Customer Comments

Had dipped into a few things of Ms. Strayed's online, like "What We're Hungry For" at www.creativenonfiction.org, and now I’m immersed. This woman is the bodhisattva of our time. Enlightened beyond measure, it's humbling to read her, to realize how compassionate, fearless, loving and empathetic she is. I recently attended her reading/signing event at Warwick’s Books in La Jolla. She read from WILD and TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS. Sugar/Strayed is like no other writer I’ve ever encountered. To quote Maxwell Kinney my online parallel at www.apartinthemidstof.com: "She’s funny, luminous, knowing and emergent. Is that not crazy, emergent?, like there’s more to come. A 40-something bodhisattva who, I expect, will be a long-time fixture on the NY Times bestseller list, and it won’t come from marketing and promotion or author tours. It will come from reading her and it will be word of mouth. There’s something in her language, in her 'literary mode of being,' in the Strayed 'word.' She’s already seen as a savior and saint on Tumblr. Anyone who reads her will be blown away and unable to resist her brilliance and charm. Everything else becomes secondary when you engage her, when you begin to see how open and honest she is, how she has come to eliminate the barrier between the word and the thing, the description and the described. She’s so down to earth, so simple and clear on how to live and love that you’re shaken to the depths. She’s the goddamn deliverer; she shows the way. If you read no one else, if time is short for you, if you’ve only got time for one more book, if you don’t read TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS you will have missed your chance at glimpsing what it means to be at ease, to know, to understand. Bliss." You have to be brave to get it, to see clearly. She will confront your every doubt, foible and insecurity. To get her, to read Cheryl Strayed, is to stand before the mirror and not look away. There will be a clarity you could not have imagined: unencumbered, unambiguous, pure and unadulterated. What are you waiting for?

Completed reading it on October 17, 2011, after a stirring beginning. A splendid and breathtaking novel. I highly recommend it. ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ Pirate Jack Lamplough, at Overlook Press, recommended this in a tweet. He was over the top in his praise. There was an ebook version so I went for it. The pirate was right. The first 10th of the book was breathtaking, a whirl of language, insight and high emotion. Couldn't stop... My second book on the Kindle App for Macs. Instead of page numbers you're told how much you've read in percentages. I'm at 9%. Veronesi's first pages so stirring and affecting, so modern, so presto-pronto, detailed and thoughtful, again, just a whirl, and when I finally paused, looking away, thinking about the opening in another way, Keats came into my mind, an odd connection: "When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charactry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, High cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink." I will report back. The pirate's recommendation has thrown me off course. What's a reader to do?

One of the very best of Charles Bukowski. It contains my favorite poem of his, "that rare good moment." A grand finish: ...there, you have it, all that style, grace, god damn it's so strange to feel good to be alive, doing nothing exceptional and feeling the glory of that, like a full choir behind you, like the sidewalks, like the doorknobs. grass grows in Greece and even ducks sleep.