Image by Bureau of Land Management Oregon/Washington on Flickr.com.

If you are looking for a good book to read in English, let me recommend to you a personal adventure story that I really like. The book I am thinking of is called Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. One reason I am recommending this book to you now is that very soon a movie version of this book is going to come out.  Reading a book, then watching the movie version of the book is a great way to work on so many areas of language development!

With much acclaim (acclaim = praise), the book Wild was released in 2012, and now, in 2014, the upcoming movie is also much anticipated. This book, is considered a “memoir” or “autobiography,” which means it is a personal account of the events in one’s life. But this is also an adventure story, as the book recounts the author’s journey for 3 months on the Pacific Crest Trail. The Pacific Crest Trail is a 2,600 mi (4,286 km) long backpacking footpath from the Mexican/American border to the Canadian/American border, on the West Coast of the United States.

This book takes place when the author was 26 years old. At that time in her life the author had very recently experienced the loss of her mother due to lung cancer. Around the same time as her mother’s death, the author’s marriage began to dissolve (dissolve = to come undone) and she began engaging in reckless behaviors and struggles with an addiction to drugs. In the midst (midst = middle) of all of this, Cheryl Strayed decides to make a dramatic change in her life, to start again, and leave all the hurt and sadness behind.  So, she set out on an adventure! Although she has very little backpacking experience she decided to begin a multiple-month backpacking journey on the rugged (rugged = ground that is rocky and uneven) Pacific Crest Trail through the states of California and Oregon in the United States. It is during this adventure that she begins to come to terms with (to come to terms with = to start to accept and deal with a difficult situation) the losses and changes in her life.

The book Wild is both an emotional journey and an outdoor adventure tale. The author’s emotional expedition into her childhood and early adulthood is intertwined (intertwined = twisted or mixed together) with her travels on the Pacific Crest Trail. The author’s past is presented in flashbacks, which occur while she is hiking, thinking about, and processing her life and past experiences. For people most interested in reading about the author’s outdoor adventures, there are vivid details of her experiences in nature, including encounters with animals. For those most interested in reading about the author’s personal journey, there are dramatic and lively descriptions of her internal process and many traumatic life events.

If I have peeked your interest in this book it is available for purchase on Amazon. If you would like to learn more about the book before purchasing it, you may want to check out the book’s webpage. But if what you are most interested in is the upcoming movie adaptation of this book, then you should definitely check out the movie trailer, which I have linked to below.

For anyone looking for a heartfelt and interesting adventure memoir – this is the book for you!

Happy reading everyone.