Interesting Flow

Not only does Jon Krakauer tell the story of his adventure up Mount Everest, but he also adds in a lot of the history on the mountain. Every few chapters he writes a chapter on the people who have climbed the mountain previously. He writes about the mountain climbers who have gone through disasters on Mount Everest that have caused them to die. By doing this, he is letting us know the details about how dangerous climbing this particular mountain really is. It also helps lead to the big disaster he encounters, because at the beginning of the story, the readers might not understand the dangers of mountain climbing. His method of writing keeps the readers from getting bored or sidetracked while reading a bunch of small details on solely his adventure. By putting history in the book, Krakauer is educating us on mountain climbing.

Surprising

I guess I just can't get over the fact that this book, Into Thin Air, is really a memoir. Some of the events that take place and some of the things that happen to the people in this story are crazy, and it almost seems as if this is a made up story. I mean, normally when you read about human excrement laying all around your campsite, it's usually in a fictional story. No one necessarily thinks that mountian climbers go to the bathroom in one big spot in their campsite on the mountain, but really where else would they go? And it is surprising to read about some person in this guy's tour group that fell 2,000 feet into a glacier. It's just sad that things like that really can and do happen but you don't always get to read about them from a man who witnessed it first-hand. When I read this book, I think about how terrible this accident was and how hard it must have been for Jon Krakauer to write about it in such detail. Props to him.

Definition of Non-Fiction

I would describe Non-Fiction as a type of literature that has actually happened. It isn't a story that the writer has made up. It usually includes characters that were at one point alive in real life and it took place somewhere in this world that actually exists. Sometimes a writer will add some parts of the story that never happened, only to make the story a bit more interesting, but the majority of it is real.