Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

First, let me get out of the way the fact that I thought this was an excellent book. I wouldn't have thought that to read about a woman spending 4 months in Italy, India and Indonesia would have made for such good reading, but I was wrong. It shows that, if a writer is talented enough (and Ms. Gilbert surely is), anything can be made interesting. She comes off as funny, extroverted, thoughtful, charming and--especially--brutally honest about herself. In fact, she is so open with her readers that at times, I felt like I was reading her private diary or something that anyone else would write only to their closest confidante. While I was reading the book however, I kept thinking about something else entirely: I wonder what it would be like to go out with this woman? (Given that this book seems to have a 99% female readership judging from the reviews, and I am not, I suspect that few others were wondering the same thing.) Anyway, here is what I thought about. On the plus side, she's a wonderful writer which tells me that she must be very intelligent and that's obviously a good thing. Her looks? Quite attractive ... I think. I say that because the only photos I've seen are the one on the dust jacket (which is very flattering) and one on her website, which is pleasant enough but in which she looks like a completely different woman. On the minus side however, she seems to have an incongruous combination of personality traits. For example, when it comes to men, she seems simultaneously incredibly independent and yet incredibly needy. I suspect that this combination may have played a role in the troubles she had with her husband and with "David". To me, one of the most revealing paragraphs in the book is on page 65 where she talks about her "boundary issues with men". She tells us that when she's in love with a man, she gives herself over to him completely until she becomes so exhausted that it's time to become infatuated with someone else. Virtually by her own admission, she seems to be what Vince Vaughn called a "stage 5 clinger" in "Wedding Crashers". How many men would line up to be with someone like that? She also seems like someone full of melodrama who careens back and forth between very high high's and very low low's with not much in between. She seems to hope (and expect) that her feelings towards her mate (and vice versa) will always be as intense as they were at the highest point, and I imagine her to be disappointed if a relationship should ever descend from that plateau. If in fact that's her mindset, that's a recipe for trouble. (To her credit though, she seemed to have more of an equilibrium about her by the end of the book than she did at the beginning, which is perhaps not surprising.) It was difficult to tell however whether her wanderlust and her peripatetic nature had changed by the end. I suspect that it hadn't, which might not augur well for her future relationships unless she can find a soulmate who does nothing but travel around the world with her. (Come to think of it, maybe she did find such a person in "Felipe".) In any event, regardless of whether she is a total catch or a total nightmare (or something in between), the fact remains that she is a hell of a writer and I highly recommend her book.

Enjoyed reading this book and following her adventures- a must read!

Eat, Pray, Love is very explicitly a prepaid writer's journey for an entire year where she tries to heal from a painful divorce. She has no children, and her job IS to fly around the world writing about things. It is important to understand this up front. I find that people either love this book or hate it, and often their feelings revolve around this one fact. Detractors feel she is "spoiled" for going off to Italy, India and Indonesia to be on her own. That is what she does! Ths is her job. It is like complaining that Steve Irwin jetted around playing with animals, and did this on his vacations too. If someone has this as their normal lifestyle, and they are actively paid for this, then being jealous or upset that they live this way seems unreasonable. We are hearing notes from a person who DOES live this way. It would be the same as picking up Steve Irwin's book about going around and interacting with animals. To complain that he should have stayed at home makes no sense. It is not who he is. It is not who Elizabeth is. So, that being said and understood, let's look into this year. It's always easy to throw stones at other peoples' lives. As has been said many times, those who live in glass houses should avoid stones - and he who has no sin should throw first. All of us have made mistakes. All of us have regrets. Elizabeth has ended up in a marriage with serious faults. She does not describe the issues - which I greatly respect! Many women would have turned this type of book into a vent-fest where they skewered their ex. If anything, Elizabeth makes much of her husband's patience and doesn't go into his faults. To complain about her tact in this area seems petty. Elizabeth honestly doesn't want kids. That is fine! Only people who REALLY want kids should have them. A look at the child abuse statistics bears this out. So for whatever reasons - mostly unmentioned - she and her husband break up. As a result, she spirals into a deep depression and is at the point of suicide. She is seeing a therapist and it is not helping. She is on medication. It also does not help. So finally she formulates a plan to get away. Remember, this is a woman who does travel writing *for a living*. It is not an abnormal thing for her. She loves the Italian language. She loves yoga. She had met a medicine man in Indonesia. So she gathers her things and heads out. Italy - land of long, leisurely walks, of delicious comfort food, of a friendly openness. I know many people who ADORE Italy and return there frequently. Yes, it is a land of fiery emotions, and some people live in poverty. You can find similar conditions in most countries. She begins her stay here sickly and worn down. Slowly she begins to repair her physical health and starts to make connections with others. She begins to explore a little and find pleasures in the basics of life. Next, India is where she explicitly goes to an Ashram (retreat) to study yoga and medication. People who are interested in yoga very often do this. Again, to complain that she doesn't "see outsiders" when she is at a yoga retreat seems baffling to me. The purpose of going to a retreat is to rebuild your own spirituality. It is only then that you can help others. When they tell you in an airplane to put on your own oxygen mask before you help a child, it's not because they're callous. It's because otherwise you both could die. She slowly learns how to deal with "monkey mind" - a VERY common issue with westerners who meditate, who cannot get their mind to let go of their worries. It is only after several months that she can meditate without strong negative, painful emotion. Finally, Indonesia is where she learns about balance. She gets a sense of how people work in a community, how they support each other, how they heal the physical and mental and spiritual together. Now, I have phrased this review a bit "defensively" because I really think some of the people who "hate" this book do so because they think it is wasteful for a person to spend a year "taking care of themselves". They feel a depressed writer should just ignore the depression and do ... what? Open a kindergarten? Elizabeth WAS a travel writer. If she had just "gone back to work" she would have been doing something very similar. A past job had been to go to Indonesia to write about yoga for several weeks. Is it really any "worse" that she went to India to write about yoga for several months? She was after all paid in both cases to do exactly what she did. The only real difference is that with this book part of the criteria of what she wrote was to include her personal feelings, which if anything is far more difficult (and risky). Some people have an issue that she HAD serious depression. Is this going to turn into a Tom Cruise rant on how women should not be depressed or affected by changes in their lives? Many women DO get serious depression and are told to just "deal with it". Depression is an extremely serious medical issue and should never be dismissed or ignored. Elizabeth was on medication, she had a therapist. If a "change of scenery" was key to helping her recover, then that is fine - and quite normal. For people who say "well my life sucked worse and I dealt with it" - again, perhaps those people do not understand what depression is caused by or how it works. It is demeaning to people who do have serious depression to say "just get over it" or "I don't think your life warrants depression, so you don't have it." If you completely ignore the content, I think Elizabeth's writing style was brilliant. I downloaded a sample 20 pages on my Kindle and was laughing out loud at several statements in the book. I promptly went and bought the entire thing. There were many, many sections in the book where her descriptions were vivid, her dialogue was crisp, her observations were right on. I love her writing style. Now that all being said, I do not say that this book is flawless. In a way it is like reading Valerie Bertinelli's book. Both women are open about their mistakes. Neither woman is perfect. Elizabeth takes on a lover before her marriage is dissolved. Certainly this is something men AND women have been doing for centuries, but it is not a wonderful choice. Being a planner-type myself, I found Elizabeth's way of just randomly launching into travel without knowing what she's doing rather disconcerting. She gets to Indonesia with no idea of where she is going or how to get there. Also, some aspects about the ending of the story bother me, but I do not want to give anything away. While others found her self introspection to be too much, I found it normal for a memoir. If you're writing a memoir, you are by definition writing about yourself. People read your story to learn how you felt and thought - and it SHOULD be different from how they would think! If we all just read about "our own thoughts" the world would be a boring place. It is important to learn and grow and understand how people different from ourselves interact with the world. I think it is very difficult for Americans in particular to "let go" of a hectic pace. In Europe people routinely take vacations of a month or more. In the US, people race away for a weekend, and bring their laptops with them. They have kids and then pile their schedules full of karate lessons, soccer games and play dates - when more and more studies say that kids (and adults!!) need quiet time to just "be free". I honestly think we all COULD use an entire year off from our current life, to spend time on our own, away from our stress and schedule. Look at many cultures were people live a far more relaxed, easy way. Often they have far less rates of cancer, diabetes, heart attacks and other issues. Stress and cortisol are causing modern people huge health issues. So to summarize, I think part of why this book is so popular is that it draws out such strong feelings in people. Readers feel jealous of Elizabeth's ability to travel. They feel upset that Elizabeth "wastes" a year traveling without feeling "guilty" about not volunteering at a nursing home instead. They feel annoyed that Elizabeth's personal memoir talks about her personal feelings rather than writing a social treatise on poverty in the slums of India (which she wasn't near). They feel morally upset that she left her marriage without laying out in explicit detail for public review why the marriage failed. They feel an ovarian outrage against any female would not actively leap at the chance to bear children. They feel religious fervor at anybody who would approach the worship of God without going specifically through a priest and Jesus Christ. Whatever was the trigger for someone, I think that trigger is an important idea to meditate on - because there are MANY people who feel the way that created that trigger. To be able to try to understand them in this no-holds-barred book is incredibly valuable. If your decision is to just close the book and turn your back, that is the attitude that causes cultures to still clash all over the world. How much better if we could really learn to understand each other, forgive each others' mistakes, accept that we all have different views and at least get some small sense of where people are coming from. I am not saying we all have to approve of Elizabeth, or follow in her footsteps. However, I feel she makes many extremely important observations, and explains them clearly. She is speaking out for a large group of people. To at least understand her is to take steps towards understanding people you have to interact with in your daily life. To do this healthily and maturely can really be beneficial long term - for them, for you, for your social group, and for your community. For that reason, well recommended.

This is, by far, my all time favorite book. It meant, and still means, so much to me, especially as a woman. I was a single mother for most of my now adult daughter's life, and I was so desperately sad and lonely after my divorce with my husband/her stepdad (Our wedding, which was obviously well pre-planned, ended up being on the day of Princess Diana's funeral (9/6/1997) and our divorce was finalized on 9/11/2001 (yep, THE day)...There's my "sign"... Anyway, several years passed and I still just couldn't see a future....of anything, happiness, travel, love, ???...(other than going through the motions and working on being the best mother I could be)...I too, was 36 years old at this time. When my daughter was old enough to have a stable relationship with her biological father, I would have every other weekend alone. I used to go to the bookstore "Borders" every Friday night and I would walk aimlessly around the entire store, just looking for any sign, the next sign for the next move, for me... I prayed and prayed constantly, just not knowing what or where I needed to be... with my physical life, my spiritual life, my love life, my motherhood... and then I looked up. On the top shelf of the "newest releases" I saw the cover of "Eat, Pray, Love"... I INSTANTLY felt a "pull" if you will... Now normally, I would wander, grab a few books, & find a chair hidden in some lonely, quiet little alcove in the store, and sort through the items I'd selected to see if anything could help or just give me SOMETHING, ANYTHING for HOPE...but I grabbed this book from the shelf, read the back cover, ran to the checkout line and left the store to go home. Within reading the first chapter, I immediately found it gravitational, humorous, very easy to follow and read.... very spiritual, and somehow, someway, emotionally compatible and conducive to exactly what I was needing at the time. You instantly understand where Elizabeth Gilbert is coming from, what she's going through, and even her "fantasies", all with humor, compassion and a desire to continue "the journey with her". I was hooked. Every chapter, I was laughing, crying, dreaming, planning, petitioning, praying, and laughing again. Every chapter held me captive in all of my senses. You can feel everything she feels, you can taste everything she tastes (even her tears), you can see what she sees, you pray what she prays, her friends (and enemies) become yours, and you get to the end, and you're a different person. It's like the book emanates and "energy" right to you and through you, and you are left feeling HOPEFUL, alive, ready, stronger, wiser, more forgiving of others, and most importantly, yourself. You learn that they way you lean into and love God is between the two of you and no one else....that what you can't necessarily see, hear or touch, doesn't mean it isn't FULLY there, fully present with you, in all It's Glory. I've read it 7 times, all on different occasions and throughout different phases in my life...After months of reading it, when the next Christmas Season rolled around, I bought 13 copies and gave them to all of the closest women in my life. I'm now only a few months shy of age 48 (years young) and I'll read this book again and again...every time I read it I learn something new about the world, others, and myself...all through this amazing woman's courage to take a chance on simply sharing all of herself for one, amazing, adventurous, incredible year... what a gift. You'll never look at Italy, India, and Indonesia, with all of it's bounty, glory, and gods, the same again. I'm forever grateful and HIGHLY recommend this book. Oh! And 1 year ago (after 2 years of dating) I got the courage to say "Yes!" to the man of my dreams. :)

Excelente libro

My reasons for reading "Eat, Pray, Love" were purely selfish. I had no need for inner enlightenment, (so I thought) or urge to live vicariously through another. I love the idea of 4 months in Italy, but had no desire to hear someone else's account of it, and while meeting some beautiful Brazilian man sounds appealing, it's just not in my cards. Nope, simply put... I just wanted to watch the movie. (Which means in "OCD Land" that I had to read the book first.) My hopes for EPL were a big fat goose egg. I am (admittedly) not that big of a fan of Non-fiction, but the more I read, the more I realized this book was not about 1 one woman's journey to find the things she felt she had lost, no... this book was a 12 month experience in what your head, and heart can handle if you make up your mind to confront them. Now, I can't really breakdown this book in the traditional sense (which is one of the reason's I choose to avoid novel's like this) but I can offer you a little insight into how it reads. Elizabeth Gilbert is witty. Amidst the paragraphs of self loathing, and her search for the perfect meditation mantra she tends to crack jokes at herself. This is a very good thing, otherwise it would basically be 400 pages of college level psychology classes, and Gandhi talk. Instead... think of this as a week long discovery channel mini-series on the inner workings of traditional and non-traditional prayer, add a dash of pizza obsession, a few (very awkward) banana references and viola, you have Gilbert's travel journal. What could have very easily been the most boring book on the planet was actually entertaining, and while yes... Gilbert tends to get a little wordy in places, (oh dear lord please answer MY prayer and make her move on) in the end I didn't seem to mind so much. The topics in which I was learning about were things I never (in a million years) would have guessed myself caring about, yet I found myself unable to stop reading about them, engrossed by the semblance of them all I guess you could say. In the end I would concur that my eyes have been opened, my head has been scolded, and my respect for yoga has grown exponentially. My final thoughts: This book is DEFINITELY not for everyone. If you are one of those people that demand a plot, and could careless for mundane details like; why guru's have 109 beads on their prayer necklaces, then this book will act like Ambien and lull you to sleep in minutes, but if you are a non-fiction fan, and don't mind learning a few new things, take a chance on it; you just might find some inner peace yourself. Happy Reading my fellow Kindle-ites and remember: "Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it."

The book, as memoir and story, represents a spiritual journey, from the sensual world of Italy, to a spiritual enclave in India, and then to the “paradise” of Bali, of a modern alienated woman, struggling to find at least some temporary balance in her life in this strange journey, which is somewhat surreal and dreamlike, as she progresses. The world, at a superficial level with its vain strivings, comes across as the strange masked ball she describes in Italy. The masks hold us in the grip of money, status and power relationships, while the strange sense of divinity and of something greater than all this pathetic pettiness seems to lurk beneath the masks. It involves her in a search for the sacred, and ultimately gets her entwined in another dance of love at the end, as she feels she has found the critical balance she needs to rejoin the masquerade and the superficiality of the world with a renewed sense of the sacred about her life, to keep the alienation and the sense of emptiness at bay. In the traditional world of the sacred, the release from superficiality into the emptiness and the void, and the futile wheel of suffering, is replaced, for her, by regaining a sense of meaning to life in union with the other, in the dance of love. This is the life of the new woman, who in the masquerade and the dance, is skirting desperation and emptiness. The tawdry superficiality of Bali, a construct of an artificial sense of paradise, has somehow helped her after a difficult journey from the hopelessness of divorce. She has finally left the old dance of sorrow, and found a new partner. It is a happy ending, with a lot of humor in the journey from Italy, to India, and then to Bali, but somehow, also, a little scary. Liz Gilbert is an exceptionally skilled and talented writer, and her book is well worth reading, of course, if you happen to be one of the “new women” of our liberated world, but also for men as well, to obtain a curiously lighthearted, and at once deep sense of our human world and life. This is clearly one of the best books I have ever read concerning “le condition humaine”, almost better than a painting.

I originally bought this book 1 1/2 years ago at the recommendation of a friend or coworker (I no longer remember who). It sat on my TBR (to be read) shelf until a few months ago when I decided that it was time to get it read. Having just finished it, I wish I could go back to that day in 2008 when it arrived in the mail from Amazon and read it right away. Then again, perhaps I wasn't ready to read it until now. If that last line sounds like New Age hooey to you, then you are not likely to enjoy this book. Ms. Gilbert's real-life adventure is divided into the three segments of her year-long adventure around the world. Part 1, Italy, was to me the least interesting part of the book. I enjoyed it okay while I was reading it, but it didn't inspire me to keep picking up the book or to read late into the night in bed like the other two parts did. In fact, I've already forgotten most of it. Part 1 was, to me, the surface stuff. Part 2, India, finds Liz living in an Ashram, spending hours every day meditating and scrubbing floors. She meets a guy there (not romantically) who she calls only "Richard from Texas." Richard is quite a few steps up on the spiritual ladder from where she is when she arrives, and he helps her get her head on straight, to see what really matters. Part 2 is her spiritual journey. To me, it was her transition from neuroses and "It's all about me." thinking to finding peace and spirituality and strengthening her relationship to God. In Part 3, Indonesia, Liz returns to Bali and seeks out an old Balinese medicine man (Ketut) who had read her palm in the past. Through him, she furthers her meditative and spiritual journeys. She also meets a female healer, Wayan, who becomes a dear friend. Both of these people figure hugely in her time in Bali and in her life. Both are very interesting characters, and it is quite fascinating to read about Balinese culture, especially in regard to Wayan. I have long had a habit of using tape tags to mark pages I read where a passage touched me, resonated with me in some way, or its writing was especially beautiful or profound. I have many such tags marking the pages of this book. I was quite impressed with Ms. Gilbert's writing. I can't always say I liked her while reading about her year of travel, but I can honestly say that I was, at times, moved, inspired and even awed by her ability to express her thoughts and feelings. Finally, it must be noted that she finds love in the final chapter of her journey, though she remarks that this man didn't save her--that she saved herself--and I was quite happy that it happened this way, because I've read too many books about supposedly strong women who didn't get it together until Prince Charming waltzed into her life and made it all possible. I've nothing against love (or men); I just think that we must each take ultimate responsibility for who we are and how we make our way in this life.

Ein must-read! Nicht nur einfach und verständlich geschrieben, sondern auch absolut unterhaltsam!

audio bookと一緒に購入して英語学習に活用しています。丸暗記ですが、スラスラ音読できるようになると達成感があります。(^^)

The first time I saw Eat, Pray, Love I didn't really understand the cover or what it was about. I was a young new mother and had no inclination or time to read anything too heavy or too involved because days might pass before I could pick up a book again. Still, I purchased the book after a girlfriends glowing review. I began reading, tired, overworked and in the throws of mommy hood I quickly became bored, irritated, skipped ahead and like many of the poor reviews left here - I just gave up and passed the book on to someone else. I had similar sentiments in that I was just a regular joe blow who would never have the time or the money to take a year and find myself. Find yourself? Who has time for that, and like other reviewers I judged Liz for being able to do such a thing. Everyone I spoke to that mentioned the book I would say, "I just couldn't get into it." To say I was jealous of Liz was an understatement. However, my jealousy was masked with judgement. When the movie came out I was quick to line up and be there on opening night. Why I wasn't sure, but I was curious if the movie would translate better for me. My sister and I attended the movie and I completely lost my sh#t in the movie theatre, crying and relating to that dark and most honest moment where Liz asks God for a sign and he tells her, "Go back to bed Liz." The movie turned my opinion around, I felt more like I could relate to Liz and being that a couple years had passed since I'd attempted the book my life had changed as well. Don't we all want a little more from life? Why should we settle? And why do we as women jump to judgement and shaming when another woman so brilliantly takes control of her life and sets out to find happiness within her instead of relying on someone else. When friends would mention the book again I was a bit of an a@#hole - I'd say, "Loved the movie, hated the book." When the opportunity for me to travel to Italy myself became my reality I jumped at the chance and watched the movie over and over. Still judging the book based on my 20 something self who gave up without really giving it a chance. Later that year I longed to continue travelling and when I decided to go on a book writing retreat where the facilitator gushed about Eat, Pray, Love I thought, "Maybe it's time to give Liz another shot." I downloaded it onto my kindle like device and ordered a hard copy. I dove in head first the night before my flight, having seen the movie almost weekly (I love it that much) I knew I had to have missed something on my first reading. I was not disappointed. I was so in love with the book I devoured every word over the course of 3 flights. I read quickly but I savoured the end for when I was on the beach in Carmel, California. Liz had it all and felt the emptiness that sometimes come with that. We get everything we want and then we realize, Am I really happy? This is not a book about a woman with "first world problems" whining her way through a pre-paid trip. This is a woman just like you and I, a woman who has it all and knows there is something more. A woman brave enough to say, "I don't know how to be by myself". A woman, like you and I who often jumps from one relationship to another without a breather because we fear being alone. I URGE you, no, I IMPLORE you to give this book a second chance at a later time in your life if you did not like the first reading. I was a bit of douche canoe telling people it wasn't as good as the movie. It's fantastic and can stand alone, no movie necessary. But please, before you leave a negative review, reconsider any title you read. I was in a bad place when I read it the first time and that can affect anything, (like when you are in a bad mood and you stay at a hotel, you're more likely to nitpick the little details - check trip advisor if you don't believe me). This is the kind of book that you appreciate more the older you become and the more life experience you have under your belt. Perhaps if you are the type of person who is content to live life according to plan and never stray, this might not be the book for you. If you feel that taking care of yourself and learning to love yourself is selfish - this may not be the book for you. BUT, if you are ready, willing and able to understand that the grass is not always greener on the other side, then get it, read it and love it as I did the second time around. Thanks to Liz for putting herself out there so boldly and for withstanding some harsh criticism for doing what most people would never dare to do. If you love this book, check out WILD by Cheryl Strayed as well. Another fantastic read in the same genre.

One of the best books about one's spiritual journey towards finding themselves. I read it at a time when i was going through something similar in my life and it really helped me. Don't get me wrong, the book never preaches anything, nor does it advocate a certain solution for all of our life's crisis. It only tells Liz' story and the things she had to go through to get the balance. I highly recommend this if you're looking for a non-fiction book.

Tutti dovrebbero leggerlo. Scritto benissimo e si legge d'un fiato. Il fatto che è la sua vera storia lo rende ancora più importante. Ho anche sottolineato molte parti come insegnamento.