Don’t call me out on the fact that I reused that thumbnail because I forgot to make one

For a second I was going to say "it isn't even the end of February yet" and then I looked at the calendar and cried

I felt the exact same way about Into the Wild. I read it in college in my young 20s and I hated it because I felt it was turning the protagonist into some sort of hero, and I very much felt his story should be viewed as a serious warning of what can happen when a person is ignorant, sheltered and a bit on the cocky side

I agree with your take on Into the Wild. I live in Alaska and there have been a lot of people who have come up here either to try to do what McCandless did or to take a pilgrimage of sorts out to the bus. Lots of those folks were like him and ill prepared for their journey and had to call for a rescue. It got so bad they ended up air lifting the bus out of the wilderness in an effort to keep people from trekking out to it.

That comment that said you "missed empathy" was surprisingly condescending. You can empathize with McCandless's ultimate fate while still acknowledging his incredible naivete and foolhardiness.

Kaiju Preservation Society by Scalzi also starts off during COVID and off putting at first, but story very quickly takes over and such a great fun read

The annihilation video you did was a lot of fun to watch and made me want to move it up my tbr!

Love the new camera angle. The lighting is lovely and it looks like the shelves go on and on hehe

So excited for you to read Howl’s Moving Castle. I loved that book.

I really enjoy your description and analysis of books. 📚

GASPED when i saw Gideon in the March TBR. i finally read that series this year and i'm still proccessing it lmao. i read Untainted Cup and it was a nice read, i hope you like it!

I read annihilation because of you and it kickstarted my getting back into reading after a bit of a hiatus. That story pulls you in and after I finished it, I still felt it with me so powerfully. Thank you ❤

Glad to see The Wickwire Watch on your March TBR!

Your stoke for books is always so infectious! I appreciate your well-rounded reviews on stuff you maybe didn't like as much. I put annihilation on hold at the library right away.

Picking up Southern Reach this month

You did better than me. I only read one book this month! 😂 but it became my new favorite so everything is fine. (Remains of the Day I highly recommend it)

Good video.

Howl's Moving Castle is a great book and part of a series that my kids love.

Thank you so much for immediately correcting “ bystandard” to bystander. Things like that don’t usually irk me but for some reason that particular one does, along with when people say “for all intensive purposes”.

I just finished House of Open Wounds! Absolutely adored it, big step up from book one!

Excited for March! Howl is one of my favorites! Plus, I think I read Black Powder War (or maybe that was the book that I only got half through before pausing from the series) and I'm reading Snow White with the Red Hair currently too! You should read Yona of the Dawn. I'm trying to reread and catch up with the series.

The Southern Reach vlog is one of my favorite videos of yours as well, so glad you loved it! P.S. How’s Reaper’s Gale going?

Howl's Moving Castle is my favorite 😊 so excited for you to read it!!

Currently reading acceptance now and I think i'm loving it even more than the annihilation! The multiple povs are disorientating in the best possible way, and being back in area x after spending a whole novel in the southern reach has only made me more fearful of what will happen. Im only a few chapters in but already im more disturbed than i was in the first book!

Solaris. Interesting. Back to the sci-fi classics. 👏👏Have to check back from 25 years old dust.

Got Annihilation (and Authortiy) as a birthday present in January, I'd never heard of it, and now comes a glowing endorsement. I need to bump this up on my tbr! 😄

Into the Sunken City reminds me of the manhwa (korean comic) called Leviathan: Deep Water, it’s spectacular

I had a good reading month too. I read like 13 books, and a lot of them were high ratings. I also read a nonfiction, which is a goal of mine to read more, and plenty of books that I've been looking forward to. I finally read Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo. I read quite a few occult/witchy reads, and it seems I am continuing that this month.

NYRB classics has such a wealth of great books.

I just finished Annihilation and wow...can't wait to read the rest!

I haven’t read “Into the Wild” since high school and I don’t remember liking it all that much h but I didn’t hate it. I definitely just wanted to finish to move on to books I actually wanted to read.

I read in Feb Star Wars Han Solo Book 1: The Paradise Snare by Ann C Crispin and listened to the audiobook Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler Book 2 of Philip Marlowe series.

I loved the fiction Small Game. It’s also a survival story on the horror spectrum, it’s short and it’s a little dystopic, but it has some interesting commentary on McCandless !

"Accidently" 🤣😂

I can understand the yearning to get away from civilization and going into the wilds to connect more with nature, but you still have to be prepared. You have to have camping skills and enough supplies, at least.

Queen's Gambit is a must watch if you like Chess books,awesome tv series :D

2 more Stefan Zweig you should read: _Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman_ and _Buchmendel_ , they were amazing reads for me. I've been told _Letter from an Unknown Woman_ it's excellent as well, it's on my TBR.

Adrift: 76 Days Lost at Sea by Steven Callahan is a great survival non-fiction.

I’m taking this as a sign to finally re-read Annihilation and continue with the rest of the trilogy ✨ Vandermeer’s Borne is also great! I’ve only read the first book but it’s one of my all-time favorites! 💚

I remember when Into the Wild came out and the ensuing discussions about it. I didn't bother reading it because the general consensus from friends was similar to yours. But more particularly, if you are that ill prepared and unwilling to listen to advice, I'm gonna struggle to read a romanticised account of the ensuing failure. There were/are more than enough accounts of heroism, or survival for me to actually spend time reading instead. As St.Patrick's Day is just around the corner, I'll give you an interesting non fiction suggestion from Ireland. There is a book called The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin which chronicles his attempt to recreate the mythical?? Voyage of St Brendan (the navigator) from the west coast of Ireland to North America in the 6th century!! In a leather boat!! Not sure how well the writing style holds up these days, but I remember being utterly fascinated by it when I read it. It also spawned a tv documentary, and a lovely orchestral suite marrying traditional Irish instruments with orchestral arrangements. Tim Severin's follow up book The Sinbad Voyage was a mad story also. A different Irishman, but equally fascinating is the Polar Explorer Tom Crean. For years he was barely known even here in Ireland, until a few famous books about polar exploration and the rivalries of Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen kinda casually highlight the fact that this one guy, Crean, was part of 2 of the greatest feats of survival and endurance in recent memory. There are a few biographies, but Tom Crean: Unsung Hero of the Scott and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions is probably the one to go with. He is rightly considered a national hero these days.

I loved Annihilation. I need to read the other 2 books in the series.

Looks like March could be an ambitious month of reading. Wyckwire Watch seems to be a booktube darling right now, but I don't know if I can commit to another series. Stay safe, everyone, and happy reading.

Into the wild I have seen the movie but I now must read the book 📕 and see what I think about it ❤❤❤

excited to hear your thoughts on gideon the ninth

Nailed why so many Non-Fiction Books and Self Help Books don't appeal to me. I've never been been able to finish Into the Wild. I've been working on Annihilation I'm only at Chapter 3 but it hasn't hooked me yet I am hoping it will if I keep pushing onward.

I love Stefan Zweig! If you're interested in another book by him I'd recommend Fouche, it's about a politician in the French revolution.

I've been commenting saying that books 2 and 3 in the Southern Reach weren't worth it for me - glad you didn't listen! (if you saw those comments at all 😉) I found the sequels quite tedious (especially the 2nd book, my lord), and thought they lacked the magic of the first book. But I'm glad you liked them more than I did 😁

Given some of Kraukeurs interviews, I always got the sense he wrote the book that way to elicit the response many are describing here. He always seemed to discuss the protagonists end occurring due to his own hubris and really points out in the interviews I've seen that the way in which McCandless went about was the wrong way to go on this adventure. I really like both books, even though Into Thin Air has some contested perspectives.

I really liked Into the Wild, but mostly because I read it for an Environmental Ethics class and loved the discussions/writing that came from it. I don’t think the author is fully glorifying McCandless, rather that he sees a lot of his younger self in McCandless and because of that, wants to interrogate why they both did the things they did. That said, the author’s conclusions are far more kind to McCandless than I would have been towards his “master of nature” attitudes. Tldr: I liked Into the Wild but mostly bc of my own countertextual reading/interpretation

Really looking forward to Small Favor, One of the upper tier Dresden books. And I 100% predict Merphy will cry and/or lose her shit at the ending

Did you green-screen your own bookshelves background?

I think you would be interested on reading some light novels. The one that I really want to recommend to you is overlord, But I feel like there's other series that I think you'll enjoy. For example, that time I was reincarnated as a slime. It's also a good one right now i'm reading volume two Of the series. I know you read the Manga for ascendants of a bookworm but I also think the light novel series is better in my own opinion. I've read a lot of other light novels. But I thif you're inteinstead on reading them. You'll get into a world wonder and not expecting on what you're gonna get into.

You really should read dungeon crawler carl. I would love to hear your opinion about it. I would bet you would be very, and i mean very enthousiastic about it.

I'm really interested in researching Jon Krakauer's story and how he died prematurely, sort of a "spark notes" version so I don't have to read a tragic or meandering book.

The movie was great...

I avoid covid novels too, I feel ya

Wow, "And put away childish things" is dark..... Alright another tbr 🤔

Are we sure this was a Feb wrap up or just another annihilation trilogy dedication video 😂

Are you reading any eclipse books in honor of the upcoming eclipse? (Are you guys going to get to see it?)

The cover looks like it is deliberately making you think of Narnia

Have you read Touching the Void? Based on what you said you like, it’s for you.

A book that's really interesting if you read Into the Wild is Chris' sister's "The Wild Truth", in which she gives some more background to the story that she had asked Krakauer not to disclose. It really delves into their (abusive) family life, so it is a pretty tough read. But as far as I remember, it is written beautifully, and I really enjoyed it (except for the abuse and violence, that was incredibly difficult to read).

I started Childish things just today.

Should I read Annihilation if I hated the film??? Is it super different?

I don't know what you're doing about Pratchett but you only need two of his books to get the most of out him. Night Watch and Small Gods are his most powerful and moving works, and you at your skill level will get two free videos made,, there's that much content to draw from. Audience will love it too I promise

for the tbr whats the difference between scifi and scfi fi

Your Into The Wild take might be "hot" for some but for me was spot on. A lot of fellow Alaskans think he was a dumbass.

Hi Merphy! I dont know if you have already mentioned this somewhere else, but did you take a break on/stop your read through of the Discworld books?

i never read Into The Wild, nor do i want to because the moive was awful

How do you get through so many books? I'm a mom and work full time and it feels like I never have enough time to read.

Merphy have you ever read a Narnia book and if so, did you review it?

Dang, did merph drop off Prachett? My favorite book series in any fantasy is the guards series of discworld. Seeing her start my favorites then drop them to read the whole thing was a little disappointing, but now I fear she won't even get back to the guard series

McCandless story - Of course they romanticized it. Why would it be controversial to say that? I caught that even in the shorter version of his story that I read. He was a fool who threw away his life for no good reason. That's bad enough. But to make him out to be sort of hero or inspiration had me furious. I sure hope no one has followed in his footsteps and ended up the same way!

I totally agree about Into the Wild-I had LOVED Into Thin Air, and as a hiker, I was so excited to read Into the Wild. but his attitude towards his parents and his completely insanely unprepared trip to AK, was just painful to read. Tragic end, and I feel for the parents, but the protagonist was just not someone I could pull for at all. One of the most disappointing books Ive ever read.

GIDEON THE NINTH LETSSSSSSSSSSSS GO IPZDVnaurbvaieruvnabv I happen to like that series aand think its pretty good If you start reading it and you feel like you have no idea what the world is like, that's ok. The book just implies things and we have to piece it together ourselves. Also there are too many characters in the first book and I literally could not tell them apart.

New camera???

I didn't like Into the Wild either.. I have read a couple of his books, and have reached the conclusion that I just don't particularly like Krakauer's writing style.

Annihilation was probably my least favorite book I read in 2023. Boring. I’m impressed you could reread it

Ugh annialation is terrible

Well... you love some books that romantizise pirate... so.... I haven't read this, but this is similar to what I think when you gash about pirats I'm talking about your criticism about Into the Wild, romantizising this man's decisions

"Into the wild" is not about survival at all. I don't remember the book really. I do remember very vividly the movie, the soundtrack, the actor. Merphy, maybe you should watch the movie. the movie is a great movie. once you have watched the movie, tell us if you liked it better.

I don't know if you had a ton of empathy or sympathy for Candless, but I know that I sure didn't. He got himself killed doing something stupid.

Malazan book 7? DNF?

In Too the Wild - The story is one big meh! Christopher died of ungodly amounts of hubris.

Gideon the Ninth is so good! And The Tainted Cup is on my list to read.