NATIONAL BEST SELLER • Oprah's Book Club 2.0 selection. • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.
Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
Sure, this is a memoir. It’s supposed to be about the growth and challenges of the author. It’s supposed to inspire the reader to find yourself during hard times and such.
But...I really just don’t get the appeal of this book.
Strayed really doesn’t talk about her growth or maturation on the PCT. Instead she fills her books with memories of the bad stuff and seems to always need to fill us in on her sexual desire towards the men she encounters on and off the trail.
Cheryl - I don’t care that you want a man to touch you again. I don’t care that you noticed that a nurse who cared for your dying mother wore his pants a little too tight and you liked it. Tell me more about the trail. Tell me about your connection with nature. Tell me about HOW YOU HAVE MATURED. It’s okay to have friends and want a solid romantic connection with a partner, but come on.
Friends - if you likes this book, what did you find to be appealing and/or inspiring?
