Into the Wild

For my outside reading I am going to read Into the Wild, by Jon Kraukaer, I don't know how to spell it. Anyways, I am choosing this book because I really enjoyed the movie and I am interested to see how the author portrays a lot of the characters. I have also heard that this book has a lot more insight then the movie when he is in Alaska. I am curious to know more and am somewhat excited for it. Whenever I watch this movie with my friends, it is never quiet. Everyone seems to have their own opinion on how dumb Alexander Tramp is or what else he should have done. Honestly, I kinda enjoy the arguements as I do have my own point on a lot of things. I think a lot of people can agree that although he was trying to escape civilization his choice to go into the dangerous wilderness was a foolish and somewhat selfish move. He really didn't take into account more about his parents, his sister, his hippee friends that he met along the way, and turned down to be adopted by Ron(Hal Holmbrook). For me, the parts with Ron saying good bye to Alex were really sad because Ron had lost all of his kids and wife.

Ending of the Odyessy

I can see how this book has such a good reputation and people all over the world still read it but I really did not enjoy it. It felt like one of those movies where there would be scenes that just went on and on. I thought the characters were all pretty vague and didn't have very much description in them. Anyways I thought it was way too long and I really was not able to get into the story. There were too many long and boring scenes. As a reader I have kind of a short attention span and I like to read books with lots of story and action behind it like Vince Flynn. Going from Flynn to Homer is quite a change but it helps me get better as a reader. Honestly, the end did not have much to it and I didn't like the end because it was way too predictable. I think everyone knew that the great king was going to get back at the suitors for what they had done to him and his family, especially Penelope. I also thought it was disrespectful of Penelope to do some of the things she did because she really had lost all faith in Odyesseus.

Thoughts on the Odyessy

At first glance, the Odyessy appears to be a very painful book to read because of it's length and diffucult words. I was not at all excited to read it, because I thought it would be too long and diffucult. At the beginning I thought it was quite boring and I really was not very enthuiastic about reading it. I thought the parts of Telemachus were boring and kept going on and on. As we started to read the parts where Odyesseus would recount his tales after and during the trojan wars I would started to get a lot more involved in the book and I actually became much more interested. The chapter with the cyclops was quite entertaining and was a chapter I had no problem reading. The one thing I do not enjoy about the odyessy are it's long and complicated words that really are only relevant in the times of the greeks. There are many words I don't know but I think it helps your reading skills. I hope we continue to watch the Odyessy movie. Even though it is cheezy, I think it helps the story line and remeber some of the not so well known characters.