Review: Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Yes, I know. I am the last person on the planet to have read Cheryl Strayed's book, Wild, especially since the movie is out and garnering praise. I had planned to read it long ago but never got around to it. After all, I am completely intrigued by the idea of hiking long distances alone in the wilderness, not that I am terribly likely to ever get around to it myself (and a good thing too, as it would be a huge folly for me to attempt). So when I went to a New Year's Eve party and most of the women there had read the book, gone to see the movie, and were discussing both, it inspired me to finally pick this off the shelf and read it.

Strayed was in a self-destructive spiral, sleeping around and cheating on her husband, getting divorced despite still loving him, shooting heroin, grieving the loss of her mother four years before, and crushed by the realization that her siblings and step-father had no interest in maintaining the family connections that were so important to her when she decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail alone as an attempt to find her center and to become the person she really wanted to be. Being out in the wild nature of the trail offered her a way to be with herself without all the noise and distraction of the world butting in on her. It is this solitude that she craves in order to take an honest look at her life.

So she sets out, completely and woefully unprepared for the rigors and reality of a hike of the magnitude she's chosen. Thanks to the chance encounters with kind and giving people on the trail, she does make it though. Her account of her time on the trail is peppered with flashbacks to her pre-hike life, to the grief she still carries, heavy as the oversized pack on her back. These insights into the events that drove her onto the trail do mean that there's not as much about the hike itself or nature as might be expected but then this isn't really a hiking memoir so much as it is about getting to the core of who she was as a person.

Written from the perspective of twenty years on from the hike, it is interesting what Strayed has chosen to include. She is brutally honest about her many mistakes and she offers up raw emotion for sure. But she is strangely concerned with how she looks (her lost toenails, poor blistered and abused feet, scaly skin on her hips, ratty hair, grubby and unwashed appearance) whenever she has one of her chance encounters with other hikers or people in the towns she has come down to and whether or not she will have sex with selected folks, returning to these concerns again and again. She clearly remembers the kindness of others who save her from herself and her poor planning, time after time, and the luck that saves her just as frequently. She does face real challenges, both physical and mental, and overcomes them as she gets back to the basics of survival and pure existence but she isn't as alone in this overcoming as she had intended. The backstory at the beginning of the book is rather slow going, albeit generally necessary, and not as engaging as her struggles, dogged perseverance, and soul searching on the trail, so the narrative is unevenly paced and the ending is extremely rushed.

Strayed apparently did come to some peace with the loss of her mother and with her past through her hike but most of that peace seems to be a simple acceptance of who she is rather than anything more insightful or profound than that.  She hasn't really changed, just come to love herself as she already is, which is a bit problematic given the destructive, poor choices that lead her to the trail in the first place.  The book was a generally engaging read despite these problems and although it should be a caution against following in her footsteps rather than an endorsement, it does also show that nature can in fact heal us and help us center ourselves in ways that our chaotic, babble-ridden world cannot.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

The Grown Ups by Robin Antalek. The book is being released by William Morrow Paperbacks on January 27, 2015.

Amazon says this about the book: From the author of The Summer We Fell Apart, an evocative and emotionally resonant coming-of-age novel involving three friends that explores what it means to be happy, what it means to grow up, and how difficult it is to do both together.

The summer he’s fifteen, Sam enjoys, for a few secret months, the unexpected attention of Suzie Epstein. For reasons Sam doesn’t entirely understand, he and Suzie keep their budding relationship hidden from their close knit group of friends. But as the summer ends, Sam’s world unexpectedly shatters twice: Suzie’s parents are moving to a new city to save their marriage, and his own mother has suddenly left the house, leaving Sam’s father alone to raise two sons.

Watching as her parents’ marital troubles escalate, Suzie takes on the responsibility of raising her two younger brothers and plans an early escape to college and independence. Though she thinks of Sam, she deeply misses her closest friend Bella, but makes no attempt to reconnect, embarrassed by the destructive wake of her parents as they left the only place Suzie called home. Years later, a chance meeting with Sam’s older brother will reunite her with both Sam and Bella—and force her to confront her past and her friends.

After losing Suzie, Bella finds her first real love in Sam. But Sam’s inability to commit to her or even his own future eventually drives them apart. In contrast, Bella’s old friend Suzie—and Sam’s older brother, Michael—seem to have worked it all out, leaving Bella to wonder where she went wrong.

Spanning over a decade, told in alternating voices, The Grown Ups explores the indelible bonds between friends and family and the challenges that threaten to divide them.

Review: Animal Madness by Laurel Braitman

Those of us who are pet owners and consider our animals to be a part of the family have no trouble believing that animals do possess the consciousness that means they are capable of independent thought and the ability to feel emotions. But this also means that we believe that they possess the capability to suffer from mental illness, much in the way that human beings do. It is this sad idea that Laurel Braitman explores in her book, Animal Madness.

Braitman and her then husband adopted a Bernese Mountain dog named Oliver. He was being surrendered by his current family but Braitman was given little information about why. It turned out that Oliver suffered terribly when left alone, even going so far as to jump out of a closed window in their apartment, plummeting to the cement below. Miraculously, he survived his fall but his anxiety and terror didn't abate at all. Although they tried everything to help Oliver, nothing worked to calm him. His clear, unmanageable, life long distress sent Braitman on a search into the origins and treatments of mental illness in animals.

In addition to her own dog and other canines, Braitman looked at whales, dolphins, elephants, birds, horses, and primates, among others, and the documented problems they suffer as domesticated or captive animals. Taking newspaper reports, interviews with keepers, and communications with experts in the fields of animal behavior, veterinary medicine, and mental health, Braitman discusses the problem of diagnosing animals without anthropomorphizing them, the ways in which their diagnoses parallel human mental health biases of the time, the option of medicating or changing the behavior of the animals, and the ways in which human interference with wild animals has led to so many of the atypical, extreme behaviors we need to control or alleviate.

Using anecdotal stories to support the wider neurological theory underpinning her conclusions, Braitman covers animals suffering from mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, OCD, and PTSD and even discusses the idea of whether or not animals can be suicidal. Although the book purports to suggest that understanding animals will help us understand ourselves, there is only a very tenuous link to that idea. Since animals cannot tell us what they are feeling, human beings must extrapolate solely from observations what is going on. It is therefore not surprising that it is all framed in the same terms that human mental illness is described.

All of these observations have, by necessity, taken place on animals either living in captivity or that have been domesticated to one extent or another rather than factoring in any animals in the wild who manifest the same behaviors. Is this because they don't have these issues in the wild? Is it because it is too hard to study the same wild animals over extended amounts of time? Is it because these animals don't survive long in the wild? These are questions that Braitman doesn't address or acknowledge, making the book less complete than it should be for the conclusions it draws. There is certainly no doubt that the ways in which we bend animals to be what we want and expect of them, in zoos, parks, and our homes, does them no favors mentally and her indictment of our role in animals' mental anguish is not without basis for sure but as she cautioned in the very opening pages of the book, she seems to be anthropomorphizing quite a bit herself. It is sad to read about the variety of ways that animals harm themselves and others of their species and interesting to read about the ways, some more palatable than others, that we people try to help them conquer these atypical behaviors. Over all, the book opens a small window into the discussion about the well being of animals, specifically those under human care, living lives we don't recognize as normal, rich, and satisfying for them.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

So for the New Year, I wipe out all of the things I should have already reviewed and start with a blank slate (although I do still intend to eventually get all those 2014 reviews written. Makes for a happier mental start to the year for me. :-) This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

My Husband Next Door by Catherine Alliott
Animal Madness by Laurel Braitman
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton

Reviews posted this week:

Life Drawing by Robin Black
The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Animal Madness by Laurel Braitman
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
A Summer Bird-Cage by Margaret Drabble

Monday Mailbox

We came home to several parcels in the mail, a few of which (surprise!) had books. I wonder if I should change the lyrics to the Twelve Days of Christmas to reflect all the books that have been sent given to me. ;-) This past week's mailbox arrivals:

My Father's Wives by Mike Greenberg came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A novel about a man searching out his father's five ex-wives in an effort to understand the hole that his father's absence has left in his own life, this sounds fascinating indeed.

Girl Runner by Carrie Snyder came from Harper and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

As we age and become frail, our past achievements are often all but forgotten so this book about a gold medal winning woman, now elderly and whose amazing accomplishment is mostly lost to time, is incredibly appealing to me.

The Girls of Mischief Bay by Susan Mallery came from MIRA and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

Susan Mallery with a new series about three very different female friends and what they want out of their lives, especially personally? Well, yes please!

Aging With Grace by David Snowdon came from me to myself thanks to Christmas gift cards.

I am completely curious to read this book length study about nuns and Alzheimer's and the conclusions we can draw from the lives of these elderly women who have devoted themselves to caring for others.

The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion came from me to myself thanks to Christmas gift cards.

I loved The Rosie Project and can't wait to get back to Don and Rosie.

Liam's Going by Michael Joyce came from me to myself thanks to Christmas gift cards.

Not only does the cover draw me in (water and boat=I'm a sucker) but the story of a child leaving for college for the first time is going to hit very close to home.

Peace Like a River by Carrie Leif Enger came from Melinda.

I'm participating in a Postal Mailbox Book Club and this is Melinda's choice for all of us to read. (I read this many, many years ago but will probably have to at least skim over it again to refresh my memory to make comments on it.)

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday Salon: Serendipitous Reading

I have some elaborate ways to choose my next read, from review schedules to the dates I bought the books to book club deadlines. But I rarely just allow the reading vagaries to take me where they will. Even when I come across a reference to a book or an author and think, oh, I should read that now, I generally don't. Instead, I let my system retake me, reading on a schedule. And because of this, I sometimes forget how lovely it can be just to follow trail after trail with no clear sense of where you'll end up. But sometimes I do manage to break free and just hop from one book to another, like right now, and I discover again the pleasure of serendipitous reading.

On New Year's Eve, we went to a party, well, several parties but one in particular where I hadn't seen many of the people in quite a long time. Since everyone knows I read, that seemed to be the topic of choice for conversations with me. Not that I'm complaining; I am always happy to talk about books, probably for far longer than the average person cares to discuss them. In any case, it turned out that many of the women had all recently read Cheryl Strayed's Wild and then gone to see the movie together. I have had the book sitting on my shelf unread since it was in hardback and couldn't really contribute anything to any conversations about it or the book versus the movie. So I resolved to go home and pull it off the shelf, especially if other friends of mine are interested in seeing the movie at some point. I read it and it led me to the next book I opened: Margaret Drabble's The Summer-Bird Cage, another book I had sitting on my shelf unread for years, literally years. The path from one to the other? Strayed reads Drabble's novel (among others, all the rest of whom I had already read) while hiking.

And as a sort of universe reward sort of thing, when I opened the Drabble, I found an old (quite probably thirty or so years old) post card marking its pages. I had bought the book long ago at a used bookstore so I knew neither the sender nor the recipient of the post card but it was delightful all the same. There was nothing much of consequence on the card but I have always had a bit of a fascination with others' letters and I am enjoying using this one as a bookmark very much. I haven't finished the Drabble yet so I don't know where it might send me reading next and whether it will be the book that inspires the next thing I pick up or whether the inspiration will be the post card. Or maybe I'll hear or read about something else that directs me instead. I will, of course, have to hew to my schedule at some point but I hope to remember the joy of just sitting back and letting the current take me where it will as well.

Do you ever read this way, meandering from book to book as things present themselves? My reading this past week has taken me all over the place. I took a look at the way we determine and classify mental illness in animals. I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail while facing my life and who I want to be. I was kidnapped in Haiti because of my economic class. I met up with the daughters of a group of women about whom I had previously read. And I am in England with the acerbic and yet funny younger sister whose older sister has just gotten married. Where have your reading travels taken you this past week?

Best Reads of 2014

Now that 2015 is officially here, I feel like I can put together my best reads of 2014. I hate to do it before the actual close of the year because hope springs eternal that I will come across some marvelous books that would then miss being put on the list. Also, because I am just a touch OCD about stuff like this. But probably more because of the former reason. (Yeah, yeah. I know it's the latter too, just humor me.) Because I am unable to stick to a top ten, I created a top ten for general fiction and then declared a few favorites in other categories. Sort of the letter of the law but not really the spirit. Since it is my law, though, I feel confident I will pardon myself before my term in office is up. :-)

So here it is. In no particular order, the list of the top ten books I read this year (some of which were actually published this year too):

Life Drawing by Robin Black
Us by David Nicholls
Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Euphoria by Lily King
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
If Not For This by Pete Fromm
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Favorite non-fiction: The Perfect Score Project by Debbie Stier

Favorite YA: Love and Other Foreign Words by Erin McCahan

Favorite romance: Suddenly Royal by Nichole Chase

Favorite quirky book: What's Your Poo Telling You by Josh Richman and Anish Sheth

Do we overlap at all? What books from your best reading this past year do you think I should have on my list in 2015?