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nancyadelman 's review for:
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
by David Grann
British explorer Percy Fawcett spent most of his life exploring the Amazon on a number of missions, including one that he never came back from. He was obsessed with finding the mythical city that he referred to simply as "Z" and which may have been El Dorado. Since then, many more explorers have gone to the Amazon to find Fawcett or his "Z" or both 
This is the premise of this (nonfiction) book: a partial bio of Fawcett and a mission by the author to find the truth. The story is told in an alternating POV between Fawcett at the turn of the 20th century and the author in the early days of the 21st century. To be perfectly honest, the early pages of this book are pretty dense reading. There are a lot of facts and people and it's all quite detailed. This is not a bad thing as I found this all very fascinating stuff (particularly about the origins of the Amazon river and the things that live in and around it).
There are so many different facets to this book that it literally has something for everyone in between the covers. Explorers getting all manner of bad diseases and fighting amongst themselves. Swashbuckling Indiana Jones types. Cannibal Indians. A little love story. Animals of all sorts. History. Science. And of course the mythical city of Z. Did he find it? Did anyone find it? I'm not telling; you'll have to read it yourself
Of course, the deeper I got into the book, the more interesting the book became. At the start of the book, I would have given this book 3.5 stars out of five, but by the middle it became a solid 4 and certainly by the last pages it had exceeded five stars out of five. This is the very rare book that when you finish it, you say "that was fun, I want to read that again." And I do plan on re-reading it, which is a very rare thing indeed, because usually I read a book once and I'm done and on to the next. It's also the sort of book that you give to someone and say read this, read this, it's just so good.
This is the premise of this (nonfiction) book: a partial bio of Fawcett and a mission by the author to find the truth. The story is told in an alternating POV between Fawcett at the turn of the 20th century and the author in the early days of the 21st century. To be perfectly honest, the early pages of this book are pretty dense reading. There are a lot of facts and people and it's all quite detailed. This is not a bad thing as I found this all very fascinating stuff (particularly about the origins of the Amazon river and the things that live in and around it).
There are so many different facets to this book that it literally has something for everyone in between the covers. Explorers getting all manner of bad diseases and fighting amongst themselves. Swashbuckling Indiana Jones types. Cannibal Indians. A little love story. Animals of all sorts. History. Science. And of course the mythical city of Z. Did he find it? Did anyone find it? I'm not telling; you'll have to read it yourself
Of course, the deeper I got into the book, the more interesting the book became. At the start of the book, I would have given this book 3.5 stars out of five, but by the middle it became a solid 4 and certainly by the last pages it had exceeded five stars out of five. This is the very rare book that when you finish it, you say "that was fun, I want to read that again." And I do plan on re-reading it, which is a very rare thing indeed, because usually I read a book once and I'm done and on to the next. It's also the sort of book that you give to someone and say read this, read this, it's just so good.