Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer - 1996

 

Wow! What a book! I actually read this one. This is probably top 10. Shout out Rachel for the recommendation. We will have to get her review on here too. Where to begin?

On Chris: 

Yes he partly crazy but mostly I agree with Krakauer that he had the right spirit and the right idea. He was just very very unlucky at the end. I see some of myself in Chris. He was a good runner and he was hard on himself and he liked to think about and understand things. Krakauer sees a lot of himself in Chris too. 

On the hard core people in this book:

It is increasingly obvious to me that survivalists are tougher than goggins. Krakauer himself climbed the devil’s thumb and detailed it in this book. I am not sure if goggins has done anything that hard. But maybe he has. However the other guy in the book, Rossellini I think, lived in the woods for 10 years for fun because he wanted to see if it was possible to live like a caveman. Goggins definitely did not do anything that hard. And the other guy was just as intense. Waterman decided to climb some remote mountain for 145 days. This mountain had previously been too hard for teams of experts to climb. Certainly goggins did not do anything this hard. However, Goggins is sane and Rossellini and Waterman clearly were not. To be the best at something you have to be a little or a lot crazy.

On Chris’s death:

Well, he was super super unlucky. The afterword of the book describes exactly why they think he died and it is very very complicated. Basically it seems he ate some toxic seed that looked like another toxic seed and no one knew that this seed was toxic. Furthermore not the whole plant was toxic but only the plant’s seed had some type of toxic amino acid. I will have to see if Rachel got this too because it was quite confusing and it took the author years and many hypotheses to get to this conclusion. Anyway, Chris was super resourceful and it is a shame he died. He even had a plant field guide which he followed but this bit of information was not in it. 

On Walt:

Walt is an idiot for having two wives/girlfriends at once. The wives/girlfriends are also idiots for staying with him. I can get 0 women and this man has two and lies to them both and still gets to keep one. Wtf lol.

On women in general: 

I can now think of two women that I know who are smart and accomplished whose husband cheated on them and they decided to stay. Why?

On Chris’s injury: Chris’s sos note says he is injured. But what was the injury?

On the private investigator: What happened to the private investigator. I guess he never found him?

On the DMV: At one point the father goes to his next door neighbor for help because his neighbor was the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. Lol this is so typical of the DMV

On Chesapeake Beach: Walt eventually moves to Chesapeake Beach which is like 20 minutes from where we grew up. Is it the same Chesapeake Beach? Like we could have driven by him or saw him at  the waterpark or something lol right?

On the book blog: Congrats to me and Scott for 240 reviews!! We never celebrate but we should go have coffee at Barnes and Noble or something! 

On me being on fire: I have been reading a lot of really good books lately. Hopefully my lucky streak will continue. The best way to find a good book is to read a book because every (nonfiction) book always references another good nonfiction book. 

Ok, I am not sure what I am reading next. Krakauer’s style reminds me a lot of Michael Lewis (author of the Big Short). Krakauer and Kristin Hannah are my current favorite authors. Lewis is also good. Maybe I should read some more Krakauer. Erik Larson also kind of writes like them and is good. Peace!