Hospital Reading: Wild by Cheryl Strayed

I'm home now, but I spent the last four days in the hospital because the blood clot in my leg "shattered" and traveled straight to both my lungs. Isn't this saga becoming absurd? Fortunately, I made it through okay. Whew!

After the first horrible day, I was glad I had the Nook with me. I had been waiting for Cheryl Strayed's  Wild to be published, a memoir of hiking solo on the Pacific Crest Trail, and on Wednesday I was thrilled to download it. Strayed tackled the trail decades ago during a difficult period in her life when she was in her early twenties. I'm enjoying it, particularly the details of her confrontation with and defiance of the elements that threatened to either stop her or kill her. Yet anyone looking for details about the natural world or an intense experience with the flora and fauna may be disappointed. Strayed writes about nature, but not as a naturalist or a person intimate with or fascinated by the natural world. Wild is a bit more of an Eat, Pray, Love sort of memoir, though interesting nonetheless.

I've had the pleasure of receiving a number of packages of books in the past week or so. I hope to post an entry about them tomorrow.