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Summary: Love Jon Katz, not but not this book
Review: When I was about 100 pages into this book, the thought struck me. All the almost all "getting away, discovering true self" books are all written by men. The women stay behind, keeping the homefires burning and the bills payed. I enjoyed this book once I got over the inequity of the whole "getting away" situation. Jon Katz has a gift for capturing the emotions of everyday struggle, complete with the absurdities of many of the things we do. His tale of discovering the ramshackle cabin and reclaiming it from the mice and encroaching forests brings a smile to anyone who has lived in a "fixer upper". He eventually blends into the local culture and weaves the people who inhabit the town into the book. It does tend to get a bit bogged down with Thomas Merton references (I am not a huge fan). When Katz deals with the reclaimation of the cabin and the people who populate his world, he is at his best
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Summary: To sappy and long winded for me
Review: I approached this book hoping for an interesting read and maybe some inspirational tidbits. I was disappointed. This book is about a self centered man who had a bad childhood, poor marriage and priorties that are way off base. I kept waiting for something to happen. It never did.
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Summary: Pudgy Putz Stumbles Round the Mountain As He Comes....
Review: Mr. Katz's book is well written, amusing, entertaining, and occasionally even thought-provoking, but let's be honest- it is also prosaic, pedestrian; hardly a genuine journey toward discovering secular spirituality based on rural hardship, privation, and isolation it raises expectations it will be through association with Merton's cache. Yet armed with armfuls of Merton material, an IBM powerbook, a cellular phone, 100 channels of media noise, and some old Glenlivet, he makes the astounding discovery that 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. Hey, where's the nearest Starbucks, anyway, buddy? Hey, Jon, that's why country folk have been fleeing to the city for hundreds of years, to see them bright city lights! One afternoon lightning strikes a tree near his house and his neighbor has to call him on the phone to warn him to go inside! Wow! What an adventure. Wow! What a putz! A strong winter wind blows and shakes the house and he suddenly discovers the "MEANING" of his own spirituality. Mother of pearl, give us pause! 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 confuses mere frustration with painful privation, annoyance with adventure, and upper middle class financial juggling with fateful personal economic disaster. It is all too typical of today's confusion among urban dwellers. Living in the land of hyperbole, they can no longer tell the difference between superficial experiences and the genuine article. Thus, they think annoyance is some kind of spiritual tribulation, and that everything they experience or think or wonder about on the way to the grocery market is philosophical grist for the world's attention. Does the phrase pampered self-absorption strike anyone as relevant here? Most simply put, this is just another urban book, written by another clever 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 and silly volume alongside real rural adventures like "Edges of the Earth", or "Living the Good Life' makes this painfully obvious. Too bad Jon didn't do some research before writing about his journey to the center of the void. He 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. The real shortcoming of the book stems from a shortcoming Mr. Katz cannot avoid; his own urban-based consciousness. Sadly, though, the danger here is that he is speaking to an audience even more ignorant and inured to hyperbole than he is, who is likely to honestly believe that what he describes is some kind of meaningful adventure instead of just an impromptu afternoon playing with his ducky in the neighbor's above-ground pool. Mr Katz no more experienced the wilderness by his commando raids into upstate New York than I experienced the spirit of Paris with a two hour layover in Orly airport a couple of years ago. Some things can't be rushed or experienced on the fly. 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 lonmg-term 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. It's just an inside joke, like the New Yorkers that come up here looking for true wilderness and not understanding why it isn't right off the freeway. Straight Ahead! Wilderness and the scary dark woods! Button up your woolies. Natty Bumpo has arrived. 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, and a lot of gumption. Just not much country sense.
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Summary: Give This Geek a Gold Star
Review: I have read Jon Katz on slashdot.org and also recently finished Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet out of Idaho. I have known him as a fervent advocate for individualism, a supporter of free speech and free living, a writer who uses his talent to keep reminding us all that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Running to the Mountain reveals the human spirit behind the loud and clear voice of Jon Katz, so it's a "must-read" for anyone who respects the work that Katz has done on behalf of the beleaguered Geeks of the world. But it's also a chance to travel along for a while with a complex human being struggling to embrace all of those things in life that offer him satisfaction and completeness without losing connections with any of them -- or with his own essential self. It is a book about connecting and reconnecting with the intricately woven strands that make up the web of one's own life. It is a satisfying surf though one Geek's incredibly human "inter-net." And is a reminder to us that, Geek or not, we all need mentors, friends, family, and mountains to run to.
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Summary: Hits Home!
Review: OK, I admit it! This book is the one that finally hit home with me! I have been saying to my wife and kids, as I approach 50 (being beyond 48 but not yet 50) tha I would like to just chuck it all and move to the mountains just like Jon Katz did...in upstate NY or Vermont or New Hampshire...anywhere away from the craziness of New York, away from the routine with diminishing return, away from the fast paced world without purpose. But then "reality" sets in...bills, obligations, organized religion, making a living...and I just stop dreaming about such a major change. So I seek out psychiatry to find where I belong at this point in my life, and it goes around and around. What a book to find! Someone has done what I want to , and I have found a new perspective on what my reasons for going on are, why my family needs me and what I can do to think differently. Does this book stop me from wanting to get away to a simpler life? No, but it helped me to think about it in a more sane way. Thanks you Jon for getting there first and helping me out in my life. Read this one if you are searching but finding no answers. It will definitely help.
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Summary: running to the mountain
Review: This is one of the best books i've read in the last year. If your looking for direction in your life he is very inspiring. This is a book I'll read agian. Greg
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Summary: Powerful and warm..
Review: This great book isn't about spirituality, but life..or maybe death. It's a great middle-aged wake up call, but also hilarious and very, very warm.
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Summary: I have shared the mountain with Jon Katz.
Review: When I first heard about Jon Katz and his story on the mountain I couldn't wait to get a copy and read his saga of life on the "hill". I thought that it was a wonderful description of a search for the spiritual meaning in our life while dealing with the mundane aspects of living in a unfamiliar environment. I too have a place at the foot of the mountain on a small lake that offers the same kind on contentment and reflection experienced by Katz. When an author can get one to experience his message the reader upon finishing the last page feels satisfaction. I recommend "Running to the Mountain"
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Summary: Lonely man writes trival book
Review: A man with few friends, a wife that seems less then happy with him, a man who had a terrible relationship with his father and brother. This is not an author to take a journey with. I suggest you stick with Walden Pond. This should be entitled Tightwad Fixes Up Mountain Cabin.
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Summary: A dream is like an old friend, it's always with you...
Review: If you were born in or around 1950 you will understand what Jon Katz has most eliquently shared in his book "Running to the Mountain." There is calling that so many of our generation have and yet remains unrequited. Our dreams. So strong is this passion that many people hold on till their dying day only to mutter, "rosebud." Jon Katz saw his dream in the mountain vista of Vermont and his guide, the trappist monk Thomas Merton put the journey into perspective. I loved this book because it speaks for the dreamers and shows how one man found his.
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