Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Published 2012 · 315 pages · 95,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Memoir & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Science & Nature
How hard is Wild to read?
Wild scores 19 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 25 out of 100
- Direct, accessible prose. Hiking and emotional vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 25 out of 100
- Abstraction: 20 out of 100
- Concrete, embodied memoir. Meaning emerges from physical experience.
- Information density: 38 out of 100
- Rich with sensory detail and emotional observation.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Chronological trail narrative with flashbacks to the past.
- Symbolic density: 25 out of 100
- The trail, Monster (the backpack), and the PCT itself function as symbols of self-discovery.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Raw, unguarded honesty. No ironic distance.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- The trail ends. Strayed reaches a kind of acceptance.
- Structural complexity: 20 out of 100
- Chronological trail narrative with interspersed flashbacks.
How Wild is regarded
Wild holds a literary regard score of 40 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.