Man's Life: Dispatches From Dangerous Places Book

There's so much washing linen in this book. It will dampen your enthusiasm. Others have not tackled it, but I will.
This guy enjoys being an invisible man. Maybe he's not comfortable with his sexuality, craving for more macho cover-ups. My main point is, Don't Leave Your Babies. That a 12,00 feet mountain is dangerously delicious is just Mark Jenknis's incredible vanity. Yes, vanity. Because he wants to be famous in justifying leaving one's family . Because he wants to be with his equally attention-deficit pals. Fame all for the wrong reasons. What could be more dangerous than your kids climbing the high cabinet top, falling and smashing their small skulls? As a father of two, why crave for a dangerous mountain when a couple of drug addicts could easily drop a whiskey bottle and smash your windshield on the highway while your kids are inside on the way to school? What could be more dangerous than a world of gangsters who would climb your terrace (while you're climbing Mt. Stanley) and break in through your windows to kill your family and steal? What could be more dangerous than your family members getting suddenly sick of Zika, cancer, red tide poisoning, or temporary insanity due to a hot stovetop being left to burn the entire kitchen? What could be more dangerous than your kids being amateur cooks and playing with knives and other stuff?
Stuff that you care less about than a crevice that can smash your fingers and make you into a burden to your family later?

Anyway, on to the technicalities of the book. Well, yeah, I'm a tomboy who collects stones. Well, yeah I have a dream area I keep comin' back to in my ruminations. Very nice beginning, very nice. But the rest of the book? I seriously thought of prematurely hiding it under the bed instead! But I remembered I paid for it , though only through sale.

This is a book with transitional and descriptive problems. Only trying hard to be Hemingway like the others, he obviously sprinkled it up hurriedly with numerous clichés and padded it up with excerpts from other authors, to compensate for its lack of philosophical anchorage.

Hero? Not for me. But it is up to you if a heap of broken bones and biking blisters are your ideas of heroic feats for a flighty father , no-show brother or a constantly disapparating husband (crampons are Portkeys). But if that should be highlighted, it should not be in disregard for the rest of the picture: Jenkins the author is a mass of contradictions, deliberately appearing as a case of a guilt "trip" and an outdoor love "trip".

I like adventure. I like some hikers, even amateur ones. I wish I could have respect for ALL adventurers. But I cannot. Because of this book. There are others worth my eyestrain out there. I'd rather read that a real scientist with tedious graphs or that a socio-analyst makes dispatches from dangerous places, (then make a university paper of it afterwards). But, Jenkins? I may never read him again. Let alone purchase.

It's just that - Mark Jenkins, you suck . This book should be entitled A Man's Lie: Dispatches From Where Mark Becomes an Interminable Burden to his Family And Milking It For All It's Worth Because He is an Emotionally Starved Narcissist Who Likes Taking In TLC More Than Giving It. He belongs to the long list of repressed men who willingly assimilate any kind of masochistic pain just to milk in the worry and concern from their unduly tortured, long- neglected ( and gullibly naïve!) family. (Then brag about it like what people do in Facebook and social networking Sites -- that's not false analogy, man.) From the sound of it, he indulges in the "circulating love" without regard to how grave it is that he will go away again, flinging away intentions to give what is within his capacity to give. He goes home, then after some length of time confesses agitation (huh?!) , and then he will delight to freakin' take flight again for so long - to fill in his starved machismo and embrace the westerner's culture of hubris masked as naturalistic endeavor (or worse, a cover-up for his homosexuality, it's just always a probability guys. )