Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place is the self written story by Aron Ralston. It goes into much depth about his near death experience, and how he overcame his situation by doing what most people cannot imagine.
The story starts out with Ralston mountaineering through Canyonlands with the intent to hike Blue John Canyon, and be back before dark. Blue John is one of many narrow slot canyons in Southern Utah that requires the highest level of skill. This journey would be a dangerous one for a small group of skilled mountaineers, but Ralston made the mistake of going by himself. And as if that weren't bad enough, he didn't tell anyone where he was going.
As he makes his way to the canyon, he meets two girls going the opposite direction who try to talk him into heading back and going to a party with them. He insists that he wants to finish his journey and that he would try to make the party later. Those girls would be the only people who actually knew where he was going, except that they weren't really expecting him to be at the party, and therefor weren't surprised when he didn't show up.

When he was no more than a couple hours away from his truck, his plan fell apart. He was climbing over a rock that was wedged in the the canyon, when it rolled and fell. He said that all he could think about was not getting hit on the head. It never occurred that he needed to worry about his arm. But he did. His arm was stuck under a boulder that weighed roughly 1000 pounds. At first he tried to pull it out but it was clearly stuck. He yelled for help but it was already getting late on a Sunday night and the chances of someone walking by were almost impossible. In his panic, he guzzled and spilled about half of his remain water.
Over the next couple days, Ralston tried breaking away the rock, calling for help, and even rigging a hoist system with his climbing gear, but all to no avail. But at least he could sit down in his harness. He had a camera and video camera that he used to record final words to his family and friends. His expectation was to die in that canyon.  He didn't even want to think about what needed to be done. After a couple more days, he started losing his mind and hallucinating because of the dehydration. He started seeing images of what he wanted his future to look like, and realized that he couldn't give up.
His large knife was dull from chipping at the rock, but he still had a smaller blade in his multi tool. Try to imagine cutting off your own arm with a dull secondary blade from a chinese multi tool. Now imagine that while standing in an awkward position and without having anything to drink for four days. He should have already died. The arm was mostly dead, except for the nerve on his forearm. Plus he had to break two bones.
After he cut himself free he was able to make it out of the canyon and find some other hikers who ran and got help. Ralston was picked up by a helicopter and brought to a hospital where he almost died in critical care. He did survive though and he still enjoys the outdoors with his prosthetic arm and hopefully a buddy at all times.

This book especially appealed to me because I love being in the outdoors and I enjoy both hiking and rock climbing. This book, aside from being a good story, can provide some priceless info and a very important warning to anyone who is into recreation. On the other hand I think that it would also appeal to people who aren't familiar with the outdoors just because of the shock and disbelief that it would bring them. I also enjoyed this book because of the way the voice changes. In the first half of the book, Ralston uses a very "matter of fact", "this is what happened" kind of approach. This changes to a more unrealistic almost spiritual style when he is describing his hallucinations and starts touching on topics like the meaning of life, and his purpose.  A third aspect of the book that I liked was how Ralston was so honest in his writing. I didn't get the feeling that he was trying to build himself up to be a hero or anything like that. He always pointed out his mistakes and mentioned dumb things that should have been done differently. His purpose wasn't to make himself a millionaire or to get famous off of his unfortunate experience. He had a good story to tell and he wrote about it as a lesson to others which, I think, gives him a lot of credibility.

On a side note, I have seen the movie, (127 hours) and they actually did a very nice job of holding the story true to the book. Even details like how the party he was invited to was Scooby Doo themed came through in the movie.

Enjoyment	Weight	Well Written	Weight	Holds Attention	Weight	Length	Weight	Difficulty	Weight	Storyline	Weight
7	3	6	2	6	2	9	1	9	2	8	2
	Points		Points		Points		Points		Points		Points
	21		12		12		9		18		16
	Total Points	Score	Official Review
	88/120	73.33%	C		C