The Social Climbers

Rating:
Summary: Humour but sadness too. Strange.
Review: An interesting read. The weird desire to have the worlds highest dinner party resulted in a group climbing a dangerous peak in the Andes to achive this goal.

Although amusing enough the book has a weird undercurrent to it that really makes it the five star. In stating just how unprepared for the climb, and how silly the whole idea was, the real characters of the climbers ( mainly amateurs) is revealed. I dont think Darwin really intended this, but that is what makes the whole thing just so interesting.

I would have given the book 4 stars, but for one thing. The very sad epilogues revealling the fate of all the climbers, the break down in friend ship and the fate of one of them is deeply moving. For this reason alone i recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: One of a kind
Review: I don't know what to call this book. It got me into climbing (really) but it's not a mountaineering work. It sometimes reads like Monty Python, but it's not a comedic work. It sometimes reads like a soap opera but it's not that either.

What is it? To paraphrase the book itself, it's an earnestly silly work about a crazy idea that turned out to be deadly serious. It doesn't really try to be anything, it just presents things as they happened, and (I loved this bit) it's up to the reader to fly the book. And flying it will make you feel happy, sad, cold, tired, drunk and obsessed right alongside the Social Climbers themselves. You might even want to go climb a mountain at the end of it.

Rating:
Summary: A tragic, insipartional, muddled, strange, compulsive book.
Review: This is the only book that I have ever read three times. It is the true story of a group of mainly Australians who have the crazy idea of holding the highest ever dinner party. They wind up on the front cover of the Guiness Book of Records. It is a story with everything - a love triangle, determination and achievement, tragedy, and some very strange characters who you end up willing up the mountain. I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever climbed even a hill or who has ever been in love or preferably both.