Strayed, Cheryl. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from “Dear Sugar.” Vintage: Random. ISBN 9780307949332. pap. $14.95; ebk. ISBN 9780307949325. SELF-HELP

Strayed has made a career out of touching her readers’ lives with stories of her own. This collection of her “Dear Sugar” columns, which originally appeared on The Rumpus, may at first glance look like a nontraditional Best Book pick. Instead, Strayed’s columns transcend the genre that made Ann Landers famous. This is a book for readers who want to cry their eyes out but emerge feeling, somehow, stronger. (LJ 5/15/12)—Molly McArdle

See all of Library Journal’s Best Books 2012: Top Ten

books:

cherylstrayed:

This is a test. I have no idea how to use Tumblr. I know this makes me ridiculous. So here I am going to post a photograph of myself. Will it work?

You guys! Cheryl Strayed, of Dear Sugar and Wild is trying out Tumblr. Let’s give her a warm welcome and show her how we do literary community around here, shall we?

The LJ tumblr is a big fan of Cheryl Strayed.

livefromthenypl:

We’re still not telling you yet who’s coming to LIVE this fall… but our talented multimedia intern, Jaeil, sketched this drawing of some of our upcoming guests! Can you guess who they are?

Check out more of Jaeil’s artwork here.

Hmm, I see Zadie Smith, Cheryl Strayed, and what looks like Kafka? I’m not sure how the necromancers at the New York Public Library were able to swing that last one.

Two of my all time favorite women.

Agnostic, Maybe: How Oprah Might Help Out Libraries When It Comes To eBooks (Maybe) →

However, it was the discovery of Wild’s publisher that brought up a much more pertinent question in this whole deal as it relates to libraries: what happens when Oprah picks a book that is from one of the Big Six publishers but is not from Random House or HarperCollins? In the case of a book choice from Hachette, MacMillan, Penguin, or Simon & Schuster (all of the publishers that do not allow library eBook lending), what happens to libraries and the digital edition? Without a doubt, these publishers would love to get their book onto the Book Club 2.0 list. It’s a powerful Oprah-style publicity ride for their author and the book, capable of pushing books up the sales list as well as cementing an author onto the scene. It’s a prize to be won, for certain, since the rewards are quite lavish. It’s a no-brainer to say that the Oprah special digital edition will not be available for libraries if it is one of the four publishers mentioned.

When it comes to pass (and I will bet dollars to donuts that it will) that Oprah picks a book from a publisher that won’t allow library eBook lending, what will we do? We will have an excellent teachable moment and we can’t squander it.

I love this book,” Ms. Winfrey writes in the July issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, which will highlight the new book club on its cover and feature an interview with Ms. Strayed. “I want to shout it from the mountaintop. I want to shout it from the Web. In fact, I love this book so much and want to talk about it so much, I knew I had to reinvent my book club.

— Oprah picks Cheryl Strayed’s Wild to relaunch her book club. You can read LJ’s Q&A with Strayed here.

A lot of what might be called my political values are, to me, core ethical values. I think it’s immoral to condemn people because they are homosexual, for example. I think we are all deserving of compassion, assistance, forgiveness, and esteem. I think women have the right to make decisions about their private parts. I think we are all sacred, regardless of whether we believe in God. Those beliefs are everywhere in my column. I can’t separate them from who I am or the advice I give.

— 

Cheryl Strayed, on her personal political beliefs in Library Journal. (via kellybergin)

God bless secular humanism.

(via rachelfershleiser)

Very early on, I realized that what had been the most helpful to me in times of sorrow or uncertainty were stories—fiction or nonfiction—sometimes in the form of poems, other times in novels or memoirs or short stories. So I decided to trust that and use storytelling in the column as a way of enlarging and deepening the questions the letter writers were asking me. The advice column is at heart an intimate exchange between two people who are addressing each other in a public forum. There’s a wonderful intensity inherent in that exchange that’s slightly different from the other genres I’ve written in, but I see all the work as parts of a whole.

— Cheryl Strayed, on writing for “Dear Sugar,” from LJ’s recent Q&A.

The worst advice I ever received was from my grandmother—my mother’s mother. She said I should never get entirely undressed in front of my husband, even during sex. Can you imagine?

— Cheryl Strayed, on the worst piece of advice she’s ever been given, from LJ’s recent Q&A.

When I was maybe six I saw a photograph in a magazine of a young woman holding a bouquet of flowers up to a police officer who was pointing a gun at her—it was the 1970s, an image from an antiwar protest. I was terribly intrigued by the contradiction depicted in that photo, so I asked my mother about it. She explained that the woman was trying to win over the officer with kindness. She said it was a good idea to do that, to be kind even to those who were being unkind to you. Her exact words were “Zap them back with super love.” I think it’s great advice. I’ve thought of that phrase many times over the years in trying moments. I’ve never regretted zapping anyone back with super love.

— Cheryl Strayed, on the best piece of advice she’s ever been given, from LJ’s recent Q&A.

Read LJ’s Q&A with Dear Sugar columnist and Wild author, Cheryl Strayed.

I am so so excited to announce that my Q&A with Cheryl Strayed is appearing in the May 15 issue of LJ, along with a review of her forthcoming collection of Dear Sugar columns, Tiny Beautiful Things. It should be online in the next couple of weeks!

LJ’s own Readers’ Advisory expert Neal Wyatt takes on Cheryl Strayed’s Wild.

She says of the memoir, “Strayed’s tale of self-destruction and self-reconciliation is an addictive one—an insightful, literary, and powerful combination of the inwardness of memoir and the fast pace of adventure quest,” and recommends read-alikes (Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild), read-arounds (Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail), and even watch-arounds (the 2002 documentary Walking the West: Hiking 2600 Miles from Mexico to Canada).

Click through for more, and keep an eye out out for an upcoming Q&A with Strayed as well as a review of her forthcoming collection of “Dear Sugar” columns, Tiny Beautiful Things, in LJ’s May 15 issue.

newyorker:

The Rumpus’s Dear Sugar columnist has revealed her true identity. The story, and an interview, on our Book Bench blog: http://nyr.kr/xUZcNW

Ladies and gentleman: Sugar is out! Your humble tumblrer, a Sugar-fan, was very surprised to realize this morning that she had already seen, assigned, and edited a review of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, her second book, coming out in March. The review appears in the February 15 issue of Library Journal, which comes out (surprise) today!

Here’s LJ’s 2005 review of her first novel, Torch:

Strayed, Cheryl. Torch. Houghton Mifflin, 2005. ISBN 9780618472178.

Teresa Rae Wood signs off from her radio program Modern Pioneers with “Be incredible”—advice that Strayed, an award-winning short story writer and essayist, took to heart in her debut novel. This deeply moving tale set in small-town Minnesota recounts an exceptional woman’s death from cancer and how her family deals with their grief. What Teresa leaves behind when she dies—her voice on the radio, a well-worn red coat, a tube of pink lipstick—has the power to touch her husband and two grown children in painful and desperate ways. Each character deals with the loss privately, not wanting to let the others in, and yet each copes in similar ways. Strayed’s descriptions of her characters’ lives, where and how they live, what they remember, and what they wish to forget ring true and clear and make this novel an unforgettable read; highly recommended.—Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA

Library Journal, September 1, 2005