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INTO THE WILD
by Jon Krakauer

This book was ... interesting. It's a non-fiction account of Chris McCandless' tragic one-man journey into the Alaskan bush. Tragic because hunters later found his body in an abandoned bus, the victim of apparent starvation.

I'm not going to say I hated the book, but I'm also not going to say that I loved the book. You see, I can't begin to understand what would possess a man to leave a life behind, a life of privilege, to live in solitude in one of the roughest parts of our country, the Alaskan bush ... scrounging for berries and killing his own food.

I'm not a person of extremes and adventure ... not extreme adventure. Don't get me wrong; I do love a good adventure, but it usually includes suitable accommodations, and by suitable, I mean running water in the same general vicinity as the area in which I will sleep [read HOTEL into that statement, please].

The author, Jon Krakauer, he's interesting in his own right. While others questioned Chris McCandless' mental state, Krakauer almost seemed in awe of his willingness to shed society and go it on his own. He states that he understands the need for extreme adventure, and he even relates a trip he, himself took, that could have ended in a similar fashion to McCandless' ... in death. It seems the author is saying that it might have just been sheer luck or even fate that he survived and McCandless' didn't ... it could have easily been Krakauer that we were all reading about.

Still, I think there has to be a certain amount of "off-centeredness" that causes someone to abandon their family, their lives, their car and few earthly possessions, live in relative poverty, and then want to go it alone in a land that, in all honesty, he really didn't know all that much about. Had he taken the time to really educate himself before hand, it's my opinion that he might still be alive today, and therefore, the story would be much, much different.