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Title: Touching the Void : The Harrowing First-Person Account of One Man's Miraculous Survival by Joe Simpson ISBN: 0-06-091654-0 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 10 January, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 (97 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A convert pays tribute
Comment: I'm new to reading about mountain madness. Was more into thrillers and crime novels but they're all starting to sound the same. Was given Krakaeur's Into Thin Air in November as an early Christmas present from my brother who was leaving for Nepal on a trek. I'd resisted reading Into Thin Air for so long because everybody raved about it, which I usually take as a bad sign. Never had respect for mountain climbers either. Bunch of idiots. Into Thin Air didn't change my opinion of climbers, but I thought the book was a knockout. I read it in one stretch.
I raided my brother's book shelves. He's got every adventure book published. Borrowed Eiger Dreams. It took longer to read because it gave me more to think about. It's a knockout too. All those mad guys. They're completely selfish but it's like they've got a disease, like they think they can see visions and they follow them. It made me want to get inside their minds and in their hearts too.
I kept pilfering my brother's books. Rheinhold Messner is a genius but his books aren't easy reads. His latest one The Naked Mountain is pretty amazing, but the first chapters sucked. Maria Coffey's books are great. The new one's a killer.
Just finished Joe Simpson's Touching The Void. It made my skin crawl, because the story is so out there and horrible with what happens to him. How in freak's name did he make it? One of the outstanding survival stories of all time. Central to the story is where Simpson is dangling on a rope with a broken leg and his mate Simon Yates cuts the rope when he's about to be pulled off too. Touching The Void is one of two books that define for me the fact that ese adventuring guys really do live in another world entirely.
The book that's strung me out the most is In The Ghost Country by Peter Hillary and John Elder. On his haul to the South Pole he loses his mind from loneliness and sees his dead buddies from the mountains come to life again and they talk about the old times and what happened to them all. And his Mom, she's his best friend. It's the freakiest. All the pictures it puts in your head. After a while it's like you've taken a trip. Now I know more than I probably wanted to know, but it left me hanging for more. Hillary is one sad dude but a pretty determined survivor too. And there's a rope-cutting story in there too, What a life.
Keep writing Krakaeur, Simpson, Coffey, Hillary and all you guys. I'll be sitting safely at home waiting to read about your next adventures. You're my new thriller writers.
Rating: 5
Summary: A compelling and controversial study of survival
Comment: Joe Simpson doesn't tell us much about where he's from or what he is about as a person. This actually gives the book its intimacy. As the cruel and miraculous events of his story play out, Joe's struggles to survive become a voice crying in the wilderness, a voice that the captivated reader almost comes to feel as his own. I couldn't believe what he was going through, and yet felt very much as if I was with him all the way. Touching The Void is a book where you take an unrelenting horrible trip and savor each victory over death with elation. There is plenty of food for thought; especially about the infamous rope-cutting incident, and Joe's realisation that his partner on the mountain is already thinking that he's dead as soon as he's hurt himself. It is a book I'd recommend for everyone, say, 13 years and older. It not only leaves you with wanting more of the same: a taste for more epic stories that essentially take place in the author's skull, even as they physically labor. My hunger to go deeper and further led me to Peter Hillary's kaleidoscopic memoir `In The Ghost Country'. While there's been nothing yet in the mainstream press about the book -- probsably because Hillary was all over the news six months ago, with the 50th anniversary of his father's (and Tenzing Norgay's) historic climb on Mount Everest) -- but there is a real word-of-mouth buzz happening with `In The Ghost Country'. It is a masterpiece, where you start out thinking it's one kind of book and find out -- in its overall effect, more than in its individual stories -- it's like nothing else you've ever read. It made me believe you can really talk to the dead, when in extremis anyway. Deserves to be a classsic as much as Joe Simpson's book, and through great democratic forums like this one, it's becoming one.
Rating: 4
Summary: Amazing!!
Comment: This is the true story of one man's survival against incredible odds. It is a short book (less than 200 pages) but not what I would call an "easy read". I found the first 3/4 of the book interesting but slow moving (too many technical terms; I had a hard time visualizing where they were on the mountain). The last quarter of the book the pace quickens and it becomes a very compelling read. I found that it ended a bit abruptly and could have used a longer epilogue. It is more the story than the writing that makes this a 4 star rating.
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Title: The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Slavomir Rawicz ISBN: 1558216847 Publisher: The Lyons Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance by David Howarth ISBN: 1558219730 Publisher: The Lyons Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Beckoning Silence by Joe Simpson ISBN: 0898869412 Publisher: Mountaineers Books Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Eiger Dreams : Ventures Among Men and Mountains by Jon Krakauer ISBN: 0385488181 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 19 May, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Annapurna by Maurice Herzog ISBN: 1558215492 Publisher: The Lyons Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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