My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book is about an explorer named Percy Fawcett who disappeared in the 1920s while trying to find the lost city of Z in the Amazon.
I had mixed emotions about this book. While I did like to hear details about Fawcett's several expeditions into the Amazon, it became somewhat repetitive. Kind of the same story over and over... he gets restless living normal civilian life so he gets a group together and they trek through the Amazon looking for Z. They are immediately hounded by millions of insects and most of the men in the group get sick, hungry, and/or infections of varying degrees after which a few of them die. After finding nothing or running out of supplies, the group goes back. Repeat. The only difference is, on one of these expeditions (sadly the one where Fawcett brings his teenage son along), the group disappears, never to be heard from again.
After the Fawcett's group disappears, the book begins to repeat itself... again. Hundreds of people go into the Amazon on rescue missions, trying to find Fawcett and/or discover what happened to him. A lot of these people die either from starvation, sickness, or being killed by Amazonian natives.
Like I said, I liked this book... there were a lot of interesting details about the expeditions and such, but I thought a lot of it could have been cut out without negatively affecting the story. I listened to this on audio and probably would have stopped listening to it half-way through if I'd had another book to switch to. Not because I didn't like the book, but because it just kept telling the same story. A side note relating to the audio version: I didn't particularly care for the narrator. He wasn't horrible... just sounded a little robot-like. If you're old like me you'll remember the old film-strip movies you used to watch in school. The narrator reminded me of the voice-over dude who told about the digestive system or Pompeii.
This book did one thing for me though and that was to cure any desire I might have had to go to the Amazon. While it may be beautiful, it sounds like a wretched place to spend any amount of time. Think I'll stick to the National Geographic coverage on the t.v.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Book Review: The Lost City of Z
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3 comments:
There's a show on PBS called Secrets of the Dead and they covered Fawcett and his journeys. It's an interesting story and sounds like the hour I spent watching was better than the several I would reading this book.
There's a show on PBS called Secrets of the Dead and they covered Fawcett and his journeys. It's an interesting story and sounds like the hour I spent watching was better than the several I would reading this book.
Yeah I think this is one of those instances where a magazine article or tv show would be a much better avenue for the subject matter than an entire book. It was just overkill.
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