Feature and Follow - Don't Read This!

This week's FF: Tell us about a book you didn't like and tell why you shouldn't read it!

Walking the Amazon by Ed Stafford has a lot of interesting elements: personal adventure, exploring the unknown, international affairs, the destruction of natural habitat, the destruction of aboriginal cultures, amid smaller themes. It just never delivers.

This is a true story of a man who set out to walk from the head of the Amazon River to its mouth in the Atlantic Ocean. I found myself disliking the author (and several of the people involved in the expedition) because of his recurring complete unpreparedness and their both lack of preparedness with him or their willing support of an expedition whose unpreparedness should have been apparent.

Maybe the author was too harsh on himself or was trying to build up the barriers to make his ultimate success more dramatic, but I found myself thinking there should be no way the expedition even started out. If I was this unprepared for a meeting, my continued presence on the project at hand would be in jeopardy.