5 out of 5 stars
Non-fiction; articles about climbers
On Amazon UK HERE
On Amazon.com HERE
On Goodreads HERE
Eiger Dreams is a terrific collection of (mostly) previously published articles by mountaineering maestro, outdoorsman and internationally acclaimed writer Jon Krakauer.
I loved every one of these, there's not one single weak one. He writes about the summer when thirteen experienced climbers were killed on K2, about the glacier pilots of Talkeetna in Alaska who fly the climbers out to base camps (a very risky business to be in!), and about the snobbery amongst the European mountaineering community of Chamonix. There is much humour, too ~ an amusing piece about the English Burgess brothers, Yorkshire 'scallywags' of the climbing world, and about the boredom of being stuck in a tent in inclement weather.
Best of all, at the end, there's a longer version of Krakauer's own experience, when he was twenty-three, of taking on the fearsome Devil's Thumb in Alaska ~ on his own (a shorter version is included in Into The Wild). It's thrilling, funny and fascinating all at the same time, and the more I read all of these the more I wanted to know about the unusual people who become obsessed with this most dangerous of sports.
Very, very readable and highly recommended.
INTO THIN AIR by Jon Krakauer is reviewed HERE, with links to my reviews of INTO THE WILD, UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN, AND MISSOULA
Thanks for visiting :) You can find books in similar genres/with similar star ratings/by the same author by clicking on tags at the end of the reviews. These are my own reading choices only; I do not accept submissions. If you would like to follow me on Twitter, I'm @TerryTyler4. Comments welcome; your email will not be kept for mailing lists or any other use, and nor will it appear on the comment. For my own books, just click the cover for the Amazon link.
Thursday, 17 March 2016
EIGER DREAMS: Ventures among Men and Mountains by Jon Krakauer
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Oh my goodness LOL Another for my ever growing list :-)
ReplyDeleteGo on, go on!!! I have at least two more of his to read....! Then I think I will have to fly to Seattle and hold a gun to his head until he writes me another one :)
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