Customer Reviews

Hey Ranger 2: More True Tales of Humor and Misadventure from the Great Outdoors (No. 2)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Having enjoyed Mr. Burnett's first book, I was eager to read his sequel. This book was also fun to read. A good vacation book that as each chapter is short and can stand alone.
It's hard to believe that people come to our National Parks so ill-prepared. It taught me a lot of what not to do!
This is a book that is great for the whole family - I shared it with my 85 year old mother and she is still laughing.

Just like the first book, these stories keep you smiling! You simply have to enjoy being able to read a short story that makes your laugh AND then be able to share it with your friends and family. That is what Jim Burnett gives you with this book. Mr. Burnett painstakingly sets up the stories so that you see the trouble coming and that is where my grin starts to grow! A definite camp-fire read for those who want to laugh instead of jump!

Jim Burnett seems to have run out of material in his first "Hey Ranger" book so he applied his tiresome style of over-writing and using out of place phrases to incidents he seems to have only read about in reports. Many, possibly most, of the stories in the initial part of the book have phrases like "the report didn't mention" or "the report was unfortunately silent". I would expect an author to research beyond the report and check facts. What little information he does research seems to come directly from websites with references like "unverified claim on the Internet".

A "fun" book like this could get by on unresearched anecdotes if it were not for the author's insulting approach. Everyone in the park seems to be, according to Mr. Burnett, way more stupid than he. The chapter titled "Assumption Junction" is a prime example. He tells the story of a man and his wife, experienced outdoors people, who make a navigation error. In hindsight it is a dumb error but typical of what many of us have done on rivers or trails. The man is a canoe instructor and has done the route before. He goes past a sign and down a rapid way beyond their ability, then walks 3.5 miles back to get picked up. He made a mistake but got himself out. Mr. Burnett gives him and his wife insulting names ("Mo and Flo"), he does not attempt to interview them and instead makes up dialogue which makes them sound stupid since the report "does not record their conversation", and gives no credit to the couple figuring out their mistake and self-rescuing.

One of the few good stories was by an Australian friend and was not even about a national park. Mr. Burnett, after 120 pages does finally present some interesting material from his life, written without filler and insult, and "researched" because he lived it. But it is too little too late. The stories could be funny, well-written, with some details beyond official reports, and not insulting. But they are not.

Pass this book by, there are so many better ones out there.

I had high expectations for this book but I had to put it down after a couple of chapters. There were too many instances where Mr. Burnett tried way too hard to make a story funny that really wasn't funny. The book is basically about stupid people asking stupid questions and doing stupid things. My advice is to just tell the stories and let the reader decide if it's funny, sad, ironic, etc. Also, there are way too many cliche's. I really hate reading books with cliche's. They should be stricken from every piece of literature ever written!
Anyway, there are some funny stories but the writing is just not really worth wading through.

I would first like to thank and congratulate Mr. Burnett for his hard work serving our parks. I didn't read the first one and I didn't know what I expected from this one, but I was very disappointed. The book seemed to lack solid substance. Most chapters seemed to drag on by the addition of filler text that made it simply boring to read. For example, there were several pages dedicated to the "humorous" events of trying to scare a snake out of a canoe. Or an in-depth analysis of how people were confused over his mailing address when he lived in one area but his mail was delivered to some other area. As time went on in reading the book, I simply had to start skimming the pages rather than reading them until I found something that was potentially interesting. Unfortunately, this isn't a book that I would even give to another family member to read.

This book is like a fresh breathe of air. It's witty,funny and relaxing to read. I found myself laughing out loud several times. A real break from the stress of life.

I like the "Hey Ranger" books. It's fun to read about working with the public in natural settings. In some of the stories you can totally see how that would happen (and can even imagine yourself in that predicament), while in others you have to agree with the author who feels that sometimes people leave their brains at home before going to a national park. My only negative comment: I wish the pictures were in color.

This sequel to the author's first Hey Ranger book is a lot of fun to read, and if you pay attention to the reasons the characters in this book had a misadventure, there's some good information to be gained as well. I enjoy his folksy, conversational style and the occasional acronyms he invents to describe some of the situations in the book. The short chapters make this a good book for travel reading.