Wild : a journey from lost to found by Cheryl Strayed

Sometimes the blurb of a book can be a tad off putting. I remember when I first became aware of Wild : a journey from lost to found a few years ago. It became very popular at the library and we had a fair few requests for it. But the description did absolutely nothing for me. In fact it made me want to avoid the book.

But ever since then whenever I’ve heard mention of the book, or the author, all I hear is positives, so when it was one of our book club picks I was looking forward to finally reading it and finding out for myself what it was all about.

I think that I thought is was going to be some hippy dippy “I found my way and my purpose in the wilds”. And in a way it is. But it totally isn’t at the same time.

It is not a travel book either, so libraries, you really should move it out of the 917s where I see a lot of you have it, because if you use this as a guide to hiking then you will be extremely unhappy. Yes, Strayed does hike the Pacific Crest Trail, and she does talk about it, what she experiences and suffered and loved about it. But is more more of a memoir or autobiography of how she started to deal with her grief over the death of her mother and how her life suddenly went off the rails.

And she just writes so well, she expresses herself so perfectly. It is just a wonderful book. I’d highly recommend you check it out.