loved this book

the copy of outside magazine sat around our firehouse for months. finally one day i picked it up and read the article about chris mccandless. that was the beginning of a love affair with me and jon krakauer.according to outside magazine, that article about chris mccandless received more mail than any other article in the history of the magazine. i knew i just had to read the book, even though this is not typical reading material for a female.
once i opened the book, i could not put it down. i was fascinated. who was this kid who gave up everything to live like a nomad and wonder around the most remote parts of our country, living off the land? krakauer draws the reader in and explains why he thinks chris did what he did. while others in this review section criticize krakauer for filling this book with bits and pieces from his own experiences and some from other strange characters. my favorite was the guy who absentmindedly forgot to have the bush pilot who dropped him off in the remote outback for a few months come back to get him......need i say what happened to him? read the book and see.
all in all this is a great book. very absorbing. you won't be disappointed. into thin air is another great read by krakauer.

McCandless was a selfish, mentally-ill fool.

Krakauer did a good job cobbling a book together from the scant scraps of information available. However, his characterization of McCandless as a young idealist became ever more grating the more I read. He was one of the most selfish people of which I have heard; disapearing from his parents' and family's lives one day without trace while communicating regularily via letter and postcards with strangers he'd met along his journeys. How could he stroll to his doom with a backpack full of Tolstoy and rice with nary the faintest prick of conscience as to how his parents felt in the two years since he'd spoken to him to them, before he'd begun his 'journey'. McCandless was a man generous and friendly to strangers, indifferent and callous to his parents. He was a fool possessed of neither the basest of common sense nor conscience. He was nobody's hero.

Chris was a selfish person...

Unfortunately, this book proves the point that you cannot always take an interesting magazine article and make a book out of it. There's just not enough to this "story" to fill up a book. That's why Krakauer has to add so much stuff about other "adventurers" (who, in my opinion were more interesting than McCandless especially the guy with the donkeys). I found Christopher McCandless's "adventures" to be nothing more than the aimless, boring wanderings of a young man without a purpose to guide him and caring only about himself. His "writings" were basically nothing more than jottings and musings about food (which he apparently needed to eat a little more of) with a few so-called philosophical entries thrown in. I also failed to see Chris as brave and courageous - I saw him mostly as a manipulator using people when and how he wanted to and playing games with their emotions. Whether he meant to be or not, Chris McCandless was a selfish person - the only people I feel for are his parents and sister because I know they are true victims in this story.