I’m a little late to the party that is Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, but I’m here now! Like most people who read this book, I came away with a sense of awe that Cheryl not only accomplished her goal of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, but also that she didn’t freaking die in the process since she was so wildly (ha!) unprepared for the task. “I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we […]
The one where I’m glad I didn’t decide to walk to Canada…
One of my closest friends hiked the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) a few years ago. She’s an experienced hiker; she did the Appalachian Trail a few years prior to that. (And we’re talking through-hike. All eleventy million miles of it. Both the AT and the PCT. This is something I would never do. I don’t pee outside, let alone hike. I’m not really sure how it is we’re friends.) Anyway, my hiker friend happened to be visiting while I was reading Wild, and I asked […]
Advice on Love and Life
This compilation of advice columns was recommended to me by my 25-year-old daughter, the same daughter who introduced me to Cannonball Read and whose taste in literature I admire 99% of the time. Not a devotee of the chicken soup series, I was—to put it mildly–reticent to read something subtitled “Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar.” But after reading one question to “Sugar” and her reply, I was totally hooked. “Sugar” is the name taken by Cheryl Strayed, best-selling author of the memoir […]
Time of Unsettledness
I am at a time of crossroads in my life and I went out looking for a book that would speak directly to me in this time of unsettledness. I remembered reading some of Sugar’s posts on The Rumpus after I read Wild so I thought why not read Tiny Beautiful Things? I’m glad I decided to, because Sugar’s voice was what I needed, what I still need. I cried more than once reading her responses to the letters she received. The stories that arrive […]