Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Eat, Pray, Love
by Elizabeth Gilbert
Pub. Date: January 2007
Genre: Memoir
334pp

Why I Picked It:
It's been a bestseller and everyone has been talking about it for years. Once I saw the movie was going to be coming out, I decided I should get on board and see what everyone has been raving about.

My Review:
I started this book on our way to Mammoth for a family vacation. I was quickly turning pages, laughing, telling my husband how we were definitely going to Italy. Oh how I LOVED her time in Italy. Loved hearing the way she very respectfully described her failing marriage and her own part in it's failure. Loved her interactions, observations, travel suggestions... Loved everything for the first 3rd of the book. Then she arrived in India, and everything came screeching to a halt.

I'm not really a mystical girl. I enjoy doing yoga for the pure stretch and fitness of it, but not to reach something within me. (Go ahead, tell me how I'm missing the point. I don't care.) The meditation, the chanting, her whining... The best part about India was hearing about Richard. That man is FUNNY and spot on with his observations. Wise, wise, wise. But I just couldn't get into all the history, the meditative struggle to become one with God. I appreciate some of her observations about how each religion needn't insist they are the only way, it's ultimately all the same.

Ugh. So it's been a month since we got home from Mammoth and each night I pick up the book trying to finish it. I'm determined that way. I don't give up on much that I've started. I'll kick and scream, curse you (not really) and complain, but I'll do it anyway. Once I got to part 3, when she is in Indonesia things steadily picked up. She was much happier again, and despite a few sections that I did skip because I just didn't care about the historical beginnings of Bali, I began to smile a little as I read.

In the end, I'm glad I stuck it out. It ended well, but I certainly won't be running out to tell everyone I know that they just HAVE to read this book. At this point, I'm not even sure I'm all that anxious to go see the movie. I'll just wait till it hits the ol' Redbox. Sorry Julia Roberts - you rock, but I need some time away from Liz.