This article is part of a series of blog posts entitled, “What’s Xenium Reading?” To find out more about this series, click here. This week’s post features Tyler Meuwissen, Human Resource Representative at Xenium.
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
I have always had an interest in non-fiction adventure books, in true tales of heroism and suspense. Into Thin Air encompasses all of those things. It is without question a page-by-page suspenseful story that does an amazing job of grabbing the reader’s attention and never letting go for 300+ pages.
Coming into the book, I knew that mountain climbing was a dangerous sport, but not until reading this book did I truly understand what these climbers must go through to train in preparation for and endure while climbing incredibly high peaks like Mt. Everest. The summit of Everest is just shy of the cruising altitude of commercial airplanes—that’s just crazy! There is a reason that only about 25% of these highly skilled climbers make it to the top.
This book is really for people who enjoy stories about adventure and wilderness. Jon Krakauer’s other famous book, Into The Wild, is another great non-fiction adventure book to read. Krakauer does an amazing job of setting the scene and is very detailed in his depiction of the atmosphere surrounding the climb up Mt. Everest. It is truly an incredible story that is definitely worth reading!
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. has always been my favorite author. After reading Slaughterhouse Five, Galapagos, Sirens of Titan, and Cat’s Cradle, I decided to dive into another, this time, Mother Night. Vonnegut’s satire and prose are what draw me to his books, and Mother Night is Vonnegut at his best, in my opinion. The story is about an American-born man who moves to Germany during WW2 and becomes a broadcaster for Nazi propaganda. At the novel’s beginning, he is in a jail cell awaiting trial for his war crimes, however, the truth is that he was an American spy helping the Allies, a fact he cannot prove to his accusers. The novel continues to delve into this man’s life and background and what got him to the position he is in now.
This book is all about identity. Mother Night really taught me to be authentic and true as often times, as the book states, “we are what we pretend to be.”
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a deep story with a dark sense of humor at times but also enjoys books that are poignant and thought-provoking. Any Kurt Vonnegut Jr. fans would love this book!
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
This book was a recommendation from my Dad who read it and loved the content. Once I started reading, I guess it was my fascination with anthropology and where we from, that really drove me to continue reading.
I learned a great deal about the origins of several historical and ancient societies across Europe, Africa and Asia. I also learned about why certain societies flourished and others did not. Jared Diamond does an excellent job of addressing certain factors that contributed to either the rise or fall of societies, including such factors as geography and climatology but also, more importantly, the domestication of plants and animals. It’s amazing how such a seemingly simple progression of one society had incredibly vast repercussions for others.
This book is for history and anthropology lovers. It’s an incredibly interesting read, and dives into many thought provoking insights into the origins of world societies. Well deserving of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction.