Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library Reader Advisory Blog: What to Read After Cheryl Strayed's Wild

If you loved reading about Cheryl Strayed's 1100 mile solo trek through the wilderness in Wild: From lost to found on the Pacific Coast Trail, then check out these titles:

Into the Wild by John Krakauer tells the tragic story of Chris McCandleless who cut off all contact with his family and headed into the Alaskan wilderness. Be forewarned, this story does not have the happy ending that Wild does but it is riveting and was turned into a movie directed by Sean Penn.

Once Upon a River: a novel by Bonnie Jo Campbell, is set in the 1970s and tells the story of a troubled teenager who takes her family's boat and sails Michigan's Stark River guided only by an address on a scrap of paper and a belief in Annie Oakley.

Claiming Ground by Laura Bell is a memoir of Bell's time in the 1970s when she worked as a sheep herder on a Wyoming ranch. Surrounded by the vastness of land and the company of mainly alcoholic men, Bell's life during that time period was marked by periods of isolation that she reflects on many years later from the perspective of a wife and mother.

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

Genre: Adult Non-Fiction
Rating: 5 out of 5

"Being Mortal is about the limitations of what modern medicine can provide for people as their lives draw to a close. Gawande argues that the objective of medicine should not merely be treatment and survival; medical care should also ensure dignity in death and having control over one's final moments. He argues that instead of aggressively fighting the inescapable realities of aging, we should ask the hard questions of ourselves and our loved ones -- What makes life worth living? When should we try to extend our lives, and when should we choose a better quality of our remaining days over extending their quantity?

This book is difficult to read. Not because of the way Gawande writes -- his style is highly engaging, and he never lapses into excessively scientific jargon or overly simplistic explanations -- but because of the tough subject matter. Gawande draws on his own experiences as a doctor and peppers his book with honest and humane stories of his patients, friends, and family; the stories he tells make the book more accessible, and also more heartbreaking. (And that's not a bad thing.)

No one likes to think about their loved ones', or their own, impending mortality. But it's important to have these hard conversations, because as Gawande says, "endings matter." - Amanda

What to Read After Cheryl Strayed's Wild

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