Chuckles Mini Reviews Catchup

I review everything I read, on my blog and on Goodreads. Most reviews are of a decent length but sometimes you don't have much to say about the book because of its length or you DNFed it or various other reasons. In cases like that it makes sense to write a few mini reviews in one post and clear them out your way! So lets catch up with some reviews fromearlier this year.

1) Ken Jones-Darkness Descending
On New Year's Eve, 2004, as 27-year-old former special forces soldier Ken Jones attempted the ascent of Moldoveanu, Romania's highest peak, he was caught in a horrific avalanche that tossed him back down the mountain, leaving him with severe injuries including a broken femur and a smashed hip socket. Alone in a snowy wilderness without any way of calling for help he knew his chances of survival were slim.

Darkness Descending is the harrowing and psychologically compelling account of the next four freezing days and nights as he dragged himself to safety, battling constantly with extreme pain, biting cold, and his own, often hallucinatory swings between hope and despair.

This book was a bit vague and messy for my taste at the beginning. We start with a vague tale of his military career where he tells the reader he had a big mouth, hated authority and wasn't much of a team player so his career never really went anywhere. Not really the kind of person you want as your Army buddy huh. He mentions maybe going to University but is then suddenly talking about being on a train to climb a mountain in Romania. The sudden jump was puzzling as was the unfinished story. He mentions his interest in Dracula and I'd have liked him to maybe expand on it rather than a brief mention of places he wanted to visit like Castle Bran. Most Everest books cover the visits to a monastary for a blessing so it's a shame that this one didn't have a Dracula chapter to set the scene of where he was climbing and the local legends.

I didn't much like the guy to be honest. He spends a lot of time bragging about his superior skills and talents, his strength and how he can do hikes and climbs faster and better than others. I found him a bit of a blowhard with a superiority complex. It was this inflated view of himself that led to his downfall as he ignored all the warning signs, local advice, even his own gut feeling as he climbed. Even when noting the signs that there were avalanche risks in the area, he decides to ignore the safer route to have the 'challenge' of taking the risk. It ends in an avalanche and him being badly injured and alone on the mountain. I just found his attitude really offputting and it left me not really caring about how he escaped his crisis, so I DNFed.

Read April 2020
DNF 1.5 star.  

2) Quentin Letts-50 People Who Buggered Up Britain
Which fifty people made Britain the wreck she is? From ludicrous propagandist Alastair Campbell to the Luftwaffe's allies, the modernist architects, it's time to name the guilty.Quentin Letts sharpens his nib and stabs them where they deserve it, from TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh, the dumbed-down buffoon who put the 'h' in Aspidistra, to the perpetrators of the 'Credit Crunch'. Margaret Thatcher ruptured our national unity. The creators of EastEnders trashed our brand over high tea. Thus, he argues, are the people who made our country the ugly, scheming, cheating, beer-ridden bum of the Western world. Here are the fools and knaves and vulgarians who ripped down our British glories and imposed the tawdry and the trite. In a half century we have gone from end-of-Empire to descent-into-Hell.

I had such high hopes for this as I enjoy his newspaper columns but it wasn't as good as I expected it to be. It had good bits looking at useless decisions like the Dangerous Dogs Act, getting rid of the Nine O'Clock News, the shooting of poor Jean Charles de Menezes and the officer in charge of the debacle taking a bonus on his pay. I also agreed when he vented his spleen over the total hysteria at Diana's death where wailing people outside the Palace thought the Queen should be in London consoling them rather than looking after Harry and William in privacy at Balmoral. That totally disgusted me too. I agree with his thoughts on modern art, the slimy oik Paul Burrell selling his soul to make money out of Diana's death, Tony Blair's dodgy dossier and Ted Heath leading the charge that being concerned about uncontrolled immigration makes you a racist.  But there were other bits of the book that were dull and were more like rants than making any real sense like his hatred of happy clappy hymns. It just wasn't a consistant read and didn't really grab me and keep me entertained.

Read Mar 2020
2.5 star.

3) Quentin Letts-Patronising Bastards
Not since Marie Antoinette said 'Let them eat cake' have the peasants been so revolting. Western capitalism's elites are bemused: Brexit, Trump, and maybe more eruptions to follow. But their rulers were so good to them! Hillary Clinton called the ingrates 'a basket of deplorables', Bob Geldof flicked them a V sign, Tony Blair thought voters too thick to understand the question. Wigged judges stared down their legalistic noses at a surging, pongy populous. These people who know best, these snooterati with their faux-liberal ways, are the 'Patronising Bastards'. Their downfall is largely of their own making - their Sybaritic excesses, an obsession with political correctness, the prolonged rape of reason and rite. You'll find these self-indulgent show-ponys not just in politics and the cloistered old institutions but also in high fashion, football, among the clean-eating foodies and at the Baftas and Oscars, where celebritydom hires PR smoothies to massage reputations and mislead, distort, twist.

I went into this book expecting a read about a Brexit supporter hitting out at all the lefties and MPs who tried to thwart democracy by blocking us leaving the EU after the Referendum. Yes there was some of that and those opening couple of chapters were entertaining. But it then seemed to descend into just having a go at everyone he doesn't like and frankly some of the reasons given were a bit dumb. And who really cares if he thinks Alan Milburn was good looking or not? Some of the digs were nasty and it didn't keep the lighthearted humour that I expected from reading his columns in the newspaper. It just wasn't my kind of thing.

Read Mar 2020
2 star.

4) Erik Weihenmayer-Touch The Top Of The World
Erik Weihenmayer was born with retinoscheses, a degenerative eye disorder that would leave him blind by the age of thirteen. But Erik was determined to rise above this devastating disability and lead a fulfilling and exciting life. In this poignant and inspiring memoir, he shares his struggle to push past the limits imposed on him by his visual impairment-and by a seeing world. He speaks movingly of the role his family played in his battle to break through the barriers of blindness: the mother who prayed for the miracle that would restore her son's sight and the father who encouraged him to strive for that distant mountaintop. And he tells the story of his dream to climb the world's Seven Summits, and how he is turning that dream into astonishing reality (something fewer than a hundred mountaineers have done).

From the snow-capped summit of McKinley to the towering peaks of Aconcagua and Kilimanjaro to the ultimate challenge, Mount Everest, this is a story about daring to dream in the face of impossible odds. It is about finding the courage to reach for that ultimate summit, and transforming your life into something truly miraculous.

Erik spent his childhood dealing with the gradual loss of his sight and slowly being unable to do all the things that he enjoyed so much. His rebellion against those who tried to help him adapt and be self sufficient did seem a bit silly as the only person who suffered from refusing to adapt was himself. Eventually he realises that and it changes his life. The book follows the challenges that he deals with in his education and trying to find a job, getting used to having a guide dog and trying to do normal things. He discovers a love of hiking and then climbing, which takes Erik and his family on adventures around the world that most of us can only dream of. It also covers finding love and getting married. Most of the book concentrates on his life and getting the most he can out of it.

I did think that there was going to be more about his climbing career rather than his adventures in bars that he sneaked into and using his dog Wizard to pick up women. I did find his attitude of steering clear of ugly women using subtle signals from his friends rather disappointing as he would've been upset to be rejected on the basis of being blind. His climbing adventures on Denali and Aconcagua were much more interesting to read about. He decides that he now wants to climb Everest and it is squeezed in as an afterthought at the end of the book and lacked the detail and interest that I had hoped for, which was a pity. It did make it sound as if climbing Everest was really easy for him. More biographical than climbing epic but still an interesting read.  

Read Apr 2020
3 stars.