Kiss or Kill: Confessions of a Serial Climber

Rating:
Summary: A Must for Skinny Puppy Fans
Review: The Rollins of alpinism has collected several snarling essays in a thin tome that covers everything from the death of close friends to the disintegration of relationships. Nowhere in the book to we get any idea why this guy pushes the hard routes but that's not the point. Who cares? Sure he's brash and egotistical and opinionated and he mocks your vacuum packed, complacent, Must See TV dog kennel of a world. And there are no bucolic Muir riffs on fields of alpine meadows or pleasant nights passed in a starry bivy. This guy is a war correspondent from a self-inflicted war and if it gets a bit self-indulgent at times at its best it's the stink of pure alpinism, which is hopefully why you'd buy this book in the first pace.

Rating:
Summary: great climber needs people skills
Review: This guy is one of the world's best climbers but is very opinionated. Like many in his league, though, he flouts safety. I tired of his arrogance.

Rating:
Summary: Very cool book.
Review: This is an intense book. VERY INTENSE. In his forward, Twight challenges the reader directly when he says that he wants to make them think, think really HARD, about what he's writing. Twight expects the reader to put it down periodically to do that thinking. He succeeded. This book is an intensely personal perspective on climbing, the ethos of climbing, and the friendships of climbing. The stories are, sometimes, not easy to read -- I sometimes found myself re-reading parts of them just to make sure that I didn't miss anything. Later in the book, Twight indicates that the "Dr. Doom" persona that he put on was sometimes (maybe) overdone for the articles he wrote. Nonetheless, the feelings of anger and rage and the feeling that he just wants to climb his own way and to his own standards, without interference, appear completely genuine starting right from his quotes from his favorite punk rock songs. Adding to the level of interest are Twight's comments after every article where, with some experience and maybe mellowing of time, he adds some additional reflections on what the story meant to him then and now. (Note: This book won the 2001 Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature.)