I just finished Into the Wild, my 9th book of 2026!

Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer, is the nonfiction, slightly speculative story of Chris McCandless, who wandered into the Alaskan wilderness in spring of 1992 to never return alive. For me, it was a 4 star book.

I don't normally read nonfiction, and I wouldn't have read this if not for my AP Lang class requiring it. Despite this, the way this book was written made it feel not so much like facts, but a story that Karakauer immerses the reader in. The story feels as true as anything else I've ever read.

The story of Chris McCandless is one I don't entirely know how to feel about. Throughout the book, Chris is framed as a fool with poor planning skills, who was lucky not to die before he did. In class, we talked a good deal about this. But despite what my classmates seem to think, I do think he was well prepared for his most notable journey. He wasn't trying to live the rest of his life, he was just trying to prove that he could and come out to better prepare after some time.

Overall, I think the framing and pacing of the class helped me really enjoy this book. I'd love to read more like it, if anyone knows a good similar book.

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I also finished Down and Out in Paris and London today, my 10th book of 2026! This was book number 7 off my physical TBR, leaving 28 to go!

Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell, is a surprising partially-true account of Orwell's time with little money in the titular cities. For me, it was a 3 star book.

While Orwell tells some interesting stories, the nature of the book just doesn't bring the entire story together enough to be extremely intriguing to me.

Despite this, I found it interesting to look at both how different being poor is in modern America to how the book describes it, but also how similar. The homeless of this novel and of today are forced to be mobile, their existence in certain areas are illegal, which means they can't hold down a job because they can't stop moving, and they can't stop moving because they can't hold down a job.

As Orwell proposes, there are simple solutions to some of the problems we see with poverty, but people who have never been poor think of the homeless as monsters, think of begging as a sin, think of the unemployed as lazy, when the root of these problems is more those thoughts than anything else.

It's a great book, just not a great one for me. If you're interested in social change, I would absolutely recommend.

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