Shook

An Earthquake, a Legendary Mountain Guide, and Everest's Deadliest Day

De: Jennifer Hull

Narrado por: Adam Verner

Dave Hahn, a local of Taos, New Mexico, is a legendary figure in mountaineering. Elite members of the climbing community have likened him to the Michael Jordan, Cal Ripkin, or Michael Phelps of the climbing world. The 2015 expedition he would lead came just one short year after the notorious Khumbu Icefall avalanche claimed the lives of 16 Sherpas. Dave and his team - Sherpa sirdar Chhering Dorjee, assistant guide JJ Justman, base-camp manager Mark Tucker, and the eight clients who had trained for the privilege to attempt to summit with Dave Hahn - spent weeks honing the techniques that would help keep them alive through the Icefall and the Death Zone. None of this could have prepared them for the earthquake that shook Everest and all of their lives on the morning of April 25, 2015. Shook tells their story of resilience, nerve, and survival on the deadliest day on Everest.

©2020 Jennifer Hull (P)2021 Tantor

Good story, poor narrator

I was hiking from EBC to Lukla when the RMI team was heading up to EBC. The story is good, but the narration was bothersome - the narrator sounds like the character Joe Swanson on Family Guy.

Awesome book!

Loved the book. Very well researched and perfectly rendered. Dave's calm demeanor is inspiring.

Heckuva story but performance was distracting

I know a member of this expedition. The book is well written and, if anything, underplayed the disaster itself. But the performance was so breathy and syrupy sweet it was annoying.

Would have been better with different narrator

Agree with other reviews. The narration choice was extremely distracting and detracted from the story.

Not much of a story.

A crescendo to nothing. An entire book that leads up to nothing notable happening. Everybody lived and were just disappointed they didn't summit. A bunch of silly rich people burning fossil fuels to go trash nature and complain about climate change. The only people that deserve any praise are the broke sherpas who carry the gear and keep them alive.

Poorly written story, terrible voice narration

I had to edit this review as by the end of this book I really disliked it. At first I blamed the narrator, and he is really not good. He has a very weird sing-song delivery and adds a layer of saccharine to the most mundane scenes. It’s extremely off-putting and distracting. I especially disliked his interpretation of the female characters voices, which he always depicts with a slight hysterical note. But the story itself is so poorly written - the characters blend together, there’s no discernible characteristics to anyone. The writer attributes the exact same thoughts and feelings to entire groups of people as if they are all exactly the same. And the dialogue is so stilted - people simply don’t talk like the people in this book! By the end I was mostly just annoyed by every aspect of this book. There are much better depictions of both climbing Everest as well as the specific year of the earthquake that this book describes, try one of those and give this a pass.