In Search of #6: A Review

If In Search of #6 was a worse book, I wouldn't be posting this bad review. You should understand that this book only cost me a dollar to suck into my Kindle and I bought it because it is about bicycle touring and it promised to be humorous. I enjoy bicycle touring and various types of humor and the reviews on Amazon were quite positive so I traded my dollar for many screens of words. In the time since I downloaded the book, some kind soul posted a review with the title "I want my dollar back." I have to confess, I don't care about my dollar, but I do wish that I could get my time back. The book is not bad enough that I stopped reading it and it does in fact contain some rather humorous prose that led me to continue plowing through redundant pages of wandering narrative, untethered in time and filled with tedious details.

In reading In Search of #6 I learned that Damon likes his friend Ben and likes that Ben hauls the heavy BOB trailer. I learned that neither of them can plan very well and they are surprised by mountains and towns that exist on maps but not in real life. I learned that Damon finds #6 at the start of the trip and spends virtually all of the trip missing her and he devotes many pages to this topic, which I'm sure he finds fascinating. By the end of the book I conclude that Damon would probably be quite amusing to chat with for an hour or so but after surviving a whole book with the man, I can only conclude that Ben is a saint for not crushing Damon's skull with a rock somewhere around Mt. Rainier and then making the whole thing look like an accident.

In the prologue to the book Damon suggests that readers tell their friends about the book and post reviews. He says "it doesn't have to be a positive one, in fact too many positive reviews make me suspicious." Damon, I'm here doing my bit to make you less suspicious.

Now I should make it clear that there is some very funny stuff in this book and many folks will probably find the tale well worth their time. But that wasn't the case for me. I want my time back.

Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson
Issaquah WA USA