Saturday, December 29, 2007

Into The Wild

A Bonus Review for the New Year

This book was a required read for school this year. Many of the books our school assigns for us to read are not that great, some were boring, others were just bad. This one is hard for me to fit into a category, but for your sake, I will try.

The author, Jon Krakauer, wrote with a style that is hard to follow. The whole book is out of order, and it can get very confusing; the reason our class had to keep a map and lists of people, places, and times. Some of the chapters don’t fit in at all; they are about other people, and other circumstances. These stories of other people were told to make similarities and differences between Chris McCandless and others who attempted similar things. These facts, though, are vital to our final view on Chris.

Chris McCandless was and extremist, it was not hard to tell. This Transcendentalist had some thoughts that were ‘way out there’, and did some crazy things (like canoeing in the ocean for a while, burning all his money, and ‘running away’, never to see his parents or sister again), but he had some good morals. He not only had morals, he stuck to them, no matter the cost or what people thought of him.

Personally, I found this book hard to read and follow, it was interesting, but, it does not fall onto my favorites list.


I am giving Into the Wild (207 pages) a 3.5/5

7 comments:

Noël De Vries said...

OOOOOOHHHHH.

Wrong Into the Wild.

:) Sorry.

What is it with your school's reading lists?

I was talking about this Into the Wild.

http://www.amazon.com/Into-Wild-Sarah-Beth-Durst/dp/1595141561/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199410433&sr=8-1

(copy and paste address)

I think you'd really like this one.

But good review--writing about books we dislike is a lot harder than raving about books we love. You were very objective, even though you didn't like the novel.

Maybe you'll get EC for blogging about the book? ;) You can only hope.

Love you!

Noël De Vries said...

Hey, I just noticed--you read Pretty Polly already!

What do you think? Is it movie material?

Don't you adore Bob?

Nicole said...

How can there be more than one book with the same name? That gets confusing! I don't know what is wrong with the list- but I found out there is a way to correct it! I can submit a book. Do you have any suggestions for a To-Be-Senior-Class to read? or the whole school (freshmen and faculty)? I could use some help finding a good one they may actually look at and pick!

I think Pretty Polly would be adorable as a movie! We can have so much fun with it! I can read a book in a day if I have no schoolwork to do, yesterday I read Ballet Shoes. I really liked that one too.

Noël De Vries said...

Books for your class ... like a classic? They seem to favor modern titles, though.

What about something like Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury? That a really cool book. Have you read that already?

Maggie DeVries said...

Hey,
I have read this book from the Warrior's series - yes, the cat book - but the first book in the first series is called "Into the Wild". Talk about copying book titles!

Anonymous said...

yeah, me again101, freaky.

marie, you read the ballet shoes in one day? sweet. ;)

I agree about Pretty Polly being adorable. I can't wait to start planning it.

Into the Wild (the one on this blog) does sound interesting. I think that's the way with more modern books, because people are so focused on revolution and being different and rebellious towards the status quo, etc. After all, have you ever read a classic that was written in present tense? Those are so annoying, but they're praised because they are breaking away from the norm.

Aub

Maggie DeVries said...

I'm reading Pretty Polly now, and yes, it is adorable. I like how Bob (is that his name?) takes stuff so literally!