Steve House, Beyond the Mountain ****

Like many of the best mountaineering books, Beyond the Mountain is as least as much a character study as it is an adventure story. Steve House is straightforward and unapologetic about his mountain climbing obsession, stating up front that:

When I stood on the greatest summit I ever achieved, success evaporated. As many before, I learned that the moment we think we have attained the goal, we lose it. Success is empty. (Prologue)

The first chapter grabbed me right away, not with the Himalayan adventure of climbing Nanga Parbat, but with a moment that illustrated House's decision-making process. At nearly 25,000 feet, House and his partner have started on their summit bid. Before they set out, he'd vomited up his last meal. He has a severe headache from altitude and dehydration.  His partner asks him whether he's okay, because he has only taken five steps in the last 40 minutes. House says he's okay, but his partner says he wants to go down rather than continue. Retreating is clearly the prudent thing to do, probably the only life-saving option, but House's reaction is to think he chose his partner badly.

Beyond the Mountain includes plenty of high-altitude adventure, well illustrated with pictures, and House is a very good writer (if a bit too fond of flashback structures). More than anything, though, I was fascinated by House's psychology.

Padgett Powell, The Interrogative Mood ****

This book is composed entirely of questions. You know how you'll sometimes get an email message where even the positive assertions are in the form of a question?

How can I describe the experience of reading this book? It doesn't tell a story. Although you can detect patterns in the types of questions that the narrator asks, they are not enough to create a full character. Nonetheless, I was delighted by the experience, especially by the oddball specificity of many of them.

If you yourself are not a coward, do you look upon a coward with sympathy or with disgust? If you yourself are not a murderer, do you look upon a murderer with disgust or sympathy? Why have I altered the position of "sympathy and disgust" and "disgust and sympathy" so? Did you ever try to raise two flying squirrels by getting up every three hours and feeding them cow's milk and stimulating their genitals with a tissue to get them to pee as your mother instructed you and seeing them die three weeks later of fever and bloat and fecal poisoning because the cow's milk had so constipated them that they had not, in all that peeing, ever pooped? And did you wonder later how your mother would know to stimulate them to pee but not that cow's milk would cement them up like that?

I was fascinated by how I actually did have opinions about some of the crazy things he asked about. ("Would you rather be trapped in a closet with a large cat or an anaconda?") Could I perhaps learn something significant about myself by analyzing my answers?

Nicholas D. Hayes, Saving Sailing **John Otterbacher, Sailing Grace ** 1/2

Despite their titles, these two books are not really about sailing. They both use sailing as props in a general argument. Hayes admits as much in his introduction: "For all practical purposes, I could make the case using fishing or knitting or playing an instrument, or any other activity that brings us joy by helping us to pass on what we know and love about life."

Hayes is a business consultant, and his book is about the social changes that have resulted in fewer people engaging in socially oriented active pastimes. His remedies are the usual ones: more unstructured play time for children, less TV, more mentoring and full-family activities. I think he underestimates the cost (in money and time) of sailing. The most interesting thing in the book are the statistics near the beginning; for example, the fact that 43% of sailors are over 55 years of age. 

Otterbacher is a psychologist, and his book is about the value of having a life goal. The first two-thirds of the book are about his serious heart problems and how he didn't let them deter him from his family's plan to sail across the Atlantic. Whether you think he is admirably audacious or selfishly irresponsible depends on how much you idealize difficult goals. When they ultimately set out on their sailing trip, Otterbacher describes their (apparently frequent) difficulties in such detail that it makes sailing sound like a dangerous trial rather than a rewarding experience. The best parts of this book are the ones that portray the day-to-day challenges of living with a bum ticker.

Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders **** 1/2

A wonderful collection of linked short stories that take place in modern Pakistan. The stories are traditional in style, no fancy experimental approaches. I was particularly impressed by how Mueenuddin's authorial voice managed to seem reserved while still communicating the character's emotions. My only complaint is that a few of the stories seemed too similar: for example, "Saleema" and the title story tell essentially the same story at two different levels of society.