norse settlement. So it was a worthwhile book for me. A great book about fabulous bush flying, written by someone who knew what he was talking about.
Now back to Shute. Some of his other aviaton books include 'No Highway in the Sky' (the movie starred Jimmy Stewart) which was the first public mention of metal fatigue failures in aircraft, 18 months before the the real-life BOAC Comet fatigue failures. Also 'Round the Bend', 'The Rainbow and the Rose', 'Stephen Morris', 'Marazan', and 'In the Wet' which accurately predicted the performance of business jets that weren't built till 30 years after the book was published. And several others that were aviation oriented, but you get the idea. This guy is still very readable, and a great story-teller.
And to digress, Robert A. Heinlein's novelette 'The Menace From Earth' about human-powered ornithopters ain't half bad either.
Also, Arthur C. Clarke's book 'Glidepath', about his involvement in the initial development of ground controlled approaches. In additon to writing the movie '2001', Clarke was the man who came up with the initial concept of geosynchronus communications satellites back in the 40's. Tried to patent it, but was refused because the idea was rediculous.
JimC