Rating: 
Summary: An interesting blend of writing style.
Review: Upon bying "Running to the Mountain" by Jon Katz, I was hoping it would be a story-wise book, meaning that it told a story, and not just about monks and faith. What I found was a very interesting blend of story-telling and citing from books by monks who Katz is interested in. Starting off the chapters, Katz describes about his house, his family, or the events he encountered that day. Then as the chapter goes on, he leads into thoughts about his faith, comments from books written by Merton the monk, and about his fear of getting older and having new responsilbities. I didn't mind reading about the faith at all, and I'm not a huge fan of just reading about spirtualty, and religion. That's what I go to church for. :) I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a good read, something they can relate to in some sence, and just a good look into someone else's life. 5 stars for "Running to the Mountain" by Jon Katz.
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Summary: Nervous Nebbish Takes A Busman's Holiday Up-Country...
Review: Mr. Katz's book is very well written, and is amusing, entertaining, and often thought-provoking, but let's be honest- a genuine journey toward discovering secular spirituality based on rural hardships, privations, and isolation it is not. Armed with armfuls of Merton material, an IBM powerbook, a cellular phone, 100 channels of media noise, and some old Glenlivet, he discovers rural life lacks the luxuries, conveniences, and the kind of instant gratification of life he has come to expect in that suffocating suburban stalag he's sentenced in by living in New Jersey. So where's the nearest Starbucks, anyway, buddy? Lightning strikes a tree near his house and a neighbor has to call him on the phone to warn him to go inside! Wow! A strong winter wind blows and shakes the house and he suddenly discovers the "MEANING" of his own spirituality. Give me a break. Please don't misunderstand me- I liked the book for what it is. But, while the book is eminently worth reading, it mistakes frustration with privation, nuisance with adventure, and upper middle class financial juggling with economic disaster. Most simply put, this is just an urban book, written by an urban author full of what sometime seem to be arrogant urban assumptions, someone who is just beginning his journey toward any real country consciousness. Placing this slim volume alongside real rural adventures like "Edges of the Earth", or "Living the Good Life' makes this painfully obvious. Mr. Katz is a skilled and talented writer, and I enjoyed his tall tale. One gets the sense there is a warm and emotionally valuable human being writing in there. Yet one finishes the book hoping other urbanites don't mistake this loosely threaded-together 'adventure' as a Thoreau-like return to nature (although both Jon and Henry David did return home whenever things got a little rough in the woods). Rural life is much more complicated and requires a passle more of self-reliance and endurance than is evidenced here. Most of us living in the country cannot simply "buy" our way out of our difficulties the way Mr. Katz describes. Thus, the real shortcoming of the book stems from a shortcoming Mr. Katz cannot avoid, namely his own urban-based consciousness. After fifteen years spent living on the cusp between the urban and rural worlds and learning the lessons of how to live a rural lifestyle, I understand it takes years to drown out one's need for constant, anxious busyness and goal-orientation that one carries around as a result of immersion in an urban environment. Mr. Katz just doen't allow enough time to lose all the noise before whipping out his power book to describe the life and times abroad in the wild wilderness. Natty Bumpo, stand aside. No time to waste. Print out the manuscript and mail it off to meet the schedule. Rural life should be so easy to understand and capture... Buy the book, by all means. Read it. But don't mistake it for anything like a return to nature or an effort to seriously get back to the kind of spiritual simplicity a meaningful rural life requires. I fear a boatload of ambitious New York writers are on their way up to grab an old cottage to write the great American novel. Hope they don't freeze to death because they don't know any of the survival basics, like how to start a damned wood fire, or ordering the firewood early enough that it can dry and become 'seasoned' enough to light and burn. Hope you continue to season in your country skills, as well, Jon. Glad you survived your first year or so, and good luck in your further adventures. Anyone reading your book will agree you've got a lot of heart.
Rating:
Summary: UNEXPECTED TREAT
Review: I first read A Dog Year (because I have a Border Collie too) and really enjoyed Jon Katz style....so I ordered Running to the Mountain not knowing what to expect. I was more than entertained, enlightened and even "introspected" (if that's a word). I just wish I had read it first, before A Dog Year, as I would have appreciated all the references and time spent at the cabin with the dogs. Can't wait to read his latest.
Rating: 
Summary: He Calls This Solitude?
Review: Influenced by the writings of Trappist monk, Thomas Merton and facing the restlessness and questioning of mid-life, established writer, Katz leaves suburban middle class life in New Jersey for a mountain cabin the the Adirondacks. There he wants to ponder the meaning of life and the direction of his soul, or so he claims. Armed with his two dogs, the journals of Merton, a lap-top (with a dedicated phone line) a CD player, a TV satellite dish (so he can receive hundreds of channels), numerous daily phone calls to his wife, a best friend living down in the valley, visits to the local diner, and numerous visits from a real estate agent and various local workmen and best of all a $36.00 bottle of Glenlivet Scotch, its obvious this in no hermitage in the Kentucky woods a la Merton. Perhaps five perent of the books is about solitude.If he had two weeks of true solitude during the entire book, I would be surprised. The rest is about the various adventures he encounters along the way dealing with that bizarre species called 'the locals'. Sure the book is funny at times. But Katz sure takes his immersion in what he calls solitude seriously. Unfortunately what he has done is substitute middle class suburban life with middle class rural life, and he calls it solitude. Well I guess perhaps, it's solitude of a sort. But I think his claim to solitude is just a bit disingenuous.
Rating:
Summary: This is a good book about a man searching for life's meaning
Review: John Katz, the author of a number of books, seems to put forth his best effort in RUNNING TO THE MOUNTAIN. It is clear that Katz had experienced what many call the American dream. He had a good job, a good family, and many friends. Yet, he was frustrated and dissatisfied with life. He was an inward failure! Some ot this can be attributed to the fact that he had reached "middle age." He also admits that the spiritual side of life was missing. This seems to be where Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, comes in. Katz in the light of reading Merton decides to run to the mountain. Much of the book deals with the moving experience.Also, it is evident at Emma, the daughter, has a big impact upon his life. In chapter after chapter, he will write of Emma. He takes her on trips. He relieves her childhood. One wil find that Emma, in my opinion, has as much influence on Katz as Merton or the mountain.It is interesting how Katz explores the impact of silence, solitude,noise, and frustration on the life of a man searching for meaning in life. He, like Merton, sought silence, solitude but could not get away fro friends and other things. For example, Katz could not,even go to the store, without his cell phone. He always had to have his two dogs, Julius and Stanley, with him. Why?I find Katz search for life and especially for the spiritual side of life most interesting. He writes, "But as I turned fifty in the summer of 1997, even before I stood on that mountain, I already suspected that I needed to take another trip, even if I didn't know why." It seems clear that Katz was looking for and needed an encounter with the spiritual, but he resisted it. He read Merton, but feared what he said. When he created a visit and an interview with Merton, who died in 1968, it is clear that Katz tried to understand what his spiritual guide was trying to say to him. If you like adventure, you will like this book. If you like Merton, you will like this book. If you do not know Merton, this will be a good way to meet him. If you are searching, you will like this book. So, I recommend that you read it.Wayne BurnsPhenix City, Alabama
Rating: 
Summary: Thomas Merton Deserves Better
Review: I read this because I enjoy John Katz's work and also Thomas Merton's [having spent a week at the Abbey at Gethsemani last year]. While the book is entertaining, the idea of it having anything to do with Merton's quest for solitude, contemplation and a soul jouney is misleading. Had Katz ever [even for a week], turned off the computer, telephone, CD, TV, etc. he might have had a chance at interior change. His reasoning that, unlike Merton, he had found inner peace.....was self-serving. He may tell himself that he wanted to take a spiritual jouney with Merton [page 14], but he was never willing to do the "work."
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Summary: Midlife angst on a mountaintop
Review: Ready to escape from his world -- Manhattan and a well-paid dream job that "lots of people would covet," Katz first escaped to the life of a writer. Approaching fifty, he now finds a house in "a small corner of upstate New York," where he retreats to write and cogitate for several months. Accompanying him are a dead monk and two dogs, as he says. The monk is Thomas Merton, whose presence begins to seem real as Katz carves out a contemporary version of a hermitage. I found some of the soul-searching a little embarrassing to read. This author, a product of years of psychoanalysis, has no qualms about sharing his thoughts. However, the reflections on midlife are right on. Katz's doubts (yet another comeback?) are real and realistic. Read his thoughts on the "lonely generation:" with no guidance from parents or ancestors, we have to face change. Worth a read as a role model for those who feel the call of the mountains.
Rating: 
Summary: Where's the beef!?
Review: Vaccuous, bereft of any depth or significance. I didn't finish it.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written
Review: I enjoyed this book very much. There are a lot of "searching my soul, what do I want to be when I grow up, mid-life crises" books out there in the market but this one is definitely worth reading.
I just finished "A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me" by Katz, so the story had even more meaning from a historical perspective. Katz makes you think about what is important in live as well as business.
Rating:
Summary: Katz does have a problem but it isn't a midlife crisis
Review: Jon Katz does have a problem but it isn't a midlife crisis. This is a book about an unemployed New Jersey writer who deserts his family for a couple of months to "find himself" by embarking on an odyssey to a local Vermont vacation home only to find that he's bored and runs back to his family for entertainment and a cure for his own shallowness. The "mountain" is a hill off a local Vermont highway. The "spiritual transformation" is analogous to that of a couch potato who feels hungry during Monday night football and heads back to the fridge to discover replenishment. The man has no insight. His thoughts and observations are as shallow as Howard Stern. He attempts to lend some credibility and substance to his ramblings by comparing himself with Thomas Merton and dragging Merton anecdotes in to pad the book where Katz clearly has nothing substantive to offer. Save a tree and avoid this book at all costs. Better yet, write your own and offer the rest of us something worthwhile to ponder rather than this drivel. If you read this book you will understand why Katz was unemployed when he wrote it.
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