Lonesome Dove

This book is like a stew. BEAR WITH ME PEOPLE! This is going somewhere.

Day 1 of stew: This stew is okay. It's stew - what do you want me to say? It's simple and it's filling.

Day 2 of stew: Sure, this stew isn't fancy. But I was working as a professional business lady all day and it's nice to be able to heat up a comforting bowl for dinner.

Day 3 of stew: This stew keeps getting better & better. All the flavors are coming together. Stew - you keep surprising me! I am glad I have a giant tub of you in the fridge.

Day 4: What a long day. I am glad I have you, Stew. You are coziness personified. You are like an old friend.

Day 5: STEW THERE IS ONLY ONE BOWL OF YOU LEFT! I'm not ready to say goodbye! At the beginning you felt like you would last forever...but I see now how short-sighted I was. *single tear*

Day 6: There is no more stew. RIP Stew. I'm sorry I took you for granted in the beginning. I could make you again, but it won't be the same as the first time. Goodbye. Goodbye...forever. *sobs*

Additional notes on Lonesome Dove that don't fit into a stew metaphor (believe me, I tried):

• Fantastic character names. Pea Eye! Newt! Dish! Soupy! Dang, now I feel like I probably could have worked those names into a stew metaphor. Lazy, Jane!
• The dialog is amazing enough to make you want to slip snippets of it into your own conversations. This will result in an uncomfortable silence when you're on a conference call at work with your New York office about the Q4 budget and you say, "I doubt it matters where you die...but it matters where you live."
• This is the type of novel that is rightly described as "epic," and an "opus." Epic & Opus would also be acceptable character names in a Larry McMurtry novel, I think.

5 grizzly bear fighting bulls out of 5.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

The term "armchair travel," in addition to being silly, refers to books or other proxies that give you the experience of a place/trip without ever having to get off of your fat ass and out of the house. I guess "an armchair travel book" sells it better than "you know you'll never get it together enough to spend the summer biking through Tuscany, so read about this person who did. They are also better looking than you."

Cheryl Strayed has written a book I would describe as "armchair wilderness therapy." You know, those programs that troubled kids get sent to after appearing on Maury Povich episodes about "out of control teens." Strayed's is the book you read to (via armchair) get your shit together so that you CAN (via armchair) travel to Tuscany and live your best life.

Is this a new record for the amount of words I've written in a review without actually describing anything substantial about the book in question? No? How...about....now?

Making up for lost time: Strayed's memoir, of the summer she hiked a section of the Pacific Crest Trail, is powerful and honest. It's so vividly descriptive, of both the trail & her state of mind, that it feels like she wrote it as she walked along, not years after the fact. Anyone who has ever faced a turning point in their early adulthood (so...everyone?) will find themselves nodding along, and may even start to look for their hiking boots in the closet before getting distracted by an old bag of gummy bears they find sticking out of their purse. Gummy bears never go bad - fun fact!

Read this book. You will find more than expired candy.

5 blood-filled blisters out of 5.