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cgj13 's review for:
Gah. This is 2 different books in one. I don't quite know how to rate this. I guess average the two and it is 3.5.
This is a two part book. In the first we find Bryson and his friend Katz out on the Appalachian trail starting from Georgia. This was probably the best part of the book. Bryson shares humorous stories about their time on the trail and the people they encounter. And his traveling companion, Katz, man you just have to love that guy. He comes into the trail not quite prepared for what lies ahead and a sense of humors that comes from being direct. In the first few chapters, you keep waiting for him to say he's done, he's going back home. But he doesn't. He sticks it through, you just have to live his perseverance. I found myself routing for him!
Part 2 is a bit dry. This part read more like a pointers for hiking, in general, and a history of the area around the trail. It lacked the humor that was found in part one and was much more difficult to read. Some parts were quite interesting about the area, such as the town of Centralia. A town that is almost entirely abandoned and razed due to the anthracite underground burning. It's a fascinating story. But I'm not sure how it relates to him hiking the trail. He didn't blend the two together very well. If he would have added the snippets of history, geology, conservation, etc alongside the travelogue vignettes i think it would have made for a more completed picture of his entire time on the trail.
I wonder if some of the lack of history in the beginning of the story is due to the monotonous nature of continual hiking. I get the sense from Bryson that after a few days it starts to look the same, and he mentions that the maps were quite useless, so at times he probably didn't really know the area he was hiking in. Whereas on his day hikes, he probably spent more time learning about the areas he was hiking and that came out in part 2.
At the end we see Bryson and Katz reunited to hike the final portion of the trail in Maine. And once again the humor comes back into the story. Which leads me to this conclusion: it's not Bryson who is funny, but Katz. It's when Katz is with him that we see personal level to this narrative, vs a lecture on the trail.
It is gripping and suspenseful in that penultimate chapter when you don't know what happened to Katz, and I was holding my breath waiting to find out. Was he still on the trail, did he get lost, was he hurt or worse???
One thing that left me unsettled throughout the book though was Bryson's "better than you" demeanor towards Katz. I felt at times that he was condescending and looking down on Katz. Almost from the get go. Katz was larger, slower, packed wrong, etc. Yet, it is quite obvious that the time spent on the trail with Katz was much more enjoyable than the time spent without him. And Katz didn't have to be there. He was one of the only fiends who volunteered to go along on this journey. And he stuck through it. The more I think about it. The more I like Katz and his tenacity. Sure it would have been easier to turn back and go home on a million occasions. But he didn't. In the end, we see that Bryson does care about him, in his own way. But it still unnerved me and made me like him less.
This is a two part book. In the first we find Bryson and his friend Katz out on the Appalachian trail starting from Georgia. This was probably the best part of the book. Bryson shares humorous stories about their time on the trail and the people they encounter. And his traveling companion, Katz, man you just have to love that guy. He comes into the trail not quite prepared for what lies ahead and a sense of humors that comes from being direct. In the first few chapters, you keep waiting for him to say he's done, he's going back home. But he doesn't. He sticks it through, you just have to live his perseverance. I found myself routing for him!
Part 2 is a bit dry. This part read more like a pointers for hiking, in general, and a history of the area around the trail. It lacked the humor that was found in part one and was much more difficult to read. Some parts were quite interesting about the area, such as the town of Centralia. A town that is almost entirely abandoned and razed due to the anthracite underground burning. It's a fascinating story. But I'm not sure how it relates to him hiking the trail. He didn't blend the two together very well. If he would have added the snippets of history, geology, conservation, etc alongside the travelogue vignettes i think it would have made for a more completed picture of his entire time on the trail.
I wonder if some of the lack of history in the beginning of the story is due to the monotonous nature of continual hiking. I get the sense from Bryson that after a few days it starts to look the same, and he mentions that the maps were quite useless, so at times he probably didn't really know the area he was hiking in. Whereas on his day hikes, he probably spent more time learning about the areas he was hiking and that came out in part 2.
At the end we see Bryson and Katz reunited to hike the final portion of the trail in Maine. And once again the humor comes back into the story. Which leads me to this conclusion: it's not Bryson who is funny, but Katz. It's when Katz is with him that we see personal level to this narrative, vs a lecture on the trail.
It is gripping and suspenseful in that penultimate chapter when you don't know what happened to Katz, and I was holding my breath waiting to find out. Was he still on the trail, did he get lost, was he hurt or worse???
One thing that left me unsettled throughout the book though was Bryson's "better than you" demeanor towards Katz. I felt at times that he was condescending and looking down on Katz. Almost from the get go. Katz was larger, slower, packed wrong, etc. Yet, it is quite obvious that the time spent on the trail with Katz was much more enjoyable than the time spent without him. And Katz didn't have to be there. He was one of the only fiends who volunteered to go along on this journey. And he stuck through it. The more I think about it. The more I like Katz and his tenacity. Sure it would have been easier to turn back and go home on a million occasions. But he didn't. In the end, we see that Bryson does care about him, in his own way. But it still unnerved me and made me like him less.