into thin air

I have decided to stop reading this book Into Thin Air even though i haven't gotten that far into it yet. I have gotten just about one-hundred pages into it, and the think i don't really like about it is how the author kept on trailing off into little side story's, or to go into depth on telling somebody's back story. This kind of writing doesn't keep me intrigued enough to really get engaged in the book. But I have herd so many people say such good things about the book, and that i would love it, so I might come back to it later and read through it, and hopefully it will get better. I'm not saying its a bad book so if you're interested go ahead and read it. One thing that made the book stand out is that by words, or names that some people might not know, or are interested in, there is some sort of symbol next to it like*. Then at the bottom of the page in small writing it will have that symbol, and then either more information or a definition, which I thought was kind of neat.