Portland Schiz?
I experienced a bit of a Portland-bender when it comes to reading a while back. I greatly enjoyed some high-quality time with two women writer-residents of the Rose City, in each case savoring two very different offerings.
One seed was "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed. This was a typically well-targeted and appropriate gift from my sister Mary, the thoroughbred in our family for reading. Nominally this is an account of hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail, a terrific topic on its own merits. I have savored a couple books in this category in the past. This was a little different.
The "wrinkly" aspects here include solo hiking by a woman and this particular woman's background, admirably frankly disclosed. That includes her mother's death and the author's history of drug use.
I greatly enjoyed Strayed's account of her pedestrian travel through California and Oregon, actually made more rewarding by the background insights. The book ends up being a good deal more about her interactions with other hikers and self-examination than about the details of the trail and route, as you might expect.
It turns out that "Cheryl Strayed" moonlights as a sort-of Dear Abby for Real Folks via her column as "Dear Sugar" at therumpus.net, sharing remarkably blunt yet understanding insights that former newspaper columnists a la Lander would likely not have been willing to tackle. She outed herself in publishing Tiny Beautiful Things, which I can now also wholeheartedly recommend, in an entirely different yet eerily resonant vein for readers of Wild.
A mini-review of Chelsea Cain's Dharma Girl that I received was intriguing, being in ever-so-brief an account of the life of a child of a hippie off-the-grid upbringing and her pursuit of her past, and I put a hold on the book at the library. In the meantime I learned that Cain was also the author of, among other titles, a series of best-selling thrillers featuring what one reviewer called the most intriguing villain since H. Lecter. Why not? As it happened, I read Heart Sick, the first in that series, before I got around to Dharma Girl.
Set up to second-guess, I found Cain's handling of a what might be a bit lazily pegged as a female version of HL surprisingly well done. I have not yet but will definitely soon be pursuing the sequels.
Her account of her run-down of her elusive childhood in DG was very moving and not lacking in challenges to this reader. I think you'd relish this.
In short, I found both of Cain's books, despite the remarkably different genres, quite well-written and thoroughly entertaining, and definitely recommend both for your consideration.
One seed was "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed. This was a typically well-targeted and appropriate gift from my sister Mary, the thoroughbred in our family for reading. Nominally this is an account of hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail, a terrific topic on its own merits. I have savored a couple books in this category in the past. This was a little different.
The "wrinkly" aspects here include solo hiking by a woman and this particular woman's background, admirably frankly disclosed. That includes her mother's death and the author's history of drug use.
I greatly enjoyed Strayed's account of her pedestrian travel through California and Oregon, actually made more rewarding by the background insights. The book ends up being a good deal more about her interactions with other hikers and self-examination than about the details of the trail and route, as you might expect.
It turns out that "Cheryl Strayed" moonlights as a sort-of Dear Abby for Real Folks via her column as "Dear Sugar" at therumpus.net, sharing remarkably blunt yet understanding insights that former newspaper columnists a la Lander would likely not have been willing to tackle. She outed herself in publishing Tiny Beautiful Things, which I can now also wholeheartedly recommend, in an entirely different yet eerily resonant vein for readers of Wild.
A mini-review of Chelsea Cain's Dharma Girl that I received was intriguing, being in ever-so-brief an account of the life of a child of a hippie off-the-grid upbringing and her pursuit of her past, and I put a hold on the book at the library. In the meantime I learned that Cain was also the author of, among other titles, a series of best-selling thrillers featuring what one reviewer called the most intriguing villain since H. Lecter. Why not? As it happened, I read Heart Sick, the first in that series, before I got around to Dharma Girl.
Set up to second-guess, I found Cain's handling of a what might be a bit lazily pegged as a female version of HL surprisingly well done. I have not yet but will definitely soon be pursuing the sequels.
Her account of her run-down of her elusive childhood in DG was very moving and not lacking in challenges to this reader. I think you'd relish this.
In short, I found both of Cain's books, despite the remarkably different genres, quite well-written and thoroughly entertaining, and definitely recommend both for your consideration.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:57 PM
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