The Boys of Everest

This exhaustive tome sustained me on a cross-country trip. With sustained moments of poetic description that suits mountaineering perfectly, it details everything you ever wanted to know about Chris Bonnington's climbing life--except its context in his life outside climbing. I found the lack of contextual information in this otherwise methodically-researched book increasingly frustrating as this audiobook unfolded over 15 plus hours. We learn everything about the lives of Bonnington's Boys in the mountains, including their unique spiritual journeys and fates, but the disconnect with their "worldly" responsibilities in their everyday lives is too jangling. The result is too much hero worship of characters whose flaws we sense but cannot ever really grasp.

That said, thre's nothing lovelier than James Adams's soothing, authoritative voice with its appropriate upper class English accent. If you like great recordings of nonfiction, this should go on your list.

Facinating study of the evolution of the British Climbing establishment. Although the descriptions of some of Bonington's actual expeditions are certainly interesting, the real attraction of this book is the interaction between the key players and how their different, yet similar experiences on the highest peaks in the world shaped climbing and mountaineering into what it is today.

I thought this was an excellent book, it took you through the lives of Chris Bonington and a group of climber as they grew up and became mountaineers.

The detail

my first

yes

no

The narrator does not add to an already dry story. I love mountain stories but found this to be too full of details, dull and anticlimatic. I got through 3/4 of the book and wished I would have given up earlier.