10 books

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starflyer59
starflyer59

Just watched Into the Wild, and wondered:

If you were planning to go out into the wilderness alone for, say, 6 months, what 10 paperbacks would you stuff in your pack?

(I'm sure this type of question has been asked before, but not lately!)

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starflyer59
starflyer59

Here are some of the books Chris McCandless took, as far as I can tell:

Louis L'Amour's memoir, Education of a Wandering Man

along with these listed in Krakauer's book, reportedly (and I don't know if he took any liberties with this or not):

-Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
-Death of Ivan Ilych (Tolstoy)
-Call of the Wild (London)
-White Fang (London)
-Moon-Face (London)
-Brown Wolf (London)
-To Build a Fire (London)
-Doctor Zhivago (Boris Pasternak)
-Terminal Man (Michael Crichton)
-O Jersualem! (Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre)
-War and Peace (Tolstoy)
-Walden (Henry David Thoreau)

and the fateful Tanaina Plantlore by Priscilla Russel Kari

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starflyer59
starflyer59

For my own list:

The Idiot (tough to find time to finish this)
& 100 Years of Solitude (of course)....

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Captain_Courageous
Captain_Courageous

Have to think about this one Star, but for starters I'd search for one like
"How to survive in the wilds by yourself"

There's no problem that can't be ignored if we really put our minds to it.
Japan Land of the Cherry Blossoms
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starflyer59
starflyer59

quite!

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shy_guest
shy_guest

Gregory Bateson - Steps To An Ecology Of Mind
William Gaddis - The Recognitions
William Gaddis - A Frolic of His Own
T S Eliot - Collected Poems
Dylan Thomas - Collected Poems
Samuel Beckett - Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable)
James Joyce - Ulysses
William Faulkner - The Sound & The Fury
Thomas Pynchon - Against The Day
Henry James - The Ambassadors
Paul Reps (ed) - Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
H D Thoreau - Walden
Shakespeare - The Sonnets
would be a nice baker's dozen.

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starflyer59
starflyer59

I think I can finish my list... almost all of these are books I've wanted to read but never did (or some were started but not finished!)

  1. D's The Idiot
  2. 100 Years of Solitude (of course)....
  3. Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow
  4. Pynchon's V.
  5. Austen's Pride and Prejudice (never had a chance to read)
  6. Tolstoy's War and Peace
  7. Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
  8. St. Augustine's Confessions
  9. Thomas Merton's Wisdom from the Desert
  10. A Bible? I'm thinking the Psalms could be refreshing and Revelations interesting.
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starflyer59
starflyer59

I guess Tolstoy's Family Happiness is another that McCandless had with him.

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widespread
widespread

It's too bad he didn't have chance to read T.C. Boyle's A Friend of the Earth or Drop City.

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starflyer59
starflyer59

interesting connection, widespread.

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