August 30, 2015

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer 3.5/5 stars

Hey, guys!  Sorry that I haven't posted recently!  To be honest, I just haven't had the time to read with school starting back.  I meant to post this review about a week ago but got behind.  Sorry!
I read Into Thin Air for my Summer Reading book this year.  (Well, I actually chose Pride and Prejudice and had to abandon that (more to come on that disaster of a book).)  Into Thin Air seemed much better.  According to descriptions it was Jon Krakauer's account of his perilous climb up Mount Everest.  While I can't deny that it was, I was also a whole bunch of irrelevant mountain statistics.  It wasn't a bad book, but it was very heavy and very little happened for the first two thirds.
Anyways, the cover:
The Cover:
It is formatted like a newspaper article (in a way), like Jon's role in climbing Mount Everest, a journalist.  The photo is of Everest in a storm.  It fits the book well, but it isn't a particularly interesting cover.  B cover.

Official Description:
On May 9th 1996, five expeditions launched an assault on the summit of Mount Everest. The conditions seemed perfect. Twenty-four hours later one climber had died and 23 other men and women were caught in a desperate struggle for their lives as they battled against a ferocious storm that threatened to tear them from the mountain. In all, eight climbers died that day in the worst tragedy Everest has ever seen. 
Jon Krakauer, an accomplished climber, joined a commercial expedition run by guides for paying clients, many of whom had little or no climbing experience. In Into Thin Air he gives a thorough and chilling account of the ill-fated climb and reveals the complex web of decisions and circumstances that left a group of amateurs fighting for their lives in the thin air and sub-zero cold above 26,000 feet - a place climbers call 'The Death Zone'. Into Thin Air reveals the harsh realities of mountaineering and echoes with frantic calls of climbers lost high on the mountain and way beyond help.


My Review:
I enjoyed Into Thin Air once the storyline truly started moving.  However, that took probably 250-300 pages.  Those first pages were full with all of the factual information about Everest and the backstories of characters that you could ever want to know.
The author introduced a few too many irrelevant characters and would rarely bring them back up again.  This led to some confusion of who the characters were and whether or not they would be important later on.
I just didn't find myself engaged in the story.  If you are interested in Everest, I would recommend Into Thin Air because I actually learned a lot.  If not, maybe choose a different book.

Phrase:
Altitude Sickness

Happy Reading!

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