Kev Reynolds (1943–2021)

Nice, this collection of very short vignettes is nice. Sadly, that is damning it with faint praise.

Go hiking, get too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, meet some people. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. The problem for me with this book is that it was too repetitious without enough stories that set them apart from one another. It seemed a little too superficial. The writing was not lyrical enough to make up for the sameness of most of the stories. Several of them have been published in various magazines and journals before this book was created. Journals – yes. These stories seem more like a did-this, saw-that journal than a glimpse into the author's life.

There were exceptions. The story about the death of an izard touched me and left me saddened. The description of accepting a host's offering of yogurt made me laugh:

Now I like yogurt. I have fresh, home-made yogurt with my breakfast cereal each morning. Straight from the fridge, my wife's yogurt has a pure creamy texture. It lies smooth in the dish; it's not yellowing, thick, lumpy, and moving. There are no goat hairs in my wife's yogurt; no livestock paddling from one side to the other. It has no alien flavors, no uninvited additions. This tin, however, held a cocktail of unwelcome mysteries.

The best bits of this book where the parts telling of interactions with other people. You can only read about so many sunsets and storms before you get bored. Or maybe that's just me. The author notes that the stories can be read in any order, there is no reason to read them sequentially. However, to me, it seemed these was no reason to read them non-sequentially.

While I love to read about travel and about hiking and climbing adventures, this one didn't have enough depth and flavor for me.

I was given an advance copy of the book for review, and the quote may have changed in the published edition.… (meer)

A WALK IN THE CLOUDS is not a bad book --as you can see by the number of 5- and 4-Star reviews over at Amazon-- but I'm fairly certain it's not going to be a book for everyone, thus my review.

A WALK IN THE CLOUDS is a collection of very short recollections drawn from years of experience climbing and hiking in mountains all over the world. Though I'm a couch-potato I've found that I love reading books about K2 and Everest, about hiking the Rockies or Appalachian trail. It wasn't until this book though that I realized that an important part about what I enjoyed about Viesturs' and Curran's, Grylls' and Krakauer's books was the personal interactions and the personal determination it took to overcome the obstacles.

***SMALL SPOILERS ** ** SMALL SPOILERS**
Kev Reynolds writes about little vignettes, special moments that sparkle brilliantly in his mind after decades have passed, but they aren't the sort of moments that are satisfying for someone looking for the in-depth portrayal of human interactions and determination. There's a story about a woman who overcame her fear of the vertical ladders at the Ceilon glacier, but the story ends with her farting. There's another story of a woman who needed prompting to cross an avalanche area... but it ended with getting a shot of snaps.

***END OF SPOILERS***

These are sweet vignettes, but very personal and something I just didn't connect with.

Like I said. Not a bad book, just not what I was looking for.

--review copy… (meer)