Eat, Pray, Love - Great way to help you through - Must Read !!
I thought this book was really amazingly written. It a perfect self help book, with light reading contents and a simply story flow. It was very inspiring and gave me a hunger to see the world differently and get enjoyment from food and culture and to find happiness within and around us. I actually liked how personal this book was and admired how open and honest Elizabeth Gilbert was in writing her account of her feelings. I think an open mind is something that is needed to enjoy this book to its fullest as I think some people might brush aside some of the authors methods to finding happiness.
The author really considers the reader as a close friend; she lets us into her most intimate thoughts and recounts all of the emotionality surrounding her failed marriage. We travel with her to the three I’s as she seeks out pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and balance between the two in Indonesia. She leads us to crave pasta and skilled young lovers. She invites us to meditate and contribute in seva (service) within the closed walls of the Ashram. She allows us to look over her shoulder as she finally rediscovers herself and takes another chance at love. Even I, the admitted apathetic spiritualist, found myself questioning if a visit to an ashram might not be such a bad idea.
The part that I will remember best is when Gilbert informs her friend Iva that she thinks asking God for specific things is a sign of one’s weakness of faith. Iva, who completely disagrees, convinces her to write out a simple plea to God asking for help in finalizing her divorce quickly and without further pain. The two friends brainstorm a rather lengthy list of people who would undoubtedly be happy to add their names to the petition of the almighty and it becomes a bit of a lighthearted game. It’s that ability to look at the same circumstance from an entirely different angle, whether applying new wisdom, a new philosophy or an entirely new culture; it’s this multifaceted gaze that eventually helps us to make the right decisions and to develop into the people we need to be.
In many ways, Eat, Pray, Love is a typical New York book. Gilbert is incredibly well-educated and stupidly well-read. I learnt so much, just from the back story or the background research. It’s New York in how it manages to bring together everything – cuisines, philosophical traditions, cultures – as if you are snailing down Broadway Avenue armed with a time lapse camera, imprisoning all the details and all bird’s eye at the same time.
You may like this book if…you are a spiritual seeker, you enjoy traveling (even if it is vicariously), you like glimpsing into the lives of others, you yourself have recently undergone a major life disturbance, you enjoy savvy intelligence and well-fleshed out metaphors, you like stories that break apart easily and are easy to read over a long period of time if necessary, you are interested in alternative medicine, pasta, meditation or languages, you have battled with depression, you sometimes feel that you are your own best friend, you like reading about real characters.
You may not like this book if…you don’t care to read so much about how it feels to meditate or you don’t want to read a spiritual memoir, you prefer a more traditional novel-sequel storyline, you want to stay with one set of characters in one setting for the course of a book rather than jumping about all over the place, you are on a diet and don’t want to be tempted.Read full review
