Sunday, July 13, 2008

Eat, Pray, Love

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Memoir


This book is about one woman's journey for one year. Liz Gilbert went to Italy (eat), India (pray) and Bali (love). She has just suffered through a bitterly contested divorce and a failed love affair. First stop, Italy. Liz locates herself in Rome and immerses herself in Italian language and food. She travels all over the country and has some of the most phenomenal meals. This was very interesting to me as I have just returned from Italy myself. I wish I could have eaten like Liz and not have had to worry about the weight gain.

Next stop, India. Liz now is at an ashram in India. This part is very spiritual and very dry. I just could not relate in any way. I am a practitioner of yoga but I can not envision myself meditating for hours on end. I could not get into this part at all

Next stop, Bali. Here Liz 'trains' with a Balinese medicine man. This part detailed some of the Balinese customs and ceremonies which are so totally different from the Western world. I enjoyed Wayan's cure of male infertility. Again I found this section interesting and even in parts very funny. It is fantastic that Liz is able to raise so much money so quickly to help her friends.


First Line: "I wish Giovanni would kiss me."


Rating:

(3.5/5)

2 comments:

Eliezer Sobel said...

I just finished Eat, Pray, Love this morning. I had been resisting it because I figured it was a "chick" book, the female version of my own spiritual memoir that I published recently. And I wonder if there IS a male/female divide with this book, because I found the eating part in Italy boring and interminable, but got totally into her India chapter! What do you make of that?
Anyway, maybe you'd enjoy my male version, except I don't do much eating OR fall in love. I do pray, but in the end I utterly fail to get enlightened.

Eliezer Sobel, author of
The 99th Monkey: A Spiritual Journalist's Misadventures with Gurus, Messiahs, Sex, Psychedelics, and Other Consciousness-Raising Adventures

You can read the Prologue here to see if it grabs you:

http://www.the99thmonkey.com

Dana said...

Maybe I am just not into the spiritual. I do not think the book is a 'female' book but it would appeal more to the female in the third section. It sounds like you have quite a sense of humor.