Wild

This is one of a series designed to tap into the recent demand for adventure started by Jon Krakauer's Everest saga. In fact, these stories are not all nonfiction--Evelyn Waugh's "Man Who Liked Dickens" comes from his novel HANDFUL OF DUST and "The Willows," a supernatural canoeing story set in the Danube swamps, comes straight from the imagination of Algernon Blackwood. Some of these stories have more poetry than real peril; all are well read. In fact, the audio form could be more exciting than the prose. The closest to Krakauer is Norman Maclean's "Young Men & Fire," the true tale of a smoke-jumping disaster. As individual stories, all the contents have merit. As a collection, they don't hang together too well. J.B.G. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine