Eat, Pray, Love

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was my Everest - the only book I vowed to finish before the end of 2010. I picked up and put down "Eat, Pray, Love" at least half a dozen times, not quite understanding the life-altering quality that so many people said this book had. And then, a friend said to me that simply, she liked the book because she too felt like she had been on a personal journey in her own life - that she, like Liz Gilbert, had figured out the path she wanted to take. Reading "Eat, Pray, Love" was a way to see someone else do that. Somehow, that idea resonated with me and while it was still slow going, I finally got into the story.

This past year, I felt like I caught a glimpse of what my life could be. Liz Gilbert also caught that glimpse, lost it, and found it again over and over throughout this book. Is "Eat, Pray, Love" as magical as so many people said it would be? No. Is it a book that prescribes bad morals as other told me it did? No. It is exactly what it professes to be - a story about a woman eating, praying, loving and through those experiences, finding the pieces of herself, Gilbert had lost over time.

If I was evaluating this book just on one-liners and random thoughts, it would get five stars. I love the awe, the sarcasm, and the raw honesty that Gilbert weaves into her carefully told 108 vignettes. However, the choppiness and the tediousness of the overall reading experience cost my rating a couple of stars.

All of the above said, I have to admit that I find myself thinking about this book every day since I finished it. I wonder what that means....

Happy reading or not - the choice is totally yours on this one.