The Ascent of Rum Doodle

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Summary: You don't have to be a mountaineer ...
Review: ... to be rendered helpless with laughter on reading this book. Its humour - both gross and subtle - is unrelenting, paragraph after paragraph. What a lovely find!

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Summary: The British have an odd sense of humor
Review: Bill Bryson, in his introduction to this book, calls it one of the funniest books a person will ever read. I'll grant that it is funny, but certainly not the funniest book I've ever read. (Actually, I'd really have to think long and hard about what was the funniest book I've ever read, but that's not germane to this review.) It's well-written, with the typical understated British dry wit that does have the reader, occasionally, doubling over with laughter, although most of the time I just chuckled at the writing. It's about a singularly unsuited team of mountaineers attempting to climb Rum Doodle, the world's highest peak at 40,000 and a half feet. No one member of the party seems to be actually fit to play his part in the expedition, and the leader of it seems peculiarly unaware of what is going on about him, from drunkenness to dereliction of duty, and other things. He spends his time finding out about his party members either having, or not having, a fiance. There's a guide who couldn't find his way out of a telephone booth, an interpreter who constantly enrages the porters because he can't get the local language correct, and other assorted misfits. Read the book by all means, bcause it is funny, but take with a grain of salt some of the extravagant praise heaped upon it.

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Summary: A quick read and a good laugh
Review: If you like British humor and have ever been involved in an expedition or read expedition books, this book is hilarious. It is a classic of mountaineering literature.

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Summary: Pass the test and you are in for a good time
Review: TEST:
When you see photos or films of intrepid explorers risking life, limb and treasure to climb a mountain because it was there, do you:
a)hold your breath find your heart beating faster, admiring them b)always remember that the photographer with equipment was AHEAD of the explorer.
Answer b) and this book is for you. A spoof in the spirit of Dr. Strangelove. A great summer read.

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Summary: Monty Pythonesq Humor
Review: This humerous short novel is about a group of inept mountaineers who attempt to climb the world's highest mountain, the fictional Rum Doodle. The style is sort of low-key Monty Python, understated absurdity. The group is made up of men particularly unsuited for their primary function in the expedition, such as the doctor who is constantly down with one illness or another or the route finder who cannot leave his tent without getting lost. While not chock full of belly laughs as some reviews would have you believe, the book is amusing and a fun read.

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Summary: Hysterically funny in a very, very gentle way
Review: You never know with humour, and for the first half of this book I wasn't at all sure I was going to like it. Was it funny at all? I couldn't make up my mind. Then, more or less as the great climb got well and truly under way, something in my mind meshed with the sublime, ethereal imbecility of the author's theme and suddenly I kept roaring with laughter.

In a way, this is a quintessentially English book. Its humour is so gentle, so oblique, so dry. Even the running gags - of which there are many - take a while to bed down. The first reference to carrying cases of champagne up the mountain tends to have little or no impact on your brain. It's such a ridiculously impossible idea that your mind simply rejects it. But it keeps coming back, progressively associated with the expedition leader's stolid persistence in believing that it is all for "medicinal purposes", until suddenly you are swept away by helpless laughter.

If you appreciate dry wit, and you happen to have a day to spare (two half-days will answer almost as well), you really owe it to yourself to join our intrepid heros and share their triumphs, disasters and general roaring incompetence. You won't regret it.