Hello! My Name is Adam Wilson and I run the Letters On Pages book review website, which is dedicated to non-fiction books. I really love to read and I love to write...so I decided to put those two together. Letters on Pages is still pretty young, but I am having a lot of fun and I think it's growing pretty fast.
I live in Cincinnati, OH with my super awesome wife and my sometimes awesome dogs. I spend a lot of my non-work time reading and watching the Reds and Bengals play badly! Other times I watch other people successfully renovate their entire house in minutes…which I have now come to find must be some sort of camera trick.
Anyway….I hope you enjoy this review from Letters On Pages! I invite you to stop by and take a look around at the other books I've reviewed...I am adding new ones as fast as I can read the books! so come on by...leave a comment or drop me an e-mail...and sign up for the e-mail subscription or standard RSS feed. That would be great!
Thanks again...and thanks to The Story for asking me to do a guest review!
Adam Wilson
_________________________________________________________
Title: Dark Summit
Author: Nick Heil
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company(2008)
You know...in the short life of Letters On Pages so far, this is my second adventure book review. If you don't know me, you would think that I love the outdoors and adventure stuff. Nope. I don't really like going outside at all. That said, I do like to watch TV shows and reading books about other people who go outside! Good for them I say! Anyway, I was sent a copy of Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season by Nick Heil. The book isn't due for regular release until April 29th, but you can pre-order the book through Amazon.
The book is, obviously, about climbing Mt. Everest. Specifically, it is about the 2006 climbing season, which had an unusual number of deaths take place. Wikipedia (the fount of reliability) says that over the years 210 people have died on the mountain. This book tells about some of the the ones who died in 2006. Particularly a man named David Sharp, whose death came under some heavy interrogation. In basic terms, Sharp was passed by as he sat on the mountain...multiple people leaving him to die and climbing the mountain anyway. Now, I guess this is not really a fair statement to make because there are thousands of variables that take place on a mountain. But I don't know...passing up a dude freezing to death? And that's not to say that the deaths on the mountain didn't affect the other climbers, because they did.
Heil does a fantastic job of telling the stories of that terrible season on Everest. He really is able to relay the emotions of the climbers and the general black cloud that hung over that trip. He also gave excellent descriptions of what was happening. I didn't quite feel that I was climbing an 29,000 foot behemoth...but that's probably good. (side note: climbers refer to their distances in metric, so Everest is over 8,000 meters. I've done the conversion here for you to make it easier.)(side note to the side note: the metric system is way better than what we Americans use!)
I think the way Heil handled the various deaths was excellent. There was the proper amount of respect given to these men. He also tried to explain the thought process of the climbers who abandoned the other climbers. That said, I read most of this book totally horrified that people would continue to climb to the top of a mountain and leave someone stranded and dying. I realize it is an expensive trip, and an opportunity that not everyone can get...but I think saving another life is more important than getting to the summit of a stupid mountain. But alas...I am not a climber, so what do I know.
This book was really good and I highly recommend it just on the storytelling alone. Great read...and I hope you check it out.
Rating: 4 out of 5
_________________________________________________________
Thanks Adam!! That was great!
Check back next week for another guest reviewer! Would you like to review a book and be a guest? Email me at thestorysiren@hotmail.com for more information.