Review: Krakauer, Eiger Dreams

[truepenny]

Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains by Jon Krakauer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Jon Krakauer is a brilliant writer. I bought this book basically because he wrote it and I knew that therefore I would find myself fully engaged with it, despite not being a mountain climber and not wishing to be one.

I was correct. I galloped through the book yesterday afternoon.

This is a collection of essays about mountain climbing in all its forms, from the guy who invented bouldering, to the weird ultra-fashionable world of Chamonix, to Krakauer's solo climb of the Devils Thumb in Alaska. All of the essays are excellent, from the wryly satirical "On Being Tentbound" to the tragedy of "A Bad Summer on K2" (which is an eerie foreshadowing of Krakauer's later book Into Thin Air). Krakauer writes with compassion and also with affection: he is himself a mountain climber, but he also clearly loves (and is worried by) the crazy things that human beings invent to do. And loves human beings for our invention.



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Comments

[rachelmanija]

I love this book. I think my favorites were "A Bad Summer on K2" and the one about Gill the boulderer.