So I read the book (on MrsD.'s recommendation) and it took me like 10 weeks. But I enjoyed and unexpectedly did not find it difficult to remember the action and salient details over so long a period. It also made the movie (and its limitations) more understandable. It was quite interesting to be finishing up the book at the same time I watched The Terror, a similar tale of failed exploration leading to death. Unlike The Terror, however, this was several stories, of several consecutive and concurrent expeditions -- the original, rescue and rival missions, and the author's own, much later expedition to try and learn the fate of the original protagonist as well the existence of a 'lost civilization' in the Amazon, a network of vast warehouses that supplied books, gadgetry, clothing and all manner of things summoned by a form of electronic telepathy. This advanced civilization (it is alleged) ironically sowed the seeds of its own destruction through insatiable and unsustainable ... ... <SIGNAL LOST>