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: Where's the beef!?
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.
Rating: 
Summary: Living a dream
Review: Running to the Mountain is your basic mid-life crisis story except that Jon Katz -- for all his protestations of financial woes -- managed to afford to do what the rest of us would love to do: buy a little cabin in the woods, fix 'er up, and live the country life, watching the sun set. Sounds wonderful to me and more power to Katz for managing it.The heart and soul of the book was lacking for me. It wasn't emotional enough. He outlined his concerns regarding his career, marriage and daughter, the changes in the lives of his friends, the lack of acceptance in our society for men who work at home while the wife does the nine-to-five dance, but he laid them out as simple facts. The emotional turmoil and confusion associated with mid-life re-evaluations (I'm in denial about having a "crisis") is not there. His relationships with the locals was interesting and his observations of Thomas Merton and his writings were excellent. For all of us who dream of escape, here's one for us! Just fill in the emotional blanks to suit yourself.
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