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 from earlier this year.

1) Steve House-Beyond The Mountain 
What does it take to be one of the world's best high-altitude mountain climbers? A lot of fundraising; traveling in some of the world's most dangerous countries; enduring cold bivouacs, searing lungs, and a cloudy mind when you can least afford one. It means learning the hard lessons the mountains teach. Steve House built his reputation on ascents throughout the Alps, Canada, Alaska, the Karakoram and the Himalaya that have expanded possibilities of style, speed, and difficulty. In 2005 Steve and alpinist Vince Anderson pioneered a direct new route on the Rupal Face of 26,600-foot Nanga Parbat, which had never before been climbed in alpine style. It was the third ascent of the face and the achievement earned Steve and Vince the first Piolet d"or (Golden Ice Axe) awarded to North Americans.

I didn't like the attitude of the author from the start. When Bruce wants to turn and go back due to how slow Steve is climbing, it is a weakness in Bruce, not Steve. Steve thinks because he is willing to die to summit that others should be as reckless and he is mad that Bruce has actually saved his life. A climber decides not to try a second climb and Steve sneers that the man's recent divorce has made him weak. He sneers at the people who choose to do proper jobs like teachers, taxi drivers, scientists as they are sellouts to the Man and don't deserve a better life. What a total asshole this guy is. It's people doing jobs like driving you to the airport, treating you in hospital, flying planes etc that allow you to climb, you womble. Here are his thoughts. 'That is the ultimate sellout-to work for the man. To cast your only soul into a hell of cubicles and workstations and dollar bills. And if they don't see this, they don't deserve the chance to find out who they might become.' Yet he of course thinks others have no right to pass comment on his choices!

He also seems to care little about people who are meant to be his friends. On hearing about one death, his immediate thought isn't for his friend or their family-it was about how to persuade a girl he fancies to go out with him. I also didn't like the writing style which was choppy, incoherant and had no flow to it. He meets his team at Base Camp, he's sick at Camp One, we jump back to how he got on the team, back to mid climb, back to how he got sick...it was all over the place. I wanted to read about the climbing events in order as they happened but this book was jumping ahead and jumping back so often that I just couldn't enjoy the climbing bits. And not liking the author at all made it hard to get invested in the story. I certainly won't read anything else this man produces.

Read April 2020
1.5 star

2) Mark Pfetzer-Within Reach
In May 1996 the media scrambled to document the gripping story of sixteen-year-old Mark Pfetzer's expedition to Mount Everest. Not only was he the youngest climber ever to attempt the summit, he also witnessed the tragedy documented in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, in which eight climbers perished in a sudden storm. Within Reach is Mark's extraordinary account of this experience and of his triumphs over several other challenging peaks. At once triumphant and tragic, this story will be an inspiration to climbers, athletes, and armchair enthusiasts alike. 

Frankly, the author is a self obsessed entitled little brat whose indulgent parents let him do anything he wants to do with little regard for safety and common sense. I want to go ice climbing at 13-yes dear. I want to go trekking in Nepal at 13 without my parents-yes dear. I want strangers to pay all the costs for me-yes dear. I want Mummy to arrange permission for me to skip school-yes dear. GAG. If he is the superb go getting achiever who gets all his goals, why didn't he get off his arse and get a job to pay for his whims instead of writing bleating begging letters to others to pay for it all? And the thanks the parents get for pandering to him? He ignores them at the airport because they are embarrassing. Nice. His bragging about how easy everything is bugs when when it was all handed to him without earning any of it for himself! Of course it's bloody easy when Mummy and co do it all for you! When he hears of others on the climb dying, it's obviously because they aren't as great and careful as him. Ugh, talk about an entitled brat!

Mark constantly claims he didn't have any interest in setting age related climbing goals but he certainly seems to brag about the records all the time each time he gets one. The actual writing about Everest and the killer storm was pretty poor and a major disappointment as that was the big selling point in the blurb and the reason I wanted to read it. It claims he was a witness to the infamous 1996 Everest disaster but in truth, he was in his tent sleeping and not invested at all in what was happening. The little he wrote about the aftermath was very much in a detached manner and lacked detail, emotion and interest. It was all very vague and dull. In truth this is a YA version of the expedition climbs, written by someone glowing with his own success who likes to remind us how good but humble he is and of all the records he breaks. I don't doubt his talent as a climber but I got tired of the childish ego and I can't say that I enjoyed the book.

Read April 2020
2 star 

3) Jules Mountain-Aftershock
Jules Mountain is a survivor. The odds of surviving his type of cancer were one in five; the odds of dying on Everest are one in sixty. But just as he reaches Base Camp in April 2015, the giant earthquake in Nepal sets off an avalanche that will kill 21 . Jules is within touching distance of his life's ambition and is now faced with an agonising choice about his next move. Aftershock is a heart-stopping eyewitness account of the deadliest day in history on the world's most iconic mountain. It is also an exploration of the choices we make in life, and throws up difficult questions about how logic and compassion can be affected by altitude and extreme stress. 

This is the first book I've read about the earthquake that hit Nepal and Mount Everest in 2015, the devastation shown all over the news. The book got off to a rocky start with the author rightly trying to test himself in difficult conditions to prepare for interest. Whilst I applauded his preperation, I found it selfish that he dragged along his poorly eqipped friend to help test the equipment in a blizzard, putting poor Fred at risk of frostbite. Jules got on my nerves by refusing to follow any of the rules for the expeditions he joined. He refused to get up for an early start to the climb then raced to catch up so he could be seen to beat the others to prove how great he was. He races other climbers up and down the mountain to show he can beat them when it is all about adapting to the conditions. He hates guides and their rules so he ignores them and frequently shows that he'll do what suits him and sod being a team player. I don't know if he expects the reader to be impressed by his childish behaviour but I wasn't. He of course takes time to brag about all his talents in case we missed his greatness.

In the aftermath of the earthquake he lends a hand with medical help for the injured which I do commend him for, but at times it sounds more as if he resents the injured for being there and forcing him to look after them. He spends time being critical of how others are acting, not considering that they might be suffering from shock. He barely mentions his loved ones back home worrying about him and we barely get a mention of him trying to contact them. As soon as the injured are taken away, he's focused on getting up Everest. I don't grudge him that as these expeditions are costly and you might not get another chance to come back. I do get their obsession in a sense. There were interesting bits in this book, especially the situation after the earthquake, but again it was spoiled by the author behaving like an ass during training. I'm getting a bit tired of this trend in expedition books.

I also found the continual comments about drinking 'Her Maj's Finest' really annoying. Can't you just say you had a cup of bloody tea???

Read May 2020
2.5 star