Sunday, October 2, 2016
Into Thin Air Blog #4
I do not think Jon Krakauer is the best writer in the world. The structure of Into Thin Air is not my favorite because when he writes he puts things you do not really want or need to know right when something big is happening. I makes you just want to skip over that part just to get to the exciting part. He puts three vertical lines in a row to show when he is changing subjects. When I see those lines when I am reading I get a little sad because I know what I am about to read will be boring. At times when he changes subjects he flashes back in time or to explain something in greater detail, sometimes it adds, but other times it takes away from the memoir. I do not understand why he tells us so much about when other people have climbed Everest because it does not add to the memoir it just makes me want to stop reading it. I can understand how it is just there to give you background information but in the end (to me) it just takes away from the experience of reading the memoir. If Krakauer had had added less flashbacks and extra details you did not need to know I would have enjoyed reading the book a lot more. Overall the story was very entertaining when there were life and death situations but other than that I would not recommend this book to anyone unless they love climbing mountains and memoirs. (Still grieving over the death of my favorite man, Rob Hall.)
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I agree so much with what you said. I think he rambled on stuff that is very technical and doesn't contribute to the story. The flash backs are very confusing and random. When he explains other people he's explaining a bunch of people so briefly that you get mixed up and have no idea who he is talking about later. I wish he kept no more than 5 main characters. Everyone is over generalized so you can't tell if a sherpa is more important that some other character when the other character is actually really important. I wish there was more of a time line instead of lots of skipping around. I only really enjoyed the part when it got super intense and they were stuck on the mountain and had to find people, huddle together and leave live people there to die. When he mentions all the frostbite it's so cringey but it's only good for a few pages then he does a boring flash back. It's like STOP!
ReplyDeleteI agree that he is not the best writer and this book was a hard read because of the Three Vertical Lines thing that was super confusing and i didn't really enjoy the way he skipped around and was rambling alot
ReplyDeleteI agree that he is not the best writer and this book was a hard read because of the Three Vertical Lines thing that was super confusing and i didn't really enjoy the way he skipped around and was rambling alot
ReplyDeletePerhaps the structure reflects how Krakauer remembers the story? Like he sees it in flashes? Do we ever remember things in perfect, chronological order?
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