Left For Dead
Author : Beck Weathers
This is the story of Beck Weathers, who, during the infamous Everest-expedition of -96 which has previously been covered by Jon Krakauer (‘Into Thin Air’), was left for dead on the mountain. Miraculously, he wakes up a few hours later and staggers into camp, where, against all odds, he once again pulls of the feat of not dying from his condition.
Let it be said, I am a sucker for survival tales. It started with Papillon, and has since come to include ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place‘, ‘The Damage Done‘, ‘Iskallt och Stenhårt’,’Into Thin Air‘, ‘Touching the Void‘,’No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War‘ etc. However, this book is something of a disappointment. It starts by telling the story of the climb – which is done pretty quickly. Afterwards, the pages are filled detailing the lives of Beck and his wife, their hobbies, cats (!) and so on. It becomes kind of dull, also since neither of the writers (Beck and his ghost-writer) are the kind of writer who can create interest from nothing. This book fall into a (large) category of books who could have, and should have, been cut by two thirds.