Huge news for local author Cheryl Strayed, whose Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is the first selection for Oprah's new "interactive" online book club. And it gets better: Oprah says she created the new book club just so she could tell people how much she loved Wild.

Oprah's weird influence on book sales has been well-documented; I'm hoping her endorsement of Wild also means that Strayed's upcoming Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection of the Dear Sugar columns she wrote for the Rumpus, will find its way into the hands of self-improving moms everywhere. (You can buy tickets already for the release party for that book, BTW, which also features Steve Almond and Laura Gibson, and you're going to want to get on it—it'll sell out.)

You can watch Oprah gushing about Wild right here.