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amerynth 's review for:
Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest
by Beck Weathers
I can't get enough of climbing memoirs, but Beck Weathers' book "Left for Dead" is not really that kind of book. It is, in part at least, the story of his remarkable survival in the deadly 1996 season on Mount Everest, where he was left for dead but survived.
In his opening chapter, he describes himself as an "amateur climber," in my opinion someone who had not business being on Everest, and his book reads that way. It annoyed me the first time he described his crampons (essentially cleats that you attach to your boots to provide traction on ice) as knives. The fact he continued to call them knives rather than crampons thereafter drove me nuts.
I've read several other books on the Everest tragedy (including Krakauer's, Boukreeve's and Breashear's.) I had been avoiding Weathers' book for no particular reason... perhaps it was instinct that I wouldn't like it. Although he had the most dramatic story of all, Weathers' book was the worst of the lot. (Only a small portion of the book is about the expedition itself.) Perhaps my intense dislike for this book is that I expected to be a climber's book and it is more a story about depression. I found it hard to swallow the redemption story and mostly just felt sorry for Weathers' family.
In his opening chapter, he describes himself as an "amateur climber," in my opinion someone who had not business being on Everest, and his book reads that way. It annoyed me the first time he described his crampons (essentially cleats that you attach to your boots to provide traction on ice) as knives. The fact he continued to call them knives rather than crampons thereafter drove me nuts.
I've read several other books on the Everest tragedy (including Krakauer's, Boukreeve's and Breashear's.) I had been avoiding Weathers' book for no particular reason... perhaps it was instinct that I wouldn't like it. Although he had the most dramatic story of all, Weathers' book was the worst of the lot. (Only a small portion of the book is about the expedition itself.) Perhaps my intense dislike for this book is that I expected to be a climber's book and it is more a story about depression. I found it hard to swallow the redemption story and mostly just felt sorry for Weathers' family.