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4.24 AVERAGE
4.24 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Wildest shit I've ever read. It feels weird rating this since it's something that actually happened.
medium-paced
I watched Everest (2015) and will admit my curiosity got the better of me. It’s very strange to me that this turned out to be the second time I read a Krakauer book. Way back in 2016 I read Missoula. I dont remember a lot of Missoula, but I do remember that Krakauer is quite skilled at this kind of investigative writing.
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
fast-paced
TL;DR: Incredible and heart breaking. This is a review of both the film Everest (2015) and this book. Both are phenomenal, but the book is better.
I picked up this book after seeing Everest in theatres. I thought the movie was phenomenal and wanted to read more about the disaster from the perspective of one of the climbers. I read online that Into Thin Air was the best personal account of what happened. And boy, was it ever. My review is going to compare the two. Even though this is a true story and the entire disaster can be read about on Wikipedia, I still don't want to give too many details away in my review. This book is worth reading (and the movie is worth watching), even if mountains and mountaineering doesn't interest you.
I've read that a lot of people say they love Jon's writing and others say they don't like it. I personally found his writing to be awesome. I just put one of his other highly rated books Into The Wild on my "to read" list.
I personally think Jon's book and perspective was much better than the film, and that was to be expected. If the film was supposed to be a visual telling of Jon's book, they missed out on a few key things, in my opinion. The first: I think they didn't do a good enough job showing just how severely confused and exhausted the climbers were on that day both before, during and after the storm. Jon did a phenomenal job describing not only the affects of the altitude in their acclimatization weeks leading up to the summit day, but also in describing how hypoxia, HACE (high altitude cerebral edema) and HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema) were experienced by the majority of the climbers, whereas I thought the movie didn't really nail that visually at all. As an example, I thought that the actors should have been breathing much heavier during pretty much the entire movie because, hello, that is what you'd be doing any time you're above Base Camp. This is one reason why I loved this book, because holy crap, Jon nailed the descriptions. Knowing that all that can happen to your body makes me nope right out of ever climbing Everest, even if one day I do learn the proper mountaineering techniques. Base Camp is a high enough goal for me at 17,598 ft (and an 8 day trek to get there).
I also loved this book because Jon really goes into detail about all the Sherpas and who they are and you actually get a sense of just how damn important they are on these expeditions to summit Everest. This is another thing that the movie didn't emphasize enough on at all, and I think that was a mistake. Everest would not have as high of a successful summit number that it does if it wasn't for the Sherpas.
Lastly, regarding Andy Harris. This is one part of the disaster that I don't know if it would have been better reading this book first and then seeing the film or the other way around which is the way I did it. I think that they grossly over simplified the situation with Andy. In fact when I read this book, I was shocked to find out what actually happened, and it almost made me cry. Let's just say, if I was part of Andy Harris' family, I'd probably hate Everest for the way they handled Andy's story in the film.
Alright, onto what both the book and the film together nailed. First, Beck Weathers... what an insane man. His situation was visually perfect and truly captured what Jon described Beck looked like. This was the only time during the movie and while reading the book that I cringed. Probably because I could never imagine the same happening to myself. Second, Jon talked a lot in this book about the commercialization of Everest and how a lot of inexperienced climbers were now finding their way on the mountain seeking the top. While the film could have included a lot more detail, I think that they did a good job of showing this as well. The bottleneck situation, for example.
My 5 star rating is for the book. I will gladly read this over and over again and still be shocked, sad, angry, etc. every single time. I originally would have rated the film a 4 but that's been knocked down to 3 since reading this book. Overall, both this book and the film have interested me in such a way that I now want to read [b:The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest|925367|The Climb Tragic Ambitions on Everest|Anatoli Boukreev|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1311995989l/925367._SY75_.jpg|910376] and [b:Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest|18571|Left for Dead My Journey Home from Everest|Beck Weathers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403182611l/18571._SY75_.jpg|19962]. The more personal accounts of this disaster, the better I think!
I picked up this book after seeing Everest in theatres. I thought the movie was phenomenal and wanted to read more about the disaster from the perspective of one of the climbers. I read online that Into Thin Air was the best personal account of what happened. And boy, was it ever. My review is going to compare the two. Even though this is a true story and the entire disaster can be read about on Wikipedia, I still don't want to give too many details away in my review. This book is worth reading (and the movie is worth watching), even if mountains and mountaineering doesn't interest you.
I've read that a lot of people say they love Jon's writing and others say they don't like it. I personally found his writing to be awesome. I just put one of his other highly rated books Into The Wild on my "to read" list.
I personally think Jon's book and perspective was much better than the film, and that was to be expected. If the film was supposed to be a visual telling of Jon's book, they missed out on a few key things, in my opinion. The first: I think they didn't do a good enough job showing just how severely confused and exhausted the climbers were on that day both before, during and after the storm. Jon did a phenomenal job describing not only the affects of the altitude in their acclimatization weeks leading up to the summit day, but also in describing how hypoxia, HACE (high altitude cerebral edema) and HAPE (high altitude pulmonary edema) were experienced by the majority of the climbers, whereas I thought the movie didn't really nail that visually at all. As an example, I thought that the actors should have been breathing much heavier during pretty much the entire movie because, hello, that is what you'd be doing any time you're above Base Camp. This is one reason why I loved this book, because holy crap, Jon nailed the descriptions. Knowing that all that can happen to your body makes me nope right out of ever climbing Everest, even if one day I do learn the proper mountaineering techniques. Base Camp is a high enough goal for me at 17,598 ft (and an 8 day trek to get there).
I also loved this book because Jon really goes into detail about all the Sherpas and who they are and you actually get a sense of just how damn important they are on these expeditions to summit Everest. This is another thing that the movie didn't emphasize enough on at all, and I think that was a mistake. Everest would not have as high of a successful summit number that it does if it wasn't for the Sherpas.
Lastly, regarding Andy Harris. This is one part of the disaster that I don't know if it would have been better reading this book first and then seeing the film or the other way around which is the way I did it. I think that they grossly over simplified the situation with Andy. In fact when I read this book, I was shocked to find out what actually happened, and it almost made me cry. Let's just say, if I was part of Andy Harris' family, I'd probably hate Everest for the way they handled Andy's story in the film.
Alright, onto what both the book and the film together nailed. First, Beck Weathers... what an insane man. His situation was visually perfect and truly captured what Jon described Beck looked like. This was the only time during the movie and while reading the book that I cringed. Probably because I could never imagine the same happening to myself. Second, Jon talked a lot in this book about the commercialization of Everest and how a lot of inexperienced climbers were now finding their way on the mountain seeking the top. While the film could have included a lot more detail, I think that they did a good job of showing this as well. The bottleneck situation, for example.
My 5 star rating is for the book. I will gladly read this over and over again and still be shocked, sad, angry, etc. every single time. I originally would have rated the film a 4 but that's been knocked down to 3 since reading this book. Overall, both this book and the film have interested me in such a way that I now want to read [b:The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest|925367|The Climb Tragic Ambitions on Everest|Anatoli Boukreev|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1311995989l/925367._SY75_.jpg|910376] and [b:Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest|18571|Left for Dead My Journey Home from Everest|Beck Weathers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403182611l/18571._SY75_.jpg|19962]. The more personal accounts of this disaster, the better I think!
adventurous
informative
tense
medium-paced
insanity
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced