Book #6

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

336 pages

 

This got bumped up to the top of my to-read list after I realized Reese Witherspoon was starring in the movie this year. I love Reese! And I usually try as hard as possible to read a book before seeing the movie, so I knew I needed to get to this one fast.

I had a really, really hard time connecting with the protagonist (who happens to be the real-life author, as this is a memoir). She was still reeling from her mother's death five years prior, and had gone off the deep end with drugs and bad relationships, as well as ending her seemingly great marriage to her longtime sweetheart.

However, I thought more than once throughout the book that it reminded me of another lost-single-again-memoir protagonist -- Elizabeth Gilbert from Eat, Pray, Love. Except Strayed didn't whine the entire book, so I had to give her props for that!! (Sorry, Julia Roberts.)

Anyway, the truth is that Strayed didn't stay on the Pacific Crest Trail as much as you'd think when you start reading it. She took detours and completely skipped a part of the trail by taking a bus to her next stop -- which I'm sure really does happen a lot when backpacking, but I am just a little unsure if it's fair that this book is advertised as if she hiked all or even most of the trail.

I liked the other characters in the book that come in and out of the story, especially her friend Doug and her ex-husband Paul.

The thing that bothered me the most is that the title suggests she went from "lost to found." But it's hard to see Strayed as a changed person by the end of the book. Yes, you find out in a few short paragraphs what happened to her in the years after the book took place, but by the end of the actual story, she seems like the same woman who started backpacking months before.

All in all, it kept me mildly entertained and it was an easy, few-day read for me. I will still see the movie, although since so much of it is flashbacks, I'm interested to see how they use the book's material on film.

Next up: The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp

P.S. I am adding how many pages each book is to my posts just for my own curiosity. I am using the GoodReads page numbers since different copies of books can have different pages depending on how they're made or whether they are hardback or paperback.