A Walk in the Woods Dewey Decimal Number: 917.40443

The trail supplies the geographical frame

The catalogue identifies Bryson's travel on the Appalachian Trail and includes both description-and-travel and natural-history headings connected to that place. This is a more precise description than simply a book about walking or woods. The narrative is organised around a journey through a particular landscape. Its initial nine places the selected number in the broad history-and-geography class, while the headings show why geography and travel are central to this record.

Sources: [1]

The publisher describes Bryson returning to the United States and attempting a journey along the Appalachian Trail, combining travel, observation and comedy. That account helps distinguish the book from a route manual or an encyclopaedia of forest species. A reader can be interested in the experience, the landscape or Bryson's narrative voice, but those interests need not imply the same next step. The catalogue's place headings make it possible to look for other works about the trail even after this particular narrative is identified.

Sources: [2]

Why the record says 1998 and the publisher says 1999

The selected library record says first edition, names Broadway Books and gives the copyright notation 1998. It contains several ISBNs, including the paperback selected here. The publisher's page for that paperback ISBN gives a May 1999 release date. These descriptions should not be compressed into a claim that the paperback was published in 1998, nor should the library's copyright notation be overwritten to match the retail date. The record and product page are reporting different bibliographic details.

Sources: [1] [2]

This is especially useful when comparing a family copy, a library listing and a modern product page. Start by asking what each date labels. A copyright year may appear in a copy issued later, while a publisher's page can identify a particular format's release. If the task involves page references or additional material, inspect the actual copy as well. Here the shared record is enough to establish the observed number, but it does not justify reconstructing every printing from one year field.

Sources: [1]

A travel narrative and a trail that continues to change

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy identifies the trail's endpoints as Springer Mountain in Georgia and Katahdin in Maine. It also explains that the official distance changes with relocations and improved measurement. That is a helpful companion fact for a book first represented by late-nineties publication information. A route described in a travel narrative is an account connected to its time; present-day mileage or route details need not be identical to the figures a reader encounters in older descriptions.

Sources: [3] [4]

Use that difference as a reading question rather than an automatic error hunt. Is a distance being used as a contemporary planning measurement, a rounded description of the entire journey, or part of a remembered episode? A memoir-like travel account and an official trail resource have different purposes. If the book inspires a visit, the National Park Service's planning page provides the next kind of information to seek. The narrative can explain an experience without functioning as a current operational guide.

Sources: [3] [5]

Natural history does not erase the travel subject

The natural-history heading in the source shows that a record can acknowledge the environment encountered during a journey while still giving the work a travel-related placement. That is useful for readers who remember passages about woodland or wildlife and wonder why the number does not begin with five. The classification is for the represented work, not a separate label for each subject mentioned along the way. The place and journey remain central organising features of the catalogue description.

Sources: [1]

Compare The Hidden Life of Trees, whose selected English-translation record has 582.16 and headings for trees and forest ecology. A Walk in the Woods is tied to a traveller and the Appalachian Trail; the tree book is tied to organisms and ecological relationships. Both may interest someone who likes forests, but they answer different questions. The comparison helps distinguish a reader seeking an account of being in a landscape from one seeking an explanation of relationships within a forest.

Sources: [6] [1]

The same writer, three different scales of enquiry

Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything carries 500 in the selected 2004 trade paperback record. The Body carries 612 in its selected 2019 first-edition record. Against this travel result, 917.40443, the three books make an unusually clear author-based comparison: a broad scientific survey, an account of human anatomy and physiology, and a journey through a particular geographical setting. The author's voice connects the books for readers, while their catalogue subjects distinguish the enquiries.

Sources: [7] [8] [1]

If you remember enjoying Bryson but not the title, ask what the book was exploring. Was the organising subject a trail, the human body or a wide range of scientific questions? That question is more likely to identify the intended book than searching for humour alone. Once the title is recognised, the related edition page supplies its own evidence. A library can make an author display spanning these subjects without implying that all three books share a detailed classification.

Sources: [7] [8]

A focused way to read a place-based narrative

Choose one episode and separate the narrator's immediate experience from the background explanation of the place. Note when the account changes from an encounter or observation to a statement about the trail's history or natural environment. Then ask what source would help investigate that second kind of statement. This approach respects the pleasures of travel writing while making its layers visible: personal response, description of landscape and information about a place are connected, but they are not the same kind of evidence.

Sources: [1]

For a discussion group, compare the place a passage asks you to imagine with the practical place represented by a map or official trail description. What does the narrative make vivid that a map cannot show, and what does the map specify that a story may leave approximate? That question gives the recorded geographical placement a real use. It leads from finding the book to understanding how a journey becomes an account of a landscape.

Sources: [1] [5]

Sources for this edition guide

1. Library of Congress: selected edition record
2. Penguin Random House: selected paperback released in 1999
3. Appalachian Trail Conservancy: trail basics and endpoints
4. Appalachian Trail Conservancy: annual mileage, relocations and measurement
5. National Park Service: Appalachian Trail visit planning
6. The Hidden Life of Trees: selected forest ecology record
7. A Short History of Nearly Everything: selected general science record
8. The Body: selected human anatomy and physiology record