Monday, February 12, 2007
Tangents... Will Stupp's first prompt
Jon is constantly going off on tangents about the 'characters' histories. He switches constantly. Because of this we get very little information about the actual events of him climbing the mountain. In example the entire chapter seven is a summary of the other teams on the mountain. The histories is usually mixed randomly with the events. Because of this, many readers who I've spoken with don't like the book. I personally am not a large fan either. It is more of a historical view on Everest. I think Krakauer would be better as a history writer. Your thoughts?
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4 comments:
To comment of Will’s idea of Krakauer being a better History book writer, I have to disagree. Krakauer gives us these bits of history of the teams and of the people to help us better understand them. Take the explanation of the South African team. He gives us a lot of information mostly consisting of how big of a sleazy slimeball the leader is, and how bad the expedition is going. This helps us better understand the attitudes in that area of the camp. It also helps us understand that Everest was starting to receive people who don’t want to really climb, but just get it for the glory, and as such people like Woodall, who has not very much skills as climber, and has terrible social skills, and is climbing Everest for fame. This is why I think that Krakauer’s looks into the other teams and a look into the history of the people and of the mountain helps the story, and doesn’t crush it.
I think that he isn't a great writer, but not for your reasons. He switches times too much and it is hard for me to keep track. On page 210 (hard back version) he talks about 5:00 p.m. then in the next paragraph he talks about 2:00 p.m.
I think that we get a very good description of what happens, especially in chapters 13-16 after they reach the summit after they reach the summit when he talks about Andy's delusions.
I to agree with Will about not being a fan of the way this book is written. For example, in the second chapter of the book all that we learn and read is the history of Everest how it was discovered and the first people to summit it. When I was reading this all I could think about and feel like was that this was like reading out of a boring history textbook. This made me begin to dislike the book and this in turn made it harder to read. I also didn’t like the way he introduces new characters and their stories making it harder to remember who’s who. I also disliked the fact that he refers to the same person with two names: sometimes the last name and sometimes the first name. This also makes it hard to remember who each person is. In conclusion, the way the book is written makes all the difference on how someone reads and process information.
I, like Will have not enjoyed this book. The first six chapters of his book were boring and they didn’t really help me learn anything useful. I do have to give him credit for his word choices though, he uses different and advanced words that leave you guessing and make you want to look them up to figure out what their talking about. I also agree that Krakauer should try writing history books, not to be mean but this book is not one of my favorite school books that I have had to read.
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