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54th out of 2,635 books
—
7,524 voters
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
by
Cheryl Strayed (Goodreads Author)
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, sh...more
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, sh...more
Hardcover, 315 pages
Published
March 20th 2012
by Knopf
(first published January 1st 2012)
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This is not a book about hiking. It is a memoir of the author's struggles with her mother's death and the depression that followed it. What worries me is that many will read this book, follow her example, and hurt not only themselves but others as well. Her approach to hiking the PCT is borderline delusional (which makes sense considering her mindset at the time), but the author does not seem to realize that this approach could have gotten her killed, and may very well get others who try to esca...more
I'm of the wrong culture for this book. Its origins are liberal, white, lapsed-Christian American, coming of age in the 1980s. I shouldn't have picked this book up, but a lot of people I respect liked it a great deal. I'm older than the demographic for Wild, I think. I'm not Christian, lapsed or otherwise. I'm not liberal. I'm a very ethnic guy whose parents lived through hell in WWII. I'm not suited to memoirs about dysfunctional families, sex obsessions, and drugs. Plus, I truly hate one sente...more
3.5 stars
What kind of dimwit would decide to backpack the Pacific Crest Trail alone with zero backpacking experience? Apparently the same kind of dimwit who would try heroin just because the stranger she spent the night with happens to need a fix.
If you can tolerate essence of dingbat and overlook her lousy choices and even lousier excuses for those choices, this is actually an enjoyable read. You have to roll your eyes a lot while working to the point where she hits the trail, but after that it...more
What kind of dimwit would decide to backpack the Pacific Crest Trail alone with zero backpacking experience? Apparently the same kind of dimwit who would try heroin just because the stranger she spent the night with happens to need a fix.
If you can tolerate essence of dingbat and overlook her lousy choices and even lousier excuses for those choices, this is actually an enjoyable read. You have to roll your eyes a lot while working to the point where she hits the trail, but after that it...more
So far, a great read. It's Eat, Pray, Love without all the whining.
A self-absorbed, ill-prepared woman, 26 years old, leaves her husband (a decent guy) for no good reason, mucks her life up even further with drugs and reckless sex, then engages in some vacuous navel-gazing on the Pacific Crest Trail. As a woman hiking alone she gets all kinds of special treatment and help from fellow hikers. She loses a few pounds, gets some muscles and some sun-bleached hair and calls her work done.
Jun 07, 2012
Emily
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
a girl who pees in the bushes, i own a pick axe, i can eat three of those
Recommended to Emily by:
the library website which failed to have the right link
*Post Review Update*
i recently hiked a portion of the pacific crest trail near scissors crossing. all by myself. here is proof:
that is me. not scared. a terribly lonely feeling at times, but ultimately very glorious and spirit strengthening. after hiking a portion of this last weekend, i decided to downgrade this book to three stars. why? this real big part shown here:
came across a bit neglected.
while i still agree with everything i wrote, and think many people will flock to this book, i real...more
i recently hiked a portion of the pacific crest trail near scissors crossing. all by myself. here is proof:
that is me. not scared. a terribly lonely feeling at times, but ultimately very glorious and spirit strengthening. after hiking a portion of this last weekend, i decided to downgrade this book to three stars. why? this real big part shown here:
came across a bit neglected.
while i still agree with everything i wrote, and think many people will flock to this book, i real...more
Apr 15, 2012
Happyreader
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
bio-and-memoir,
travel
So much baggage. As a backpacker myself, I cringed to read about hoisting a backpack so heavy that she could only strap it on while sitting on the ground. How she managed to balance that pack and not let it accidentally fling her off the Sierras, even after Albert put that bag on a diet, is beyond me. And those tight boots that ate her toenails and mangled her feet into a fine pulp!! If nothing else, those boots end up being a fine advertisement for REI’s amazing customer service. While I’m happ...more
This book was like a long strange dream of my own youth. So I surely can sympathize with Strayer's pains, uncertainties and mistakes. But I simply cannot manage to love this story as it probably deserves.
When I think of backpacking, I feel the words of Robert Frost:
These woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
To me, the trail is a joy. Every switchback and summit reveals something new about the world, or about yo...more
When I think of backpacking, I feel the words of Robert Frost:
These woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
To me, the trail is a joy. Every switchback and summit reveals something new about the world, or about yo...more
Despite this book’s stellar reviews and much hype it did not seem like one I’d enjoy. A memoir written by a woman who loses her mother and then promptly takes up heroin and cheating on her sweet husband (who she loves very much). She then decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail despite zero hiking/wilderness experience. I figured nothing to relate to here: the loss of a parent, the drugs, the cheating, and any and all hiking/camping/roughing it…these are all completely foreign to me and also thi...more
A few years ago I had occasion to re-read HATCHET, by Gary Paulsen. I did not do this on my own, but with a fourth-grade boy who was wholly entranced by it. I had never been a big HATCHET fan myself (I preferred the Little House books, if you wanted to get right down to it), but reading it with this kid gave me a new appreciation for what the book allowed us both to do: live in the terrifying wilderness, live in the terrifying aloneness, live in the brave and cold and the that which seems both i...more
Apr 10, 2012
Lizzie
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommended to Lizzie by:
Gift from Meg!
Shelves:
nonfiction,
new-stuff,
memoir,
2012,
embarrassing-subway-weeping,
favorites,
book-of-the-year
Ok ok good. Everyone's new favorite book: yes, I loved it too.
DO YOU WANT TO HEAR SOMETHING STUPID? During the first half, I wasn't sure how much I liked it. Because I am crazy. Because it is good! It is all good. But it was different, at first, than I expected. I was joking before, that for fans of Sugar (an inevitable readership for this book), there almost needs to be two ratings: one for book-ness, and one for Sugar-ness. By nature, the essays in "Dear Sugar" are written in a way that requir...more
DO YOU WANT TO HEAR SOMETHING STUPID? During the first half, I wasn't sure how much I liked it. Because I am crazy. Because it is good! It is all good. But it was different, at first, than I expected. I was joking before, that for fans of Sugar (an inevitable readership for this book), there almost needs to be two ratings: one for book-ness, and one for Sugar-ness. By nature, the essays in "Dear Sugar" are written in a way that requir...more
Check out this review and others like it at BadAssBookReviews
Wild is getting quite a bit of national buzz, my local friends have been pushing me to read it and as a result, I resisted starting this book. Reading Wild was a combination of a fuzzy walk down a specific memory lane of my early to mid-twenties and a current wish fulfillment fantasy. Author Cheryl Strayed is a few years older than me, her memoir is focused on her childhood, her teen years, her college aged time period and then her mi...more
Wild is getting quite a bit of national buzz, my local friends have been pushing me to read it and as a result, I resisted starting this book. Reading Wild was a combination of a fuzzy walk down a specific memory lane of my early to mid-twenties and a current wish fulfillment fantasy. Author Cheryl Strayed is a few years older than me, her memoir is focused on her childhood, her teen years, her college aged time period and then her mi...more
I love memoirs/autobiographies written by brave women. That’s right; I’m not ashamed to let my feminist flag fly...
If you don’t know what this book is about then you’re probably not a member of Oprah’s book club or you don’t follow the New York Times bestseller list. Here’s the gist:
Summary
At twenty six, after the death of her mother and a divorce, Cheryl Strayed hikes the Pacific Crest Trail... alone... with like bears and other dangerous things she has to confront along the way.
What I thought...more
If you don’t know what this book is about then you’re probably not a member of Oprah’s book club or you don’t follow the New York Times bestseller list. Here’s the gist:
Summary
At twenty six, after the death of her mother and a divorce, Cheryl Strayed hikes the Pacific Crest Trail... alone... with like bears and other dangerous things she has to confront along the way.
What I thought...more
I'm in process, about 1/2 way thru, and loving it. I enjoy any book that is at least semi-autobiographical, about a woman finding she can handle adversity, usually in nature, and that she learns how strong and competent she is, and that she can survive on her own on her own terms. That's so much what this book is about. The other wonderful thing about this book is that I can read it while pedaling an exercise bike. Tonight? I rode for an hour, and virtually didn't realize it until I was at 51 mi...more
I know what Cheryl felt like on the Pacific Crest Trail because I felt like that reading her book. Neverending. Arduous. But without that whole enlightenment part.
[Warning: Spoilers] Wahhh, I did heroin and cheated on my husband and my life's a mess. Wahhh I'm too tired to even masturbate. Wah! I slept without protection and got an abortion! I lost my toenailz. I have godzilla skin on my hips because my backpack weighs so much! Had sex anywayz. B.T.DUBS I like sex!?!
Seriously: she had this pro...more
[Warning: Spoilers] Wahhh, I did heroin and cheated on my husband and my life's a mess. Wahhh I'm too tired to even masturbate. Wah! I slept without protection and got an abortion! I lost my toenailz. I have godzilla skin on my hips because my backpack weighs so much! Had sex anywayz. B.T.DUBS I like sex!?!
Seriously: she had this pro...more
I wouldn't say that this book kept me at the edge of my seat, but it kept me wholly entertained in the way that an excellent magazine keeps you on the toilet seat for an extra 20 minutes after you've finished just so that you can read another really good article.
5 stars for great entertainment. No, I wouldn't recommend it to my friends.
5 stars for great entertainment. No, I wouldn't recommend it to my friends.
I got an advanced readers copy of this book from the publisher:) I was so excited to get to read something that is not even out yet that I dove right in. And I can't put it down. I love it! It is a memoir told in the same style as The Glass Castle (one of my favorites). But, the strangest thing about this book is I still want to read it even though I really do not like this woman who is telling this story. I usually have to at least like the characters in the books I read. If I don't I usually c...more
This author is the columnist who writes Dear Sugar? Sugar is wise and funny and real.
I found this book to be incredibly self indulgent. The first 100 pages was the author whinging about how her mother died when she was 22, and how she would never recover, never stop crying, never stop lashing out at the people around her. Instead of focusing on how lucky she was to have ever had a mother who poured an infinite amount of unconditional love into her, she instead imploded, lost in her own self ind...more
I found this book to be incredibly self indulgent. The first 100 pages was the author whinging about how her mother died when she was 22, and how she would never recover, never stop crying, never stop lashing out at the people around her. Instead of focusing on how lucky she was to have ever had a mother who poured an infinite amount of unconditional love into her, she instead imploded, lost in her own self ind...more
Nov 28, 2012
Trudi
rated it
2 of 5 stars
Shelves:
2012-reads,
audiobook,
non-fiction,
grief-and-loss,
man-vs-nature,
mothers,
biography-memoir
Finally finished listening to this as an audio. Meh. I have my problems with it. I may or may not review it, we'll see.
***
Alright, I've given it some thought and feel that I should try to capture some of what this book made me feel (and didn't feel as it were). This memoir is essentially two stories that sometimes intersect with each other but more often than not run parallel. One story is Cheryl's 90+ day 1100 mile solo hike of the Pacific Crest Trail when she was 26 years old. The other story...more
***
Alright, I've given it some thought and feel that I should try to capture some of what this book made me feel (and didn't feel as it were). This memoir is essentially two stories that sometimes intersect with each other but more often than not run parallel. One story is Cheryl's 90+ day 1100 mile solo hike of the Pacific Crest Trail when she was 26 years old. The other story...more
When I first found out about this book, I was immediately in love with it. The journal of a hiking trip along the Pacific Crest Trail, that really sounded like a book I had to read (me being in love with the USA and especially the western states). I only had visited the Mojave desert myself a couple of months earlier and I fell in love with it's Joshua Trees... So I couldn't wait to read this book. The first chapters read very easily, but when I was at about 40% of the book, I found myself more...more
I finished this book a couple of days ago, and have not been able to get it out of my mind. I was happily coming to Goodreads to give my glowing review, but was pretty annoyed at a few of the recent reviews, so I wanted to address that first. The bravery and honesty that flowed from those pages touched me deep into my soul, and to see her described as dimwitted and self absorbed is insulting to the author and to those of us who were moved by her story. If you want to read about a well planned tr...more
What a fantastic read. I have noticed I do like travel stories. Mostly i read stories about survival, where people have to fight for their life. maybe because of a mistake they made, or because of mother nature, but this is in another way a survival story. Interesting that her subconscious knew what she needed to do to survive and not stay a broken person who ended up a heroin junky because of the loss of her mum and other things.
She met some fantastic and very helpful people on the way. I enjoy...more
When I read the review of Cheryl Strayed's Wild which chronicles her hike on the Pacific Coast Trail (and, perhaps more importantly how she ended up there) I immediately knew that I wanted to read it. I have a very good friend who hiked the entire Appalachian Trail and we talked about it extensively after we met in the Peace Corps. I was convinced that this was something I wanted to do post-Peace Corps and read several books, including A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson which my Mom sent to me w...more
It is noteable that this author chose the name "Strayed" for herself, because stray she certainly does in her life choices, emotions, and finally solo on to the Pacific Coast Trail to hike it, by herself.
Initially the book annoyed me and I even decided to stop reading it. Did I really want to read another memoir about a sex addicted, heroin injected, husband dumping, mother obsessed woman, who made up her name and maybe her memoir?
Well, yes.
It was her decision to deal with these, uh, problems...more
Initially the book annoyed me and I even decided to stop reading it. Did I really want to read another memoir about a sex addicted, heroin injected, husband dumping, mother obsessed woman, who made up her name and maybe her memoir?
Well, yes.
It was her decision to deal with these, uh, problems...more
I have read a great many criticisms of this book by people who either expected it to be solely about the PCT itself, or were offended by the author's use of coarse language and discussion of her sexual proclivities. And that's fine; all of those readers were obviously seeking something other than what this book had to provide. Myself, I enjoyed it from cover to cover. A longtime lover of the PCT, I already know about the trail from end to end. I was more interested in how the author used a rathe...more
I've always wanted to go on a journey like this. But I haven't. Because I'm lazy. I mean, I now have the time in the summer. And It clearly doesn't take much money after an initial purchase of equipment (as Strayed makes abundantly clear). But I'm just lazy. Or scared. Or whatever.
It's fun to hear about a person as ill prepared for a trek like this as I would be making many of the same stupid mistakes I would trying to hike 1000+ miles. I probably wouldn't have slept with that dude on the beach...more
It's fun to hear about a person as ill prepared for a trek like this as I would be making many of the same stupid mistakes I would trying to hike 1000+ miles. I probably wouldn't have slept with that dude on the beach...more
I couldn’t describe it better than the book description, so … “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 Paci...more
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 Paci...more
Here is a quote: "...a prayer marched through my head, though prayer is not the right word to describe that march. I wasn't humble before God. I didn't even believe in God. My prayer was not: Please, God, take mercy on us." (p. 10).
When I read the above quote, I began to like Strayed and her book. You'd think that when you pray to an all powerful, all knowing god, that you'd ask them to change things since they were all powerful; God the powerful. It's Dharma to try and accept things as they rea...more
When I read the above quote, I began to like Strayed and her book. You'd think that when you pray to an all powerful, all knowing god, that you'd ask them to change things since they were all powerful; God the powerful. It's Dharma to try and accept things as they rea...more
Cheryl Strayed is a good storyteller, with descriptions that are so accurate and hilarious. This book made me relive my own solo hiking adventures...Her memories are so vivid that I felt like I was on the trail with her.
Her personal achievements, mental and physical, were inspirational. She took control of her life, and had an amazing adventure without any serious danger occurring (although it was very close at times).
Her personal achievements, mental and physical, were inspirational. She took control of her life, and had an amazing adventure without any serious danger occurring (although it was very close at times).
I didn't think I would like this book but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's the story of the author's "hike" along the Pacific Crest Trail - funny, heart wrenching, and parts made me cry. As she got closer to the end of the trail and the end of her story, I found I didn't want it to end.
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Live Video Chat with Cheryl Strayed | 140 | 226 | May 15, 2013 12:47pm | |
| Oprah's Book Club 2.0 | 42 | 420 | May 01, 2013 02:49pm | |
| Fun hiking in Nature, but negative intos in the City | 2 | 31 | May 01, 2013 02:41pm |
Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, Wild, will be published by Knopf in March 2012. It will also be published in Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Her novel, Torch (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and was selected by The Oregonian as one of the top ten books of the year by writers from the Pacific Northwest. Strayed’s writing has appeared i...more
More about Cheryl Strayed...
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“What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done? What if I'd actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”
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63 people liked it
“The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.”
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46 people liked it
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May 08, 2013 11:45am
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