Daphiny 28/11/2014
I now walk into the wild
[English review]
1st: This book is way out of my comfort zone, I wouldn't randomly pick it to read on my own not even on my worst "I need new things" days.
2nd: I didn't like the synopses and I'm not much of a fan of non-fiction reads, but I have someone who really loves this and he thought I would enjoy it too, so I thought: why not?
Except that........
it took me 6 whole months to finally finish it.
I know, what a shame.
But I just couldn't. Believe me, I did try thousands of times, but I always ended up getting really bored and feeling the need to read another book (that I was actually really willing to read) and I just read the other book. That happened over and over. Actually, it happened till last month.
I'm not very proud of that, but what could I have done? I didnt feel the connection, I didn't feel like this was a book for me. The first chapters were plain boredom, I just really don't like long descriptions of land and geographic things. I like adventure and thriller scenes! I wanted to see that.
Then, things started to get a little more interesting. Long descriptions, yeah, but about REAL ADVENTURES and not about just land and boring stuff! That was COOL STUFF! I started to enjoy the pace and the language and the writing. And weirdly, I started enjoying the book. The one I thought I would hate.
I dont know exactly what happened, but I just suddenly understood why everybody liked it: the book speaks to you. The values this book passes on are pure greatness. Chris's story just teaches you a lesson: he showed us great individuality and full control over his freedom of choice as to living life rather differently than how we ordinarily would, caring little about what people would think. He's like a big brother you look up to. You wanna be like him, but you dont have the guts to try. But that's not why I liked it exactly.
I liked it because, even being super duper upper smart, McCandless didn't see the weird seeds thing coming. Because even being super confident and independent, during his last days he admitted he needed other people to be fully happy, because "happiness is only real when shared". I dont know why, but those little samples of weakness were what really got me.
It isnt a book I would recommend to any one. No, you gotta have an open mind and let yourself enter their world so you can enjoy it to the fullest. I wasn't ready to read it 6 months ago, and that's why I thought it was so boring. It required me some maturity to finally understand what this was really about: it's not just an adventure story. It's this whole psychological trap that will blow your mind and have you thinking about it for days after you read it.