Into Hot Air: Mounting Mount Everest

Into Hot Air, Chris Elliott's second "novel" is another dead-on parody of an adventure epic, packed with Elliott's unique brand of humor. The narrative is wildly inventive, the dialogue is cleaver, and Chris (as himself, the leading character) is at his irreverent best. This book is dense with humor, and you just smile and smile as you read. Let's hope he's working on another!

I loved Chris Elliot in Get a Life. I didn't know he was also a talented and creative writer. This novel is just plain funny. Elliott takes a serious, introspective topic - ascending Mount Everest - and turns it into a laugh riot. The story, despite its outlandish plot, flows well. Every page made me laugh on some level of the laugh scale - from guffaw, to chortle, to laugh out loud. Elliott takes us from the genesis of his journey, when he discovers his great-uncle Percy'd diary, who presumably summitted Mouny Everest, through his gathering of a team to climb with him - including a mix of celebrities, each with their own particular role to play on the climb, especially as foils to each other, to the inevitable hazards encountered on the ascent, including some outrageous episodes that could only have been conceived by Elliot's mind. If you read the book now (March of 2008) there is an eerie sense of prophecy in some of the events that unfold. I don't want to give it away, but if you are keeping up with news about Tibet (where Mount Everest is located) you'll know what I mean. If you want to laugh consistently while reading a humor book, pick up (and read) Into Hot Air.

the book is good. there was almost no instances that i was not laughing out loud while reading the shroud of the thwacker. this one not so much, but the story itself was pretty engaging. so just good. i hope he does a few more as funny as shroud of the thwacker. also more movies and a talk show. and another sitcom. okay, that's all.

At once a novel and a parody, INTO HOT AIR mocks epic literary adventure stories and comes from an award-winning comedian who presents the story of a great-uncle's journey and an anonymous package which indicates he might have been the first to climb Everest. High humor and tongue-in-cheek discovery will delight any who regularly read adventure nonfiction, particularly mountain-climbing books, making this an excellent general-interest collection recommendation. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

Chris Elliot's unique sense of humor is captured perfectly in this hilarious follow up to the equally funny "Shroud of the Thwacker". I'm looking forward to seeing Chris Elliot on the screen again, but his books are doing a great job filling the void.