5.0 out of 5 stars ​

A wry and witty antidote to all those "serious" books about climbing,

22 Jan 2013
By Adrianw
 

​I imagine most climbers who read this book will equate in some way with several of the many escapades contained therein. Never attempting to take itself seriously, this hilarious collection includes a self-diagnosis toolkit to see whether you are of type Praxis, Protos, Patrias or Prat and the various shades in-between - certainly more entertaining than a Myers-Briggs type assessment. Tie this to the incomparable annual training plan and you'll have a recipe guaranteed to make you laugh, at the characters, their various adventures or yourself. Great stuff!

 

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A review by Dave Pickford in Climb Magazine (February edition 2013, p.67)

 

​Climbing literature’s relationship with humour can seem alarmingly similar to an anorexic’s relationship with saturated fat: a toxic entity to be avoided, if possible, at all costs. This dearth of fun in the genre is linked to its structural dominance by excessively serious accounts of heroism and survival by male mountaineers. Can you actually imagine Kurt Diemberger laughing? Someone with a beard that size could do serious collateral damage with an involuntary fit of the giggles. Similarly, the concept of Reinhold Messner making a self-deprecating joke is rather like the idea of Vladimir Putin writing a book on freedom of speech, or Silvio Berlusconi becoming the patron of International Women’s Day.

Firmly in the tradition of Mark Twain’s epic satirical essay ‘The Ascent of the Riffelberg’ and W E Bowman’s celebrated novella The Ascent of Rum Doodle is The Bumper Book of Climbing Fun, a collection of wide-ranging and brilliantly observed sketches, pseudo-blogs, fictional diaries, short stories and comedies of errors satirizing all the stuff that British climbers do, think, and say. My personal favourites are ‘The Training Year by Leni Gamersh’, a journal of various iniquities masquerading as a training diary, and the sketch ‘Resigned to Being a Bumbly’, which charts the hapless misadventures of an aspirant climber whose enthusiasm somewhat outweighs their ability. In the list of hot tips that serves as an appendage, ‘Bumbly Tip 5’ is accompanied by a grainy shot of a portly, bearded, and disconcertingly constipated-looking chap with a thick rope around his neck. It is accompanied by the italicized line: ‘Take charge of coiling the rope – makes you feel in charge’. This hilarious chiasmus is a neat measure of the quick-witted genius of this wonderful, irreverent, and hugely entertaining book.

In today’s blog-saturated, performance-oriented, continuously Facebook-updated climbing world, satire matters more than ever before in the history of the sport. Taking the piss out of each other – and out of ourselves – is important because it massively reduces the immanent danger of taking life too seriously. Thankfully, English literature has a rambunctious and fertile tradition of satire, and The Bumper Book of Climbing Fun is a marvellous addition to this honourable, irreverent culture. Get a copy and keep it in your lavatory. Going to the toilet will have never been so much fun.

David Pickford

 

 

 

 

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A review by Karin Magog on www.climbonline.co.uk 10th January 2013

 

​The Bumper Fun Book of Climbing is an really entertaining mix of short stories, poems, problems pages and other bits and pieces all climbing related. There's even a photographic guide for aspirant bumblies, a year's training plan and a psychometric test to determine your climbing stereotype. I loved the new British Climbing Dictionary e.g. Areete: (Geordie Sl. ) climb when ready; Avoid: don't look down, and the Shortly Before The Incident quotes e.g.''Of course it'll pull down clear of that crack.'' The short stories were my favourite though and really made me laugh, they're a 'slightly' exaggerated version of a real-life climbing situation. My other favourites were The Rock Doctors problem pages which certainly provided some extremely useful advice for common climbing situations (what do you do with that second who is always leaving your gear behind in the crack? You'll have to buy the book to find out!) It's a great book for dipping in and out of or for taking away on holiday and had me sitting laughing away. The two authors have done a great job and I can't recommend it highly enough. You can buy The Bumper Fun Book of Climbing from www.cliperati.com or it is also available via Amazon Marketplace and from www.lulu.com , as an ebook on Amazon Kindle store, and now as an epub version to work on other non-Kindle readers from www.ivanovella.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5.0 out of 5 stars The Bumper Book of Climbing Fun, 21 Dec 2012
By Crisp

Just received a copy of this book as a birthday present, it is brilliant. The perfect read for days when you can not go out climbing. I especially enjoyed the year long training programme which sums up the best intentions of mere mortals.