Into the Wild (by Jon Krakauer)

You may recall that one of my most frequently re-read books of all time is Into Thin Air. I don't know why I never had much of an interest in Into the Wild and then suddenly I did, but when I was looking for a new "gym book" (the books I read while exercising) I decided to give in to my Krakauer love and give it a shot.

Krakauer's writing is never less than great, but the story to me is less compelling than Into Thin Air. In fact, the best part of this memoir is Krakauer's own account of his ascent of the Devil's Thumb. He includes this to show why he empathizes so strongly with the somewhat foolhardy Chris McCandless, but it is by far the most compelling and exhilarating part of the book.

The problem is, there isn't much to McCandless's story. He meets some people on the road, hikes into the Alaska wilderness, finds a bus, moves in, kills some animals, eats some poison berries (or seeds, or mold, or potatoes -- this part has some controversy surrounding it) and doesn't make it out again.  It's more about whether you think McCandless was young, reckless, and noble, or young, reckless, and dumb. 

I felt for the kid, in the end -- Krakauer makes a good argument about the folly of youth in general and about what McCandless did manage to achieve -- but I was left not really getting why this one dumb adventure was worthy of a whole book. And McCandless came across as a somewhat stereotypically pretentious twentysomething. No shade: we've all been pretentous twentysomethings. But he's not exactly a figure to admire.

It did make me eager to read Eiger Dreams, however -- a book of essays about Krakauer's own experiences climbing. I don't know why I, voted Least Likely to Climb a Mountain by the award committee of me, am so fascinated by the climbing stories, but I am!

Oh, and halfway through this book I realized it counts as a biography for the Read Harder Challenge. Yay! A freebie!

Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything (by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong)

This history of Seinfeld seemed right up my alley as soon as I first heard about it, and I preordered it immediately. It's the classic fun book that I like to parcel out to myself at the gym, and I do love insidery books about the comedy scene (see also: the SNL oral history).

I was not the world's biggest Seinfeld fan, but I really grew to appreciate it as time went on, it appeared in syndication, and I realized how many real-life situations bring to mind this or that episode of Seinfeld. Also: it is a crime that Jason Alexander never won an Emmy for playing George Costanza. It's not quite Steve Carell levels of egregious but it's close, Jerry! It's close!

I would have enjoyed a book twice as long and with twice as much depth. This book is really great when it talks about the minutia of individual scripts and episodes, or even the stories of individual writers, but the title "Seinfeldia" is a reference to the fandom around Seinfeld, and this is interesting at first, but wears a bit thin and comes across at times as a bit of a stretch. (For example, much of the final chapter of the book is devoted to dueling parody Seinfeld Twitter accounts. Did we really need the inside story of @Seinfeld2000? Not really. Or certainly not to this extent.)

Also the photos at the end are interesting but it weirdly over-emphasizes writer Andy Robin's extended family. (There is a picture of his grandmother-in-law at one point.) This seems like Seinfeldian nitpicking but it is odd: there are seven pictures of Andy Robin and his family members, and only two of Julia Louis-Dreyfus.)

This is absolutely a fun read though, and I recommend it to Seinfeld fans. I also did immediately fire up Amazon Video so I could watch, not Seinfeld, but the Seinfeld reunion episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.  Pretty pretty pretty pretty good.

Royal Wedding (by Meg Cabot)

This one has taken me forever to read. It was my gym book, but I often found I'd rather read Ask Metafilter or something else than get back to this one. Which is not to say it's bad; it's fun. It's a more "adult" themed sequel to the Princess Diaries series, and of course, is about Princess Mia's wedding.

Kind of. The actual wedding ends up taking a backseat to some other plot developments, like Mia's long-lost sister and some stuff about Mia's parents I think? None of which is fully fleshed out. Really, this was not a page-turner for me, although I still enjoyed catching up with everyone, and Mia's voice is still charming.

The ending suggests this is meant to set up the next book in the series. I would totally read it! I just would hope for a stronger plot for the characters to hang onto.

The Rosie Effect (by Graeme Simsion)

This is my latest gym book, which means I've been parceling it out to myself when I'm exercising. I loved The Rosie Project in particular for its narrator, Don Tillman, who is a somewhat unreliable narrator due to his most likely being somewhere on the autism spectrum. He is so completely delightful and literal and wonderful, and I was so happy to spend time with him for a second book.

Don being overly literal and socially somewhat awkward gets him into a number of sticky situations, some of which made me tense in an uncomfortable way (such as the whole social worker plotline) but others of which are very entertaining. His group of friends -- Dave, George, and Gene, are wonderful and their interactions -- from the beer-storage apartment to Dave the Calf -- are fun. The book's resolution is touching, and is a nice culmination of the rest of the story.

Don's wife, Rosie, comes off significantly less well in this book; as other reviewers have noted, she is not very sympathetic here at all. But Don loves her, so you're rooting for them because you're rooting for Don. But her lack of ability to communicate and meet Don halfway left wondering where they go from here. Hopefully there will be a threequel so I can find out!

Live from New York (by James Miller and Tom Shales)

I've been slowly re-reading this book at the gym over the course of several months. I had been eagerly anticipating the newly expanded edition, which picks up where the previous edition left off and includes about a decade of new material.

The first thing that perplexed me was that none of the old material had been updated. Some of the quotes were now out of date (like a reference to Conan's studio in New York) and none of the early chapters had interviews with any of the new cast -- I was anticipating the chapter dishing on the guest hosts to be updated with details about more recent hosts -- like Jon Hamm or Justin Timberlake -- but it didn't seem to be at all. So that felt like a huge missed opportunity.

I also thought maybe they would re-interview some of the people they interviewed the first time around, to get updated quotes. (I know Bob Odenkirk has said he felt he was misquoted.) But it seemed to be exactly the same for the first 600 or so pages and not updated at all. So I plodded along on my exercise equipment, enjoying the re-read and waiting.

Then you get to the new stuff. My impression is that it was very rushed. The writing of the intros for the new chapters is often awkward ("When Saturday Night Live is at its best, it serves as one big selfie..."), the quotes aren't smoothly edited, and there are so many people whose memories feel very under-plundered. They have one or two quotes and then that's it, so it doesn't have the feeling of depth that the first edition had.

Of course, I am happy that they updated this book at all. It was just a letdown compared to my expectations of it. I would have been happy with 600 more pages on the last decade of SNL -- maybe they should have waited a few more years and then published Live from New York: Volume Two.