Flying W Things

I haven't read a lot of nonfiction in the past, but this summer I snuck a few things in with the old-school science fiction. Here's a rundown of some of the stuff I've read lately:

It's Not About The Bike: My Journey Back To Life by Lance Armstrong. This was a good read. Following Lance as he discovers he has cancer, and the subsequent fight, recovery, and return to cycling is pretty compelling.

I will say this: Reading the book illustrated how highly Lance thinks of himself. (Very highly, indeed.) Even when he does try to inject a little modesty, he does an unconvincing job of it. I suppose that a healthy ego comes with the territory when you are a world-class athlete, but it gets to be a bit much at times. I'm still a fan, but now I think it's more of Lance the Cyclist, and less so of Lance the Person.

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. I think this book suffered from the buildup it received from my sister Anne. With a subtitle of "Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly," I was expecting, well, some adventures. What I got was a series of loosely connected anecdotes about working in professional kitchens, told out of sequence and spanning some 25 years, with advice on ordering food in restaurants stuck inbetween. Oh, and a story about visiting Tokyo thrown in for no apparent reason except maybe to pad the final word count.

Some of the advice is logical, like "don't order fish on Tuesday, because the restaurant hasn't gotten any fresh fish since last Thursday." Makes sense, but is it true outside Mr. Bourdain's New York City? Who knows?

He also spends a lot of time telling you how crazy he is, that he is a pirate, a rock star, and that you (no matter who you are) could not do what he does. The pirate business comes up over and over. Whatever, Blackbeard. Where's my steak?

All in all, I enjoyed The Making of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman a great deal more.

Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. I realize I'm a little late getting to the party on this book, which chronicles the ill-fated Mt. Everest expeditions of 1996, but I'm glad I got around to it. This book grabbed me, and hard. I plowed through it in two days.

I have to admit I had never given much thought to the technical problems of getting a human being to a point 29,028 feet above sea level. The lack of oxygen in the air doesn't just affect your muscles, it affects your ability to think. And it kills brain cells even faster than a Flying W homebrew.

After reading about the ordeal Krakauer passed through to get down from the summit, I cannot imagine what would possess a sane person to put themselves in such a situation. If anybody I knew and cared about was considering a trip to Everest I would do everything in my power to dissuade them from going - starting with making them read this book.

Each of the chapters opens with an excerpt from some other adventure book or expedition journal, and one of them really resonated with me. Thomas Hornbein, who summited Everest in 1963 via a never-before-attempted route, wrote the following in his account of that trip:

There was loneliness, too, as the sun set, but only rarely now did doubts return. Then I felt sinkingly as if my whole life lay behind me. Once on the mountain I knew (or trusted) that this would give way to total absorption with the task at hand. But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind.

I suppose you don't have to be on Mt. Everest to feel that way.

This was a great book and I recommend it heartily - although it's bestseller status in 1997 probably means you've already read it.