kgohl

It’s free and it’s short—fortunately

Revisado: 01-24-25

Three young and inexperienced climbers attempt one of the more difficult and underrated mountains in the Americas. You can guess what happens next. It’s fairly melodramatic, and the ending is just silly—they wanted to tie it all up, I guess.

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This is not a biography of Amundsen—it’s better

Revisado: 12-14-24

Indeed, this is not a biography of Amundsen, which is what I’d expected and was curious about. In fact, this is a much more interesting book—almost a series of essay—about various, mostly Norwegian, explorers, and the author’s fascination with them. These tales are interspersed with the author’s chronicle of some of her cold water swimming exploits in Greenland, Alaska, and Antarctica. It’s an extraordinary book, but you’re not going to like it if you can’t just go with the flow (sorry). I have no idea why the publisher would advertise this book as a biography of Amundsen. The narrator was fine but at times perhaps overenthusiastic, which could be heard as naive.

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PDF?

Revisado: 12-02-24

I love this book—the text, the recipes, the author’s narration—so where’s the pdf for the recipes? Come on!

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Too much chitchat

Revisado: 12-01-24

I had a hard time finishing this book. First, there’s endless girlish chitchat among the characters that has little to do with the plot; it became incredibly tiresome. Then there’s the premise that someone can actually make a living as a hand knitter of sweaters. That’s ridiculous, and anyone who knits knows it is. The characters themselves were interesting, but geez—get on with the story and stop the chatting about.

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I’m annoyed as hell!

Revisado: 08-26-24

Am I the only person here who expects that at the end of a book there will be some sort of resolution aside from the detective’s wife having twins? There are two criminals followed throughout the book, and by the end nothing has been resolved, one is on the lamm, both are considering killing Warwick—and a satisfactory ending is presumably the birth of twins? Really?

Overall the book was quite good, it’s just that it came to an abrupt and ridiculous end. I’m really annoyed.

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Lovely

Revisado: 08-22-24

Of course it’s lovely—it’s John McPhee. It’s interesting, and somewhat surprising, to compare his fears for the Pine Barrens back in the 60s and 70s with the current state of the place.

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I loved it.

Revisado: 08-22-24

This is a lovely book—sort of what I’d expected from the description—and I enjoyed the whole bloody thing. I’d probably even read it again in a year or so, but then I’m one of those people who actually read hiking books. My only query, and perhaps I’ve misremembered the mileage details, but I think it takes longer than 10 or 12 days to hike the Wainwright across Britain.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

Not bad, really

Revisado: 08-22-24

I found this book and the narrator amusing, and the plot twists unusual. The author had me until we got to torture and digging up bodies, which I really hadn’t signed up for. I’ve left it unfinished, I’m afraid—I find it hard to do humor and gruesome at the same time.

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More than an adventure story

Revisado: 06-04-24

When I first began this book I thought, oh no, this is another book about how inexperienced, incompetent hikers learned backcountry skills through misery and but eventually came to love the trail. These are themes that do run through the volume, but in the end they are only a small part of the book. For me the best parts were the actual hikes—where the two went, who went with them, how they pulled them off—as well as the sections on the history of the canyon—its geology, the native tribes who lived there and their history with the Forest Service, earlier forays into the area by boaters and hikers, present-day threats to the canyon, and the camaraderie among the small group of those who hike the canyon off trail. This book is much more interesting than originally promised.

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A disappointment

Revisado: 05-24-24

Oh dear—I’d expected tales of wild camping along the many footpaths and in the bothys of the UK, but so far it seems mostly a treatise on where in the UK you may and may not legally camp, what people have been trying to do about it, whether it’s fair or not. Frankly the book is boring unless you’re something of a legal scholar and live in the UK. I’ve tried to return it but Audible isn’t cooperating.

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