Five Million Steps: Adventure Along the Appalachian Trail

A story

no, not at all.

Nothing stands out but overall it was a bad experience. He must have really needed the work

Irritation

The religous tone of the book did not upset me, I expected it from the introduction, it was the only thing that gave is any sort of direction. I feel the author just didnt have enough to say. He spends 30% of the book just naming, by trail name, everyone he ever crossed pathes with. The naming of each person seemed to me so that they can say,"hey! I made it into a book!" Another 40% of the book listed every meal( whate he ate as well as everyone else dinning with him) while hiking and on his side trips. It seemed as though he had to fill space. It really got annoying. The other 30% was about the trail and how God guided him on his journey.

He should have just stuck to giving talks. There is 30-45 mineuts of material. Ouch, tiring to get through. Kept waiting for more.

I would like to hear more commentary about the hike and less of the detail about who he saw and what religion they claim to be. Good book if you want to read everything you can about the AT. You will hear the name of every every shelter on the AT and every place to grab a peach Snapple. You won't hear a lot of wit, but you will figure out that you will meet persons representing every religious denomination on the trail. Methodists are most favorable in the authors opinion.

Drum roll please...well a drum roll would have been nice.

Decent narration.

Not at all.

No- this is just a bunch of rambling, Their isn't a story here, it jumps all over without any trail stories or info. you get -"once this happened" and "I remember a time when..". repeatedly. No names just references such as " the boy" or "the youngest son" or " the older gentleman" then all the sudden you will get a long list of trail names that mean nothing since there is no story associated to them, just trailnames.

No, I forced myself through 50 minutes of listening and finally couldn't take it anymore. Its like sitting in a lecture with someone that cant speak in public.The narrator speaks 7-9 words then pauses then the next 7-9 words - repeat. obviously tries unsuccessfully to put some inflection in, but no emotion come through. Very hard to listen to.

find someone that is a storyteller

cut the whole thing and tell a story in sequence, not jumping from a weekend one year to a week a year later. Make the characters people, not objects.

I have never written a review before but I am so disappointed with this I had to..

I enjoyed the humbleness of the author as he encountered various characters. I was disappointed that there was so little info on his actual experience as a hiker (what equipment he used, what pace he tried to maintain, what he ate on the trail,etc., and how he managed weather, wildlife and nature. This is a preacher's collection of notes on people he met when he was in town (and a few on the trail). He could have been encountering people in the mall and the story would not have been much different.

I think the author sounds like a decent guy with a big heart who enjoys making new friends and being accepted by strangers. He has humor and wit and his ramblings are interesting for a short listen. This work is exactly the correct length. Any longer and it would have been tedious.

The least interesting part of the story is the part about the trail itself. There is so little definitive info, so few experiential anecdotes and almost no detail on what it takes to successfully navigate the trail that it is hard to believe he actually hiked it. I was hoping for some real detail on what it is like to do the various sections of the trail. This work is a collection of people who gave him rides and let him take a shower, as well as what he ate in the various towns and how much it cost. Clearly he copied out his diary and strung the notes together with a few extraneous sentences from memory.

There was really only one character.

Definitely not. There wasn't enough info to justify this book!

If you want a real book about the trail, read Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. Better humor and humility and much more detail about the trail itself.

No

No, there are many good hiking books

Unlikely, but the narrator is generally secondary to the author

Incredulity that something so bad could get published. I was looking forward to this, so i was disappointed, then angry. I finished it, but almost stopped halfway through

I'm generally neutral/tolerant when it comes to religious issues, but this is nothing but a priase the lord pile of delusional horse pucky. The author can't go two lines without mentioning god. He charaterizes EVERYONE he meets by their faith. I can only imagine how incredibly annoying he must have been to the other hikers