2011 - Book #5

Eat, Pray, Love

Loved Loved Loved LOVED it! As a member of the LDS church, I was a little hesitant about some of the religious parts in it before I started it, but the whole thing turned out to be amazing. I think Christians sometimes think that they're the only ones "in on the secret" about prayer and God, but that's so not true. Just because someone believes differently than you doesn't mean that they don't have a solid, real relationship with their Heavenly Father, just like you do (and in some, if not a lot, of cases, a stronger one).
For those of you who don't know anything about this book, it's about a woman who goes through a terrible divorce and goes on a year long "journey" to heal. She starts off with 4 months in Italy and eats away a lot of her pain while learning Italian. Then goes over to India for another 4 months where she spends the whole time in a ashram praying and meditating. I want to learn how to mediate. Praying is when you speak to God, and meditation is where you listen for his answer.  I think that's a big part of the whole religious experience (whatever your faith may be). She has a few experiences with her meditation that I think I can skip in my life, but it was really cool to read about.  Then she hops over to Indonesia (Bali) for the last 4 months of her journey to study with an ancient medicine man and she learns how to love again (...she doesn't fall in love with the medicine man, ps.).
She is an amazing author and draws in so much humor with her writing.  The whole thing is in first-person, which I love. I felt like I was on the trip with her so many times, and I think that is a real advantage that this first-person narrator has - you feel like the narrator is speaking directly to you, the reader, as opposed to a third-person narrator who is typically telling the story to a third-person audience. Man, don't make me get out my book on Narration, it's a pain in the butt to find stuff in a book when you can't remember exactly where it is. Let's just suffice it to say that she's a good narrator. The end on Narration.
I give this book a 100% positive review. AND, the whole time I was reading it, I was thinking to myself, "huh...this seems more like the type of novel that "Under the Tuscan Sun" should have been based on..." The tone of this novel was very similar to that movie. As opposed to the actual novel Under the Tuscan Sun, which is very very different.
See my reviews on this here and here.
AND, my next movie that will be on my list is "Eat, Pray, Love" with Julia Roberts...let's just hope that she nails the character of Liz!!! I've had enough disappointments with girls falling short of their Elizabeth characters:

Both
Just
Plain
Awful
(in my opinion)













As opposed to:

which was a.m.a.z.i.n.g. Nothing can or will ever top this version. I love Colin Firth. Have you seen "The King's Speech"???? They came out with a PG-13 version for the theaters, so you have no excuse!