Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Basis of the Motion Picture 127 Hours [Kindle Edition] Author: Aron Ralston | Language: English | ISBN:
B000FC2ITY | Format: PDF, EPUB
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Basis of the Motion Picture 127 Hours Epub Free
Download Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Basis of the Motion Picture 127 Hours [Kindle Edition] Epub Free for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link One of the most extraordinary survival stories ever told -- Aron Ralston's searing account of his six days trapped in one of the most remote spots in America, and how one inspired act of bravery brought him home.
It started out as a simple hike in the Utah canyonlands on a warm Saturday afternoon. For Aron Ralston, a twenty-seven-year-old mountaineer and outdoorsman, a walk into the remote Blue John Canyon was a chance to get a break from a winter of solo climbing Colorado's highest and toughest peaks. He'd earned this weekend vacation, and though he met two charming women along the way, by early afternoon he finally found himself in his element: alone, with just the beauty of the natural world all around him.
It was 2:41 P.M. Eight miles from his truck, in a deep and narrow slot canyon, Aron was climbing down off a wedged boulder when the rock suddenly, and terrifyingly, came loose. Before he could get out of the way, the falling stone pinned his right hand and wrist against the canyon wall.
And so began six days of hell for Aron Ralston. With scant water and little food, no jacket for the painfully cold nights, and the terrible knowledge that he'd told no one where he was headed, he found himself facing a lingering death -- trapped by an 800-pound boulder 100 feet down in the bottom of a canyon. As he eliminated his escape options one by one through the days, Aron faced the full horror of his predicament: By the time any possible search and rescue effort would begin, he'd most probably have died of dehydration, if a flash flood didn't drown him before that.
What does one do in the face of almost certain death? Using the video camera from his pack, Aron began recording his grateful good-byes to his family and friends all over the country, thinking back over a life filled with adventure, and documenting a last will and testament with the hope that someone would find it. (For their part, his family and friends had instigated a major search for Aron, the amazing details of which are also documented here for the first time.) The knowledge of their love kept Aron Ralston alive, until a divine inspiration on Thursday morning solved the riddle of the boulder. Aron then committed the most extreme act imaginable to save himself.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place -- a brilliantly written, funny, honest, inspiring, and downright astonishing report from the line where death meets life -- will surely take its place in the annals of classic adventure stories. Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Basis of the Motion Picture 127 Hours Epub Free
- File Size: 55236 KB
- Print Length: 368 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1451618506
- Publisher: Atria Books; Media Tie-In edition (September 15, 2004)
- Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
- Language: English
- ASIN: B000FC2ITY
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,376 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #30
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Mountaineering - #43
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Outdoors & Nature > Hiking & Camping > Excursion Guides - #68
in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional U.S. > West
- #30
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Mountaineering - #43
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Outdoors & Nature > Hiking & Camping > Excursion Guides - #68
in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional U.S. > West
I saw the Dateline NBC special about Aron's ordeal when it aired 3 years ago. I was stunned, as I'm sure everyone who saw it was, and I made a mental note to read this book. But here it is, 2007, and I've only just now gotten around to it.
I don't think this book is all good or all bad - I share many of the same opinions of the others who have reviewed it. One thing I will say is I don't think it's possible to be completely objective and review the BOOK alone, separate from "reviewing" Aron as a person. But when someone writes their autobiography, I think they put themselves out there for judgment, so I won't attempt to make that separation.
First, the writing style. Yes, there are many instances where the descriptions are incredibly overwritten, where you can almost see his conscious effort to make his writing seem "poetic." And his penchant for $2 vocabulary words couldn't be more annoying. But for me there was a huge difference between the writing in the "background" chapters (overwritten and over-detailed) and the writing about the entrapment itself, which is nothing short of vivid, stunning, and remarkable. His ability to put you right there in that canyon with him is amazing. He really is a very good storyteller, and I found myself very intrigued and delighted on numerous occasions to read the unique ways that he describes things.
As others have said, there is way too much technical detail, particularly when he's recounting his past outings. In those passages I found that even with pages of description, I still had a hard time picturing exactly what he was talking about because I'm not a climber (or a skier, or a white-water rafter, or a canyoneer, or a rappeller or a...).
I feel like an 800-pound boulder going in to write anything less than an overwhelmingly positive review of "Between a Rock and a Hard Place". How many people have said they'd give their right arm to have their memoirs reach the bestseller list? Well, outdoorsman Aron Ralston actually did that. Who, then, am I to judge his writing style?
There's no listed ghostwriter, and you can believe Ralston did structure and write the whole book himself. A Carnegie Mellon grad with five years as a mechanical engineer, and well versed in outdoor literature, Ralston comes off as a talented writer (one would hope, however, that he'd avoid the inevitable trap of making his next book a thinly veiled roman-a-clef about a trapped rock climber). However, the book is bogged down by two authorial -- if not editorial -- decisions:
First, the writing style is very technical, and therefore dense. I'm not an outdoorsman; probably the most extreme things I've done in my adult life are to climb the Diamond Head on Oahu, which really just involved walking up a lot of stairs; and an extremely little bit of caving outside of Rapid City, South Dakota. Although Ralston cites to Jon Krakauer as a writing inspiration, he lacks Krakauer's ability to make the extraordinary seem achievable. I felt I could climb partway up Everest after reading "Into Thin Air". After "Between a Rock and a Hard Place", I didn't even think I could ride a bicycle again.
Second, the alternating chapters. I understand the structure of the book: in order to tell his whole life story, while keeping the suspense going, Ralston only describes his ordeal in odd-numbered chapters.
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