J: Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life

Warning: Spoilers follow!!

If you were a reader of this blog at all back in the day, you know that I had a pretty strong love-hate relationship with Gilmore Girls, especially toward the end of its original run..and especially with Rory Gilmore. She started off the series so relatable and likable and gradually just became insufferable. I won't go into all the reasons, but consequently I was pretty nervous about this revival.

So, when I couldn't binge-watch all of A Year in the Life right away...I (like Mira) read spoilers. Well, not really spoilers. More like, full recaps and full analysis. LOTS of it. And it kind of led me to expect the worst! So, when I got around to watching it throughout this week, it actually was not nearly as bad I had been fearing...and yes, I, like, Mira, am generally satisfied.

The Bad:

• The Stars Hollow Musical was almost totally unwatchable. I know a big component of the show is the Stars Hollow "quirkiness," but this was too much. Sutton Foster is great, but man, it took all I could to not fast-forward through that.
• The Life and Death Brigade. UGH! They're so awful.
• Rory's blitheness about her personal and professional problems the first and second episodes. I know it was supposed to be funny that she has a boyfriend that no one can remember, including herself, but that's just horrible. I'm glad she realized that and admitted it out loud later, but she still didn't do anything about it. And it still pisses me off how Lorelai excuses Rory's bad behavior...yes Paul did not fit. That didn't mean she could just treat him like crap. 
• And her thing with Logan? I could not empathize with or feel sorry for her on that one either. 
• As for her career, I guess it's one thing to not want to settle for a job she doesn't want, but Rory has always had too lofty goals and I didn't see any indication that she'd been paying her dues since the last time we saw her. She was expecting that her one New Yorker article was supposed to get her straight to the top? Her indignation at the interview with the online site annoyed the crap out of me too. You had no ideas and you're mad that they decided they didn't want to hire you?
• The Thirty-Something Gang and how they were all disappointed that Rory didn't want to hang out with them. She's not that cool, ok guys?
• I like Paris, but I found her freak-out in the bathroom at Chilton to be totally unnecessary. And her still being hung up on non-Chad-Michael-Murray-Tristan was kind of pathetic. 
• Rory's random speech about music at Chilton was terrible too. As if the kids would really enjoy that?
• I understand Lorelai missing Sookie, but the way she was just dismissing those celebrity guest chefs really irritated me.
• Lorelai and Rory at the pool being catty and having those kids be their servants. Another ridiculous example of how they know they can get away with anything in Stars Hollow and have no problem taking advantage of it.

The Meh:

• I kind of hoped Lane would be doing something more interesting. I guess it's nice that she and Zach and the band are still going, but it looks like she's still working at her mom's store so not much has changed...
• I'm Team Jess, although I didn't have much hope that he and Rory would end up together. But I did hope he'd have a bigger role in these episodes. Oh, well. His last scene made it clear (to me at least) that he still has feelings for Rory, so who knows. There were a lot of mentions of things coming "full circle" which some people have extended to include making a parallel between Lorelai/Christopher/Luke and Rory/Logan/Jess, but I guess we will never know! Unless Amy Sherman-Palladino decides to reveal something...
• Rory writing a book about her and her mom. Did this strike anyone else as very Little Women/Anne of Green Gables? (Or at least the movie versions.)
• I thought Sookie's appearance was kind of a letdown, honestly. Not that her babbling was out of character, but maybe it was just too short?
• April is still annoying. I guess that's fine...

The Good:

• Happy ending for Luke and Lorelai! There was a lot of focus on who Rory would end up with, but my biggest shipper concern was mainly for L/L and I'm glad they did not screw that up. I really loved Luke's speech when he thought Lorelai was leaving him.
• I thought I would hate Lorelai's "Wild" detour, but I actually thought it was pretty funny. If you hadn't read the book or seen the movie, I don't think it would have been nearly as entertaining though.
• I thought they did a really good job with Emily and Lorelai's relationship and the aftermath of Richard's death. I'm glad Emily quit the DAR and moved out of her house. The running gag with Berta and her family and their language was too much for me though. I had the captions on, and they translated some of what Berta was saying just fine...
• Rory kind of redeemed herself to me by the end. She realized what bad decisions she'd been making in her personal life, realized that she's not really cut out for journalism (which I kind of thought was obvious since like...Mitchum Huntzberger), and just generally seemed to be a bit more self aware.
• The final four words. In some ways I kind of glad that the Palladinos weren't able to finish season 7 the way they wanted to. Having Rory pregnant and becoming a single mom at 32 is very different from having that happen at 22, and I think she's way more prepared for it now. Going back to the conversation with Christopher, it's clear she was trying to figure out if she should do what her mother did or if she should involve the father more. 

Odds and Ends:

• Loved the cameos from Lauren Graham's Parenthood co-stars Jason Ritter and Peter Krause (also Lauren Graham's real-life boyfriend), as the park rangers. Unfortunately Mae Whitman's was kind of lame.
• Why mention that Luke is friends with Kiefer Sutherland and not be able to have Kiefer Sutherland make a cameo? Major letdown!
• I'm sad that Paris and Doyle were getting a divorce, but I did find it amusing that they wrote in Danny Strong's real-life success as a screenwriter.
• Michel was hilarious, I'd forgotten how much I liked him.
• Paul Anka and Petal were pretty cute.
• Rory quoted Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This made me happy.
• Mr. Kim exists!!

gilmore girls: a revisit, a retrospective, and a revival

Jenn had suggested that we live blog or blog about the latest Netflix revival -- Gilmore Girls -- and though we're not really blogging here anymore or able to time watching GG: A Year in the Life together, it seems fitting to revisit 'we like tv' as we revisit Gilmore Girls.

Mira:
Revisit: After mulling it over for a while on whether I could re-watch Gilmore Girls from the beginning, and deciding for the majority of the last year that it wouldn't be a good idea (I just couldn't stomach all the bad I remembered about the show: Rory and married Dean, Lorelai and Chris ruining Lorelai and Luke, April, Rory quitting school, Rory being an entitled brat, and I'm sure there was far more!), a few weeks ago I decided to "watch a few episodes." That quickly turned into watch 6 episodes in a row, which then became, watch an entire season (mid-Season 1 to mid-Season 2) over a three day weekend... Fortunately the insanity died down there and my brain feeling like mush put the brakes on any plans to try to fit in the remaining 5.5 seasons of Gilmore Girls into a 2.5 week span. (I only ended up getting up to Season 2, Episode 19.)

It was a perfect few seasons to revisit Star's Hollow and the Gilmore Girls universe. I was reminded by how sweet Rory and Dean were in the early days, how great Max Medina was (I'd forgotten about him), how blatant Luke's crush on Lorelai was (and Emily's remarking on it from the beginning!), the great emotional tension between Emily and Lorelai, the hilarity of Rory-Paris and Michel-everyone, the adorableness of Sookie and Jackson, Tristan, Jess... All I had remembered from the 7 years I had watched the show was impressions of people, the quick-paced banter, and the quirkiness of Star's Hollow; I had totally forgotten all of the heart of the show until I got a chance to relive it.  Unfortunately, I haven't quite make it back to the best of the Rory-Jess episodes (just entering into that territory now!), but the build up of relationships (and I guess that's why the tearing down of them was so upsetting) was one of the best elements of the show -- and especially nice to revisit in the years where I still really liked Rory.

Retrospective: One of my first realizations in re-starting the series was that I was almost the same age as Rory when the show first started (I was one year older), but now I am one year older than Lorelai.  How's that for feeling old?  That aside, I think perspective, distance, and well, life, has changed my view of the show and my reactions to some of the story lines.  Don't get me wrong -- I still hate that Rory goes full brat and Emily enables her; I hate the April storyline; I hated basically all of Season 7 and probably a good amount of the seasons leading up to it.  However, I also now forgive Rory for that a lot more than I did previously -- she represented well her character. her circumstance, her generation.  She had a lot of privilege provided for her, through her loving mother, her adoring townspeople, her doting grandparents; she was quite entitled, but truthfully -- aren't so many people these days exactly that? So my Joey Potter annoyance with Rory has dissipated mostly, and now I can view the series and her journey in it as exactly that -- a journey from childhood to almost adulthood.  And I was really curious to see how she would be portrayed in the revival.

Also, as a cardholder of the if-there's-no-relationship-to-root-for-i'm-not-interested club, I was terribly invested in the Team Dean (yuck, as if!) vs. Team Jess vs. Team Logan debate.  But Amy S-P had a great article in which she gently reminded the fans that Rory's identity should be more than who she dated at the age of 16 or 18 -- would you want to be defined by who your high school/college boyfriends are?  And would they necessarily make sense in your life as your life partners?  So I felt a little abashed, but still slightly Team Jess anyway. Anyway, none of that matter as much to me as seeing Luke and Lorelai in it for the long haul!

Revival: So, since I couldn't wake up and watch all 4 episodes (nor stay up at midnight and watch all 4 episodes), I had to wait until I got home from work today to watch GG: A Year in the Life. So what'd I do instead? Read spoilers. All of them. Final four words. Where have all the characters ended up. Who does Rory end up with. Where are Luke and Lorelai. EVERYTHING.  Why would I do this? Would I still binge watch the show?  Well, yes, yes I would. From 4PM-midnight, with a slight break for dinner, I watched all 4 episodes.

Pre-watching, post-spoilering, I was very apprehensive. Post-watching, I'm satisfied. Zen.

Rory and where she was in life made sense for her chosen career path and was not handled delicately (even mocked via the '30 somethings club'), I loved that there was a journey for Emily, there was some great homage to what made the original series so wonderful, and I got my Luke and Lorelai completion more completely than the series finale.  So many small moments that were great; some moments that dragged out quite a bit more than I could keep attention to; closure and updates on pretty much everything; and as mentioned several times throughout the 4 episodes -- full circle.  For me, yeah there were a few questions raised by those final four words, but really, I don't care. I think it's an interesting place to leave off and I can accept it as coming full circle.


Now, when I can handle some more GG, maybe I'll get back to the original series and at least watch through the end of the Jess era. :)

Jenn-- your turn!

J: Catching up!

So, it's been over a year since I last posted! A lot has happened -- most notably, I got married and bought a house, which has kept me pretty busy and not terribly up on the pop culture, unfortunately...

TV
I haven't had cable or even broadcast TV in a long time, so my TV sources are solely Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus. My husband and I watched the first seasons of Orphan Black (so awesome, will season 2 ever come to Amazon Prime??) and Defiance (fun, also waiting for season 2 to hit streaming), and are slowly starting to go through Fringe from the beginning. We also got hooked on MasterChef Junior and recently started Agent Carter which we're enjoying so far. On my own, I'm keeping up with Downton Abbey, of course, and Jane the Virgin, which is crazy but really funny and addictive. I'd like to go back and catch up with Parenthood and Parks and Recreation and The Mindy Project and such, but just haven't had time...

Books
I really do wish I devoted more time to reading. Most of the time I borrow books from the library, renew them as many times as possible, and still have to return them unfinished. Some that I did manage to finish and liked were:

• The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman  - last book in the Magician's trilogy 
• For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund - crazy young adult dystopian retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion
• Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami -  much shorter and "lighter" than his last book, 1Q84, but still very enjoyable.
• Wild by Cheryl Strayed -  listened to the audiobook. Want to watch the movie!

Music
Every once in awhile I latch onto a new band, but I just don't listen to a lot of music anymore. I listen to All Songs Considered every week, and that's kind of it. I don't think I've been to a single live show either. Do podcasts belong in this category? I too was obsessively listening to Serial and still keep up with This American Life and Pop Culture Happy Hour.

Movies
My husband is a movie fan, so I think this is the one area I've actually picked up on! For 2014:

• The last Hobbit movie - um, boring?
• Interstellar - A little overwhelming in true IMAX, but I thought it was very well done.
• The Hunger Games - Mockingjay Part 1 - Not much happened in the book, so not much happened in the movie...
• If I Stay - Watched this on the plane. Adam was perfect, but I liked the book better.
• Big Hero 6 -  Cute!
• The Maze Runner - Surprisingly fun, I'm looking forward to the sequel.
• Step Up: All In - Ha, of course I saw this.
• Guardians of the Galaxy - Should probably watch this again since I dozed off in the middle, but it was fun. Really like Chris Pratt and Groot. And Baby Groot!
• The Fault in Our Stars - I didn't cry like I thought I would, but it was cute. I'm not sure if I'm really a Shailene Woodley fan though.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past - I thought this was very smart.
• The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are growing on me. I guess it helps that they're dating in real life...
• Veronica Mars - I streamed this day of release as a Kickstarter backer and didn't watch it in theaters. It was kind of just a long episode of the show, but it was satisfying. 
• Captain America: The Winter Soldier - I think Captain America is my current favorite of the Marvel universe. Scarlett Johansson was surprisingly likable here.
• Divergent - This was ridiculous, but pretty fun.
• The Lego Movie. Ummm this might have been my favorite movie of the year...

M: totally neglected... but i still like tv!

... and books and music and movies. :)

Though in truth, my TV watching has been sporadic at best in the past 1.5 years since I last posted.  The only currently airing TV shows I watch are The Amazing Race (though I haven't watched the finale of the most recent season which ended in December), Gotham (4 episodes behind), and MasterChef Junior.  I listen to the husband watch Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., and Bones.  I recently obsessively watched all of season one of a Canadian TV show called The Next Step, I'll blog about that separately later, though.

I don't do much reading these days, or at least anything blog-worthy. I've discovered in the past couple of years that if I don't have the time to sit and read a book (or series) from start to finish in pretty much one sitting, chances are pretty high that I will never finish the book (or series). As a result I've been pretty bad about reading anything long and meaty, and instead tend to only read young adult or trashy books, which can be started and completed in one sitting.  However, last weekend I did binge-read two books that are blog-worthy -- Graceling and Fire, part of a 3 book series by Kristin Cashore.  I have the 3rd book in possession now to read, so I will blog about those 3 books soon, too!

I do listen to music and make my way to concerts when opportunity arises.  But truthfully, I have no idea what "new" music exists anymore and find myself listening very often to the same music I have always liked.  Notable concerts I have attended since I last blogged: Imagine Dragons on their Night Visions tour, OneRepublic at the Royal Albert Hall, Pentatonix, Download Fest in Derbyshire with headliner Linkin Park performing Hybrid Theory front to back, and Linkin Park on their Hunting Party tour.

I go to the movie theater for movies maybe once every other month?  Working backwards, I've seen: Into the Woods, Mockingjay, Part 1, The Maze Runner, The Fault in our Stars, and Captain America: Winter Soldier. I think I watch more movies on planes than in theaters... I could write about Into the Woods (which only just released in the UK and I watched yesterday), but I probably won't. :)

And so yes, that is the round up of how I still like tv and books and music and movies but never blog because I just don't watch/read/listen/watch much worth writing about.  That said, I of course have new year's resolutions that I'll probably forget about shortly, which includes writing more -- and so I will try to do so through blog.  I've started my own personal blog and the plan is to cross-post anything that is relevant to this long-standing blog on both sites in the coming year.  So stay tuned! (If anyone is still tuned in, that is, ha!)

Oh -- and I did totally kill the 2013 weeklies by moving overseas.  :(

M: 40 days of dating

Hello, blog.  You still here? :)

So Jenn and I got sidetracked from blogging for the past couple of months.  She's only planning a wedding or something and moved from MD to VA.  I moved across the pond to England or something boring like that, and somehow fell off the face of the blogging earth in the process. That being the case, I'm sure we have a negative number of readers now, since that means that even we aren't checking our own blog to read new posts.  And the handful of readers who may have done so while we were regularly updating (thank you for having existed as readers at one point) should have given up on us eons ago.

In any case, I found something I wanted to blog about! A while back I had introduced the Lizzie Bennett Diaries on this blog, which lead to Jenn reading and getting super caught up on it (while I never finished going through it and am now woefully behind). More recently I came across another web series thing (via Facebook), which is based on real life and so very engrossing.  So much so that I'm already caught up!

http://fortydaysofdating.com/ 

It's two graphic designers in NYC who were already good friends and who decide to try this experiment of dating each other for 40 days and documenting the experience.  The girl is a serial relationshipper, while the guy is a serial dater.  She falls too fast; he never falls. They started the journey in March, and started sharing the story earlier this summer.  The story unfolds a day at a time (with the final reveal/Day 40 coming later this month on August 16), and is shared via an interview-style system with fun graphics (given their professions, makes sense) interspersed.  They are currently on Day 27 and I seriously want to know -- do they make it beyond Day 40 or not?!?!?  Are they in a true relationship or will they go back to a friendship or less?! 

C'mon, get hooked with me! :)

J: Week 16 (Randomness)

I know, I know, this week's post is very late. The truth is that I just haven't really known what to blog about. Five years ago I never thought I'd be saying this, but I honestly just don't watch that much TV anymore. And I don't have as much time to read as I'd like, few movies interest me, and music always has and always will kind of overwhelm me. But I wouldn't say that I've totally cut myself off from pop culture - here's just a random selection of things that I've been enjoying or that I'm looking forward to.

• The Veronica Mars movie - Obviously, I contributed to the kickstarter!
• Before Midnight - Third in the series after Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, which are some of my favorite movies of all time. SO excited for this.
• Tegan and Sara's album Heartthrob and Frightened Rabbit's album Pedestrian Verse.
• In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen. Almost finished with this book. It seems I've been on a non-fiction kick lately...
• Next up on my audiobook queue: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein and The Raven Boys by Maggie Steifvater
• Top of the Lake - I started watching this Sundance Channel series and thought it was really interesting but fell behind. Would like to finish it up before I move since I'm not planning on having cable TV at my new place.
• Mr. Selfridge  - Same story, started watching this latest Masterpiece Classic series but fell behind. At first I was like, Jeremy Piven in a period piece? But he's actually really quite good.
• Pop Culture Happy Hour - Apparently I like listening to people talking about things I don't watch or read or listen to.
• This American Life - Still try to catch this every week. Dr. Gilmer and Mr. Hyde was a really interesting recent one.

M: Week 15 (No More Original Movies)

There seems to be quite a dearth of original movies being made and produced for theaters these days.  So many movies coming out this year appear to be either sequels or more. (Even the few original movies I've watched in the past year seem to have been based on novels or were remakes...) When looking at movie lists for upcoming movies, I'm either thinking, "Wait, they're making another movie in THAT series?" or "Wait, HOW many of those movies exist already?"  Of course, I'll admit there are also times when I'm excited to see the next movie.

Here are great examples:
Iron Man 3 (There is no end to these Avenger-related movies, huh?)
Star Trek into Darkness
Fast and Furious 6 (Six?!)
The Hangover: Part III (Part II was so bad I couldn't finish it... how did a Part III even get funded and made?)
Man of Steel (Figure anything in the Superman, Spider-Man series counts in this category. They're definitely not "original" material for movies at this point.)
Monsters University (12 years later... a prequel.)
Despicable Me 2 (I have to admit I'm a bit excited about this one. It was a surprise to me how much I enjoyed the original.)
Grown Ups 2
Red 2 (Enjoyed the original, but surprised that they even bothered with this.  Then again, this falls into the Expendables category and that series is working on its third, right?)
The Wolverine
The Smurfs 2 (really?)
300: Rise of an Empire
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (Given how long it took for this to come out, I had figured they weren't going to bother since the first one didn't do that well.  Silly me.)
Kick-Ass 2
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
Sin City: A Dame to Kill for
Paranormal Activity 5 (I vaguely know of 2... I didn't realize 4 already existed.)
Anchorman 2 (9 years later... not as bad as Monsters, Inc.)
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Can't wait! Also the Divergence book series will be made into a movie series to capitalize off of The Hunger Games market.)
The Hobbit 2 (This is the prime example of trying to milk a franchise for everything it's worth. NOT necessary. Sigh.)


That's only a list of movies coming out the rest of this year!

J: Week 14 (Life of Pi)

I apologize for being late this week! I was out of town for the weekend and am still catching up. But -- taking a page out of Mira's book -- I did watch a movie on the plane! I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were showing Life of Pi already.

Confession: I tried to read the book, several times actually, but could never get through it. I think it had something to do with the writing style, but it just didn't retain my interest, even though conceptually I thought the story would have appealed to me So initially I wasn't too excited about the movie version, even though Ang Lee was directing it and he seemed like a pretty perfect choice. But after some good buzz and awards season success, my interest was piqued again. And I have to say that I really enjoyed it.

The movie was really visually gorgeous. It's left somewhat ambiguous whether the events of the story actually happened or if they were imagined by the main character, Pi, but there are definitely a number of fantastical elements that the movie takes full advantage of. I thought the night scenes especially were pretty breathtaking. And this was on the tiny airplane screens!

Suraj Sharma has a heavy load on his shoulders as the teenaged Pi - he's the only human onscreen for the bulk of the film - and is immediately likable. The equally likable Irfan Khan is the older Pi (I associate him first with The Namesake, in which his wife was played by the same actress who plays Pi's mother here) and there are a sprinkling of other actors who all acquit themselves well. And then of course, there's the tiger (named Richard Parker of all things), who is definitely a character on his own and not just a plot device.

Recommended!

M: Week 13 (Much Ado About Nothing)

One of my favorite Shakespearean plays is "Much Ado About Nothing," and one of my favorite movies is also Much Ado About Nothing (starring Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Denzel Washington, Kate Beckinsale, the doctor from House MD, and lots of other familiar/famous faces). The play in itself is really fun with great characters and a perfectly messed up plotline that gets resolved rather perfectly.  The movie version took all of that and translated it perfectly to the screen (no surprise since Kenneth Branagh was involved). There's really very little that could be done to make what's already been perfected even better... Still, I'm really excited to share two upcoming projects related to "Much Ado About Nothing" that I've recently learned about!

JOSS WHEDON?!?!
Apparently Joss Whedon and friends have created a modern day interpretation of "Much Ado About Nothing," shot in black and white and filmed over 12 days. There will be many familiar faces, such as Agent Coulson from The Avengers, and actors from Firefly, Angel, and Buffy. I'm so glad to hear that it takes its own interpretation and doesn't try to remake something that's already been perfected. And truthfully, if there's anyone who is pretty reliable about taking something that has a devoted fan base (okay, so maybe "Much Ado" may have a devoted fan base of one -- me) and redoing it to different level of greatness, well I think Joss Whedon can do it. For more details:
http://www.examiner.com/article/joss-whedon-s-much-ado-about-nothing-to-visit-wondercon

A MUSICAL?!?!
Seriously, there's something going on here. I love me some musicals and I love me some "Much Ado," so whoever decided the two must be combined was obviously doing it for me.  Maybe there's something in the water/air, but here's yet another famous-name-attached project related to "Much Ado" -- a musical scored by Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong!  Hopefully this project takes off and makes it onto a larger production platform (currently only set to be performed at the Yale Repertory Theater in 2014) so I can see it.  But I find it fascinating that this is happening at all. For more details: http://www.zmemusic.com/rock/billie-joe-armstrong-shakespeare-15032013/

Maybe my personal love for "Much Ado" isn't so unique and there is quite a huge fan-base, who knows.  But regardless, I'm excited and hope I get a chance to watch both and add them to my "Much Ado" collection.  If not, I've still got the play and the Kenneth Branagh movie version.

J: Week 12 (Into the Wild)

I borrowed this book, Into the Wild, from my brother years ago. I knew the basic story and found it fascinating -- especially since I had read one of Jon Krakauer's other books (Into Thin Air) and really liked it -- but for some reason I didn't get around to it until just recently.

I probably became re-interested in it because last September I somehow found myself on a 6-day backpacking trip through the Grand Canyon and started to really understand why people love getting away from civilization and just enjoying the outdoors. Growing up in the city/suburbs, I had never even been camping before last year! But I mean, this was a guided trip - we went with a company that provided all of our food and gear and even cooked every meal for us - and it was seriously tough. I don't think I'd want to do something that intense again. So the thought of just going out alone into the wilderness for weeks and months at a time with no one really knowing where you were? That I couldn't fathom.

Krakauer does a great job building the story. He starts with Chris McCandless' fate and then goes back to trace his journey and try to piece together his complex personality. He explains that a lot of people labeled McCandless as simply foolish and unprepared but I was actually pretty impressed by how long he did sustain his wandering lifestyle. I think in the end it was really his idealism that got him in trouble. It's ultimately a sad story but still an incredible one.

Right after I finished the book I was pleasantly surprised to find that the movie version was free for streaming from Amazon Prime. Emile Hirsch plays Chris McCandless and I thought he was pretty fantastic. Reading about what he went through physically is one thing but seeing it made it even more powerful. I remember one of the notable things about the movie was that Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam contributed original songs to the soundtrack and I thought his sound was actually extremely fitting.

I highly recommend both the book and the movie!