I finished Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. It was a choice of two books for book club this month. Some didn't want to read this one so they chose Sense and Sensibility, which I'll read also (think I have before but it's been awhile...)
OK. I didn't really want to read this either. First off you know it's going to end badly if you know anything of the true story. This boy graduates from college, decides to give away all his worldly possessions and travel to Alaska to see if he can survive. Needless to say that he was found in a bus on a trail in the wilderness- dead. So as you can see not my usual fare.
I think it was slightly more interesting than I thought it would be. Slightly. The kid was obviously unbalanced in some way. I think he probably had severe OCD with scrupulosity, because he obsessed so much about morals and such. He would have been much better off if he'd joined a monastery or something along those lines to find what he was seeking. And, as you may know with most chemical imbalances diet is everything and here you have a guy who's starving himself on purpose, which would make him more unbalanced. Really strange. He was a smart kid (well, book smart) but did some really stupid things like leave his fishing pole and gun behind, burn his money, go into the Alaskan wilderness with bad boots and clothes and virtually no food. As someone interviewed in the book says "He obviously wasn't a Boy Scout because he sure wasn't prepared."
What was strange was how many people he connected with on his travels. They really felt drawn to him and yet he shunned most everyone in the end.
A tale of growing up gone wrong.
