"On the face of it, this is an account of what happened to Chris McCandless, a 20-something who made his way to the Alaskan wilderness. Krakauer admits he is also exploring something inside himself through the story of this young man’s life. He’s trying to figure out what makes certain people go to a place where there isn’t any protection. What’s so beautiful is the last anecdote: The parents travel to the spot where their son died, and it gives them peace. The mother leaves a box of food, with a note: “Call your parents.” This isn’t a book about someone looking to die; it’s about someone who wanted to live and had to test himself. I think everybody has some of that inside of them."

"It’s almost like these three sisters are a part of my family... I grew up in Sweden (New York, too, and by the time I read this book, was making my own life in London in my late teens). The world around me was not exactly celebrating cultural diversity... this book, and books like “The Color Purple,” “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” and “Beloved,” took me by the hand, held me, beckoned me into womanhood, aroused a love of my heritage, and love for myself. I ate this book in one serving. It was passed down my by mother... again, I’ve given it to my daughters and waited, impatiently, to talk to them about it as they’ve read."

"Essentially an autobiography tracing the author’s own family’s move from Europe to what is now Israel and the disappointment of immigration. His mother killed herself, and he’s spent much of his life creating scenarios of why that happened. The process of meditating on her life makes him into a writer. The book is also about the birth of a language. He talks about his great-uncle, who was one of the architects of modern Hebrew, and how there didn’t used to be a word for shirt until he created it, because Hebrew had been a biblical language. It’s so interesting to think about what comes before the process of naming something—how you struggle when you don’t have the words to say what you feel."