Alex Honnold

I don't climb and my immediate thought after hitting the specialized vocabulary on page one was, "I'm in over my head." What I found however, was a careful sprinkling of context and parentheticals throughout the text to help the reader like me. While there were still references I didn't get, the book was very kind to non-practitioners without wholesale dumbing down the language for a mass audience.

The book works because of the back and forth between the subject (Honnold) and his co-writer show more Roberts. Their sections are formatted and voiced differently, and do a great job of placing the meat of the book (Honnold's sections) in context with the drier and sometimes antagonizing sections written by Roberts. The book provided a behind-the-scenes look at some of the amazing climbing films that Honnold has featured in.

I didn't really get the sections on Honnold's relationship with SP - I'd guess they were included because they were important, but I'm not sure that came across in the text. Generally, a few more diagrams, especially to help detail the longer exploits involving multiple climbs, would have been appreciated by this non-climber. show less

As a climber, this was a fascinating insight to Alex Honnold's process for preparing and executing his free solo climbs. I've watched many of the movies referenced in the book, so the additional context and details about each were great.

This guy is seriously extreme. Alex Honnold is arguably the world's greatest exponent of free-solo climbing - no ropes, no equipment, no partner to save him if things go wrong. He falls, he dies. With only a bag of chalk, climbing shoes and his fingertips, he climbs to terrifying heights on the world's highest rock faces. He does things even other top climbers fear to do. And with it all, he's a free spirit, with an admirably clear philosophy of climbing and the soul of a poet, and makes his show more home in a van, travelling from one climb to the next. Gorgeous book about a true adventurer. Slight annoyance is the amount of climbing jargon, which makes it difficult for the non-initiate to really appreciate what Honnold is achieving. But its a minor niggle, this is a super book for rock jockeys and mere climbing groupies alike. show less

Really interesting to learn about the level of preparation he goes into before embarking on a Free Solo. Also cool story of the mindset and lifestyle of a great climber.