Eat, Love, Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert

[thartley]

Ginafish and I are both "reading" this one right now.  I actually brought the audio book with me to listen to and have only gotten the first of 11 disks finished.  I'm not sure how far Ginafish is in it.  I know her time to read is usually limited to magazine articles, so it  may take her a while.  I am finding this an excellent book.  I have not listened to many audio books because frankly, though I might love the story, the voice reading them on the cd's can be very distracting.  Luckily for Eat, Love, Pray, the author herself is doing the narrating.  She knows just how she meant something to come across.

My only problem is that I normally only have time to sit still and listen to the book when i am going to bed, which is also when i would normally be reading a hardcopy book as well.  But the author's voice is soooo soothing, I go right to sleep.  It took me three tries to get through the first cd.  The first time, I fell asleep before she got through the foreward/preface.  The second time I got a little farther, fell asleep and dreamed of someone buying a big house.  Both times, the cd went thru to its end while I slept. Turns out there is a bit about a big house that has been purchased in the story.

I am too tired now to begin cd #2.  But this is a very good book.  Its basically about a woman who is going through what can only be described as a harrowing few years.  I think it is described in the book as being as if she were in a car accident everyday for two years.  And in order to heal her soul and get her life back, she takes about a period of one year, broken up into four month segments and decides to travel to India for spiritual exploration, Italy for explorations in pleasure, and Indonesia for exploring a balance between the two.  So far, its a pretty remarkable story.

[Ginafish]

I really am enjoying this book. I'm on page 259 of 331 pages, so I'm the home stretch. It was published in 2006, and was on the New York Times best seller list; the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, did Oprah and all the other talk shows, and Terri and I are just now catching up with the times.

This is a true story of a woman on a journey to help her balance her need for pleasure and her spiritual needs. She is not affiliated with any one religious group or another, rather she does the 'cherry picking' method. When she describes her experiences, I really empathize with her going through them.

For instance, she's in Italy, and has made a friend who has gone with her to Naples, where they will eat "the best pizza in the world." The description is that the pizza is so delicious they are about to lose their minds.

I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. Meanwhile, Sofie is practically in tears over hers, she's having a metaphysical crisis about it, she's begging me, "Why do they even bother trying to make pizza in Stockholm? Why do we even bother eating food at all in Stockholm?"

Now after I read that glowing review of the pizza in Italy, I felt like, YES! I need to go to Italy to eat real pizza!

The word on the street is that this book will be made into a movie with Julia Roberts starring. This is a time I'm really glad I read the book before that happened so I really grasp all the imagery.

[thartley]

Julia Roberts?  I like Julia, but I do not picture her in this story when I listen to it.  I think I picture someone more like Diane Lane, and probably because she made that other film about a woman who finds her salvation in Italy (Under the Tuscan Sun).

This story has reminded me of a painting of my grandmother's.  A huge thing in a gilded frame hanging over a well worn victorian camel back sofa with claw feet.   The painting was of a beautiful bayside landscape with cliff homes that looked like mexican pueblos.  For all of my childhood, I had assumed this painting to actually BE of someplace in Mexico.  I have started at that picture for countless hours as a child, looking at the tiny figure of a peasant farmer walking beside a donkey with side bags full of hay and market goods.  it wasnt until my grandmother passed away some years ago and I came into the possession of this painting that I got a look at the little metal plate with the painting's title engraved there: Isle of Sorrento. 

I have now added this place to my list of  "I am going there!" places.  I may never find the exact view the artist stood from while he laid brush and hue to canvas, but I can go there and breathe the air, and feel the sun, at least.  I can't wait.

[Ginafish]

The author of this book has had an interesting life. When she lived in New York, she worked at the famous bar Coyte Ugly. But it wasn't famous when she worked there the same way it is now. In fact, this author wrote an article about her experience at the Coyote Ugly, which was printed in GQ magazine in 1997 which was later picked up for a movie. I haven't seen the movie in quite a while so I don't know if Elizabeth Gilbert is a character in the storyline, or if it's just about the owner and other girls. I might just have to watch it again, ya know, Tyra Banks is in it, after all. 

On the faq page of the authors website, are some pictures of the people she meets during her trip. Dario, and Giovanni, Richard from Texas, Wayan and Tutti and others.

I don't know how I feel about Julia Roberts doing this role. In the book, she's 35 or 36 and Julia's in her 60s now, right? We'll see. Right now it's in development still. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0879870/

I think Diane Lane would be a good choice for this role, I just don't know if I can picture her really enjoying food.

[Ginafish]

I finished the book. How far have you gotten with the audio version? I don't want to yak about the rest of it till I know where you are.

[thartley]

The audio book is killing me!  She has just gotten to the ashram in India, so I've started what she calls "Book II", but the problem is that whenever I put the headphones on to listen, I am OUT LIKE A LIGHT!  I almost slept into my classtime tonight!  Barely had time to shower and get over to the ILC.  But I'm a few beads into the India segment.

I miss Italy already.  She says that when she woke up in the ashram that first morning, she Italy was a million miles away and she felt she had been in India all her life.  Well, she could have stayed in Italy with Dario and Giovanni and Luca Spaghetti and Sophie for the entire book and I would have been happy as ever!

[Ginafish]

India was a little hard for me to get through because I missed Italy so much. It's sort of funny b/c she felt a bit of struggle in India, as I did to get through India, but it balances out in Indonesia: going through the history with her, and her life as well.

The link to her website I posted has pictures of Dario and Giovanni, and Sophie I think.

[thartley]

Ginafish, I finally finished the audiobooks a couple weeks ago.  This one book is like a trilogy.  I could have read three times as long on the Italy section.  I seriously could stand to live like that for a long time.  Well, not too long.  Even that much good would get old after a while.

India...hmmm.  It really didn't do much for me.  If I was into the yogic traditions a little more, I might have been able to identify with this section better.  But I am not, so it was kind of outside of my ability to relate.  She did come to some amazing insights, though.  THAT I could well relate to.

Bali.  Makes me never want to go there.  I was both glad and disappointed that Katut didn't readily remember her and she didnt actually live there in his home.  But it opened her up to EVERYTHING else.  ALOT of what she writes about in this segment could be taken straight from Nong Khai, with the expats specifically, the don't worry about it attitude, etc. 

This is a really GREAT work.  Her publisher could not have invested that book advance in a better chance.  Fantastic!

[Ginafish]

Yes, as I was reading it, I could have let Italy go on forever...and I agree, most of India was a struggle to read. But maybe that relates to how she struggled there. I think it's interesting how she struggled with her time there at the beginning and was going to leave and meanwhile, I'm reading it and I'm struggling to keep the book in my hands, not to just set it down and never finish it. For me, the reader paralleled the writer. So while I didn't reach enlightenment, I did trudge through to Bali.

Bali was an odd section. The book was like a triology, and while Italy felt to short of a read, India felt too long, with Bali, I wondered why? I know this is the time she was melding her spiritual side with her consumerist side, it just felt more like a section of settling back down to reality.

I was pulled into the story of helping the woman with the house, but never really grasped how much she loved the man in the end. And yes, I looked it up on the internet, they eventually married.

So it had a happy ending and I'm glad you were able to listen to the whole thing. While reading it, I could totally see how you might share some of her experiences and feelings about being in a new place.

One of my new mantras is "Only 10 more years till I can really travel, only 10 more years till I can really travel". But I'm going to not include Indonesia on my list of places.

[thartley]

I hear you about not including Indonesia.     The Bali part of the book was almost more brutal to me than India.  India had the spiritual aspect to it, but she also made friends with "Richard from Texas" and you could really get the rapport those two had and the impact they played on each other.  I liked his nickname for her of Groceries.  Very unique.  The ashram just felt so isolated and desolate. 

However, in Bali....wow.  I felt parched the whole way thru.  If you've ever seen a movie where the whites are overexposed and superwhite, just overtaking the whole frame...that's what I saw while I listened to that entire section.  Except for dinners and the party she went to.  Any exterior narrative just seemed dry, dusty, and bleached.  I know it can't have been, but the way she talks about the bombing and the war and the toll it all took on the country, etc.  I just saw it very bleakly in my mind.

Oh, and thanks for mentioning the author's website earlier.  She looked pretty close to what I could imagine her to look like.  And I was pleasantly surprised at how nice Dario looked.      I'd love to take Italian lessons from him. haha!!  Did you by any chance notice where her next book is going to be based on, location-wise?   

[Ginafish]

No, I don't remember seeing on her website what sort of next book she is going for.

I vaguely remember the narrative about the conditions of the country, but I tended to ignore that and make it my own tropical nice place. I did enjoy reading about the ceremony for when the baby's feet first touch the ground. How the local shaman went from his house rarely.

I did like Richard's nickname for her, groceries. Makes Ginafish sound downright bland.

[thartley]

Gina-
I grabbed this off Yahoo today.  I dont think the man's version sounds very entertaining.     http://news.yahoo.com/s/n...CT2FsA48NnaYBNmRXhPJxFb8C

And yes, it looks like Brad Pitt's production company (Plan B I think) is set to move on it, with Julia Roberts (ugh) in the lead. 

[Ginafish]

Sometimes I really hate satire. I mean, come on... the Thailand bit??!? I hope the audience of 15 year olds he's aiming for really enjoys it.... oh wait! They don't read outside of school. Guess it'll be a flop. HA!

[thartley]

yeah, I know.  I don't find anything funny about that at all, and I dont see how anybody could.  Even if they had never been here to see anything firsthand.  Its not slightly appropriate material for satire or any other sort of humor and I can only imagine the basest sort of individual who would.

[Ginafish]

Let's just think of Dario and his twin brother and taking Italian lessons while nibbling on homemade pasta and gellato.

[chithanh119]

I also finished the book but I need audio version

[Ginafish]

Chithanh119, is there a particular part of the world you liked best?