Gary Paulsen is one of the authors who made me a reader. I hated reading when I was a kid, but I loved the woods. I liked survival stories and learning about nature. Hatchet was one of the few books that I actually enjoyed. After reading Hatchet a few dozen times, I moved on to the rest of Gary Paulsen’s Brian books.

In Guts, Paulsen talks about the real-life events that inspired him to write the Brian series. He has lived an unusual life, mostly in remote places. He writes about his time as a paramedic in rural Colorado (very close to where I currently live). He also tells stories about surviving in the wilderness in Minnesota and Alaska. Gary Paulsen has actually lived through everything that happens in the Brian books. This memoir covers his experiences with heart failure, plane crashes, animal attacks, and hunting mishaps.

Paulsen’s writing style is conversational. I read this book straight through without putting it down because it felt like I was listening to a friend tell stories. I laughed out loud several times. The author has a way of understating deadly problems that makes me laugh. Then I feel terrible about laughing at his near-death experiences. They’re funny, though!

My favorite story is the one where Paulsen and his 14 sled dogs got trapped in a blizzard and needed to be rescued by plane. The dogs were loose inside the plane and lost their minds when it took off and started bouncing around in the storm. During a 20-minute flight, the dogs destroyed the plane’s interior. They bit the pilot and almost caused the plane to crash. Not cool, dogs. The moral of the story: dogs on planes know no chill.

My second-favorite story is the one where Gary wanted to know if it was possible to eat turtle eggs. He tried eating one and threw up. His dog caught the puke and swallowed it before it hit the ground. Again, not cool, dogs.

“We have grown away from knowledge, away from knowing what something is really like, toward knowing only what somebody else says it is like. There seems to be a desire to ignore the truth in favor of drama.” – Guts

If you’re not interested in hunting or wilderness survival, then this book might not be for you, but for me, it was perfect. It’s a quick, funny read that distracted me from the rest of the world. You’d probably get the most out of Guts if you’ve read the Brian books, but it’s not completely necessary. The stories are entertaining on their own.

Raise your hand if you’ve read a book by Gary Paulsen. Ever heard of Hatchet? Brian’s Winter? Dogsong? Author Gary Paulsen draws on his own experience in the wild outdoors to fill his popular books with excitement.

This book is Gary Paulsen’s chance to tell his own stories, the true stories that inspired his writing. 
Read p. 1: “He was sitting … “

Gary Paulsen used to be a volunteer paramedic, and he remembers being called out to many, many heart attacks – one in particular during which the dying man looked directly into Gary’s eyes. 
Read p. 6: “Years later when I came to write … “
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Guts is filled with many other stories, much of which are very funny – like the crazy moose who attacked him, the time he ate raw turtle eggs (they tasted like rotten Vaseline), and the time his sled-dogs almost crashed a plane. A small bush plane rescued Gary and his dog-sled team from a blizzard, but the dogs were scared of the airplane engine noise, so they all ran to the tail of the plane. 
Read p. 24: “Thanks to the angle …”

I taught seventh grade middle school for 35 years and during part of that time the sixth grade read Hatchet. Naturally when they came to me the following year some were hooked on Gary Paulsen books. From time-to-time I find myself reading teen books out of habit and desire, I have a list of authors I still enjoy and Gary Paulsen is one. His books have always made me feel I was sitting listening to him tell me the story.

If you have read or you know someone who has read the "Brian" books I would recommend this book by Paulsen. In it Mr. Paulsen explains how some of the situations Brain finds himself in are based on his own life experiences. Although I purchased the book from a school book club I would also suggest it is good reading for any of the hunters in your life. It is fascinating to read how Mr. Paulsen made his own bow and arrows, as well as, teaching himself to hunt with this homemade equipment through trial and error.

Finally it is a quick read for those reluctant readers. 150 pages and not full pages of reading. Enjoy something different.

Gary Paulsen shares countless stories of hunting, fishing, dogsled racing, and other adventures that inspired him to write Hatchet and other books. Incredible to read about his own life experience, but some of it was nasty and graphic. Fine read.

I have met Gary Paulsen and love his books. Guts was entertaining, serious, and filled with information about wilderness survival that I simply did not know. A few times, this book made me laugh out load!

Short read about the true stories that inspired my favorite book growing up, Hatchet. I find Gary Paulsen super easy to read, probably because I have the comprehension of a child. Some stories included seem too far fetched to be true and I wonder if they were exaggerated a bit by a man getting old in age. None the less, a good read.

4.5 - 5

I'm a sucker for Hatchet, the Brian books, and woodland survival. I'm not sure I'd actually want to be stranded alone in the woods for days/weeks/months, but I enjoy reading books like this and giving myself a false sense of security (superiority) regarding my potential survival.

Gary Paulsen is a wild dude. He has lived many lives with wild experiences and this only scratches the surface.

If there is some type of apocalypse that does not affect woodland creatures, I will carry this book as my Bible.

THIS GUY IS WILD AF. Definite recommend if you love survival fiction. Frequently hilarious.

I didn't read  Hatchet as a kid. In fact, I still haven't read it. I will be getting to it soon, but until then I figured I would give  Guts a try, seeing how it has gotten no small praise from other accounts I read of the books.  Hatchet has come up enough in falconry circles to make me curious about it, and inevitably this book came up as well. Albeit, it has nothing at all to say about falconry in it. It does reaffirm my terror of moose, though.

This book consists of a series of stories that illustrate how  Gary Paulsen's own life influenced the books which he wrote. The stories are to a point rough to read - he pulls few punches in describing how difficult life in the wild can be. The fact that the stories are true adds a veneer to them that wouldn't otherwise be there. People do go through this. They survive it sometimes. Nature doesn't care about you, and it cannot be tamed or subdued. You need to have your wits about you, and an awfully strong stomach.

I think this would be an excellent book to recommend to any younger kid to get them reading. I think it lends itself to kids reluctant towards reading, as it is an easy read, but also full of compelling details that draw the person in. There's plane crashes, moose attacks, deer attacks, people freezing to death and starving. There's eating gross foods - including eyeballs and turtle eggs - and hunting with a bow carved by your own hand. Who doesn't want to read such an exciting adventure?

Guts by Gary Paulsen is such a good book, i don't read a lot of books but this is one i really enjoyed. Gary's books always get me interested in the beginning, they always draw me in. There is never in one of his books that starts to get boring, there is a lot of action in his books. In most/all of his books it's about the wild or living in the wild. I am an outdoors person and these books are all about the outdoors, that's one thing i like about his books. In Gary's books there is always a lot of detail, he makes sure that there's nothing being left out. (SPOILER ALERT),( in the book Guts, he explains how he lives in the forest for so long what he ate, how he hunted, and what he hunted, in the book he encounters many animals that he didn't want to encounter, like one part in the book he was walking down a trail and he heard grunts from a moose but he didn't see it or know were it was, and all he had to defend himself was a 22. caliber rifle, which was not enough to scare a moose, and all of a sodden it jumps out of the brush and charges, it stomped him nearly to death and he explains how it was stomping on him, he said all he could do was lay there curl up in a ball and cover his head, but suddenly the moose stops and site there and look at him, and if he made the slightest movement it would jump back on him, now he says this is personal. Every time he would even take in or let out the slightest breath the moose would jump back on the attack, he says this moose wants me dead.) One thing i really like about Gary's books is he gives every little possible detail possible.

I found the personal true stories that Paulsen drew from when writing about Brian interesting for the most part. He gets into some details that were a bit too much information for me...though I do agree with his statements: "We have grown away from knowledge, away from knowing what something is really like, toward knowing only what somebody else says it is like..." and "To learn, to be willing to learn how a thing works...to always keep learning is truly wonderful."

An action-packed quick read that tells the harrowing true stories of near misses and almost crashes. Paulsen based his Brian Robeson books (Hatchet, The River, Brian’s Winter, and Brian’s Return) on events that actually happened to him, or on things that he could do, making the reader realize that the author has seen a lot of death….

Two things that I gleaned from the book were that animals are much more dangerous than I think they are, and I’ve been lucky (so far) when I’ve been out in the wilderness. As Paulsen puts it: “It often seems that everything in the wilderness is conspiring to harm you in one way or the other […] The solutions to facing all these dangers […] is knowledge.”

I would recommend this to tweens and teens who enjoy the outdoors, tinkering and repairing things, and reading about gross things to eat (eyeballs). There is also quite a bit of useful information if you happen to wind up lost in the wilderness.

If you like books about testing yourself in the wilderness, you might also enjoy:

Lost in the Barrens, by Farley Mowat, and
Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer

-Marjorie