I got this Advance Reader's Edition softcover from a local Savers thrift shop. (I found a note tucked inside - not unusual in itself, but the note was from 1940, a really touching birthday greeting from the writer to her niece, with some tantalizing genealogical comments. (Some Googling turned up a news item: "Miss Petrea Cabaniss, who was a bridesmaid in the wedding, is the guest of Miss Mildred Cabaniss at her home at the Biltmore hotel." So that would be birthday-girl Petrea and her Aunt Mildred. Petrea moved to Minnesota after her marriage and died there at the ripe old age of 96. But who left that note in this book???)

The book itself features the author's memoirs of what sounds like a rather troubled - or, more accurately, troublesome - youth, leading to a passion for climbing and a desire to set some personal goals: namely, to climb the highest peaks on each continent AND to surf in each of the world's four oceans. [There are some amusing sidebars dealing with the definitions of "ocean" and "continent".] While some of the book goes into detail on specific peaks (most notably Everest), most of them are more or less mentioned in passing, with the author's attitude varying from "that was boring" to "I narrowly escaped death purely by chance, having nothing to do with the mountain at all". Changes in his personal attitudes make up a large part of the narrative, but I have to admit that he sounds pretty annoying much of the time: he tends to speak as if anything that he doesn't like personally must be bad in general, no matter how many other people enjoy it. (By the end of the book he seems to have loosened up a little, but still...)

So: not quite the adventure-narrative I'd expected, but it had its points.

I left this book in this new-to-me Little Free Library; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2022 Tick Tock challenge. ***