Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Life and Love From Dear Sugar

I was interested in Wild, but not sure if I would like Strayed's writing style enough. So I decided to start with Tiny Beautiful Things since I'd never read any of her Rumpus columns (she didn't originate the column, but took it over from the original writer and kept the pseudonym).

Some of the letters sent to Dear Sugar are soul-shattering, gut-wrenching confessions and Sugar/Strayed reveals a lot about her own past in trying to help those authors. The response to Stuck ("How You Get Unstuck") was beautiful, telling a mother who miscarried a pregnancy and is now lost in depression and eating disorders that its OK to be sad, and what happened was awful, and that to get unstuck she will have to take all that pain and use it to transcend.  Some of the letters are rather whiny and Strayed lets those authors know that, too, in trying to help them clear a path out of their predicament (see: "Write Like a Motherfucker").  Another letter/response (M/"No Mystery About Sperm") hit too close to home for me - about a woman looking at her remaining years of fertility and whether she should go for it and have a child alone or suck it up and wait, on the off chance she'll find a non-loser partner who will stay with her/have children.

This is the first time I've ever read an "advice column" and actually wanted to know how the people who wrote in were doing after. Definitely going to pick up Wild now (although, not the Oprah 2.0 edition - it's 3$ more than the regular edition).

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