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This is Jon's first book, and most of the stories have been previously published in Outside Magazine. Eiger dreams is a quality collection of short stories that covers many of Jon's personal climbing adventures and a few other character profiles. I particularly enjoyed the one about the bush pilots in Alaska. They are written with a great style and provide the reader with hours of armchair adventure. Dancing on the Edge of an Endangered Planet
The last few chapters are excellent. Also, this causes the book to jump around some on various mountain climbing topics.
He was the author and participant in the Everest disaster in 1996. This book is written by the best selling author Jon Krakauer.
This causes the book to have some excellent chapters and so weaker chapters. He wrote about his experiences in "Into Thin Air." This was also an excellent book and was better than this work.
Eiger Dreams is a collection of numerous articles that Jon Krakauer has written over the years that have been published in various magazine. The book becomes more interesting as it goes deeper into the pages.
If you liked "Into Thin Air", you will enjoy this book but just not as much.
Both of which are must reads. Eiger dreams is an excellent compilation of short stories that follow the pioneers of extreme alpine sports(bouldering, climbing, parasailing, glacier piloting, etc). I would say that this compilation is on par with Into thin Air and Into the Wild. This book will make you want to get outside and explore places you have not been to and make you want to push yourself beyond your limits. I highly recomend this book.
If I haven't read the material, what's the difference. The two (out of 13) that put me off were a personality piece about two male climbing twins and juvenile delinquents, The Burgess Boys, and A Mountain Higher Than Everest., a, to me, tedious examination of the history of the science of 'triangulation' or whatever gauging the height of mountains entails.I heartily recommend that anyone lured by the image contained in 'Eiger Dreams', the title, skip'em.I like Krakauer's writing persona and his style of reportage, but I'm not thunderstruck. I have nothing special against collections of previously published work. I was impressed enough by INTO THIN AIR, his '97 account of the previous year's Everest climbing disaster, that picking up a used copy of EIGER DREAMS was a done deal. And they all managed to do it, somehow, in the same place, at the same time.After reading that, damn near anything would fall shorter.I concede that that tale was a hard act to follow. Think of them as 'climbing canapes'.
They vary widely in specifics within that overall focus.
But, as a writer myself, they always make me nervous somehow.
I KNOW I'll read 'Into Thin Air' again, but 'Dreams' may be really yellow before it's opened again.
I didn't pay enough attention when buying it, however( at a local used bookstore) to learn that it was a compilation of climbing-related stories he'd previously published in 'Outside', 'New Age Journal' and 'Smithsonian'.
I'm glad I picked it up for $6 in paper.
Maybe it's the image of the writer badgering his agent about getting the cash flow flowing again and the agent placating him with, 'Why not pick some stories that aren't doing you any good anymore, the rights to which have reverted, and see if we can't make'em work the second time around.'The included stories, with two exceptions (to me), are good, solid tales of blue ice and heartless rock and the maniacs who love both in vast quantities.
and vertical.
The former, in fairness, had mainly to skillfully report a place and event that provided every conceivable element of breathtaking(excuse the pun)drama, high (see previous apology)tragedy and a worst case example of what happens when too many people abandon reason, common sense and a saving humility, preferring to let blind obsession become their guiding principle.
It only followed it for me, however, having been published in 1990, six years before the catastrophe on Everest took place.
Written well, and it seems to put you right in touch with the climbs. This is an amusing conglomeration of climbing stories. However, through fault of the writer or of the storytellers themselves some of this seems to be a bit over the top. Humor, greed, suicide, and sheer bravery all included in these stories. Parts of these traits could be in a single story depending on which stage of the climb you are in. He could have been a mixing it up for entertainmnet value or for some other reason. But it should still be read by anyone who is into climbing.
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