Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Blurb

It’s 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She’s in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they’re trying for a baby – and she doesn’t want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance. So she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds, an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor, and Bali where a toothless medicine man of indeterminate age offers her a new path to peace: simply sit still and smile. And slowly happiness begins to creep up on her.

My Perspective

Eat, Pray, Love follows Elizabeth Gilbert as she takes a year off travelling to Italy, India and Indonesia in her search for self discovery.

I didn’t realise this was actually a non fiction memoir. To be honest I thought she was a pretty lucky individual to have the means to be able to do what she did.

I mostly liked Elizabeth however I did find her also slightly annoying. I can’t put my finger on why, just that she aggravated me a bit.

The book is in three sections: Eat (Italy), Pray (India), Love (Indonesia). I enjoyed reading the first section (Eat – Italy) as it sets the story and involves lots of yummy food! I wasn’t such a fan of the second section (Pray – India) as I found that it was more like a Yoga textbook than her actual experience with Yoga. Obviously you have to have some explanation so that the reader understands however I found it was too much, which means I was a bit bored throughout that section. If I wanted to understand Yoga that much then I’d research it properly rather than reading someone’s non fiction memoir. I mostly enjoyed the third section (Love – Indonesia) however I found it went from being super spiritual to an almost teenage romance. I had a bit of a hard time reconciling the two.

Overall though it was an interesting read and certainly has the potential to make you reflect on your own life. I would probably recommend it.

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Summers In Supino: Becoming Italian by Maria Coletta McLean

Blurb

An Italian Canadian woman recounts her annual summer trips with her husband to her ancestral village of Supino, Italy, in this heartwarming hybrid of travel guide and memoir. Written with humor and heart, it describes her process of adjusting to life in her father’s hometown, as well as the eccentricities of its people. Supino’s colorful landscapes and citizens make for vivid stories, from pizzerias in sheep pastures and fish restaurants hidden in the woods to village-wide celebrations of figs, watermelon, azaleas, and artichokes. The book goes on to explain how with every trip, the budding Italian gains a deeper understanding of her connection to Supino and comes to more fully embrace her cultural heritage. Filled with brilliant stories about a fascinating land, this engaging narrative explores notions of identity and the restorative power of community.

My Perspective

This is the first book I read from my post Credit Where Credit’s Due. I read about Summers In Supino: Becoming Italian by Maria Coletta McLean from Ionia at Readful Things Blog. You can read her thoughts on the book here.

Summers In Supino: Becoming Italian is a true story of Maria’s memories of her summers in Supino, Italy from when she and her husband bought a house there.

The story was written in an unusual format. It was in chronological order however apart from that it kind of was just written as a continuous memory. Some parts was almost summarised and other parts were intrinsically detailed. Sometimes it flowed beautifully and other times it was jolted. The style didn’t bother me majorly however I did find that sometimes I was taken out of the story because of it.

Supino sounds like a truly fascinating place and I was actually reading this while we traveled through Italy on our European adventure. I was sad that it was not near where we were visiting because I would have liked to have visited and seen what I read about.

I loved reading about the Italian way of life. The comparisons between the Supinese culture and the North American culture were so different and it was sad to see how the North American culture started influencing the area and changing it.

I loved reading about the food too – it all sounded so delicious!

The humour was subtle and I really enjoyed it. It was also quite a sad book.

I enjoyed reading this book and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys memoirs and reading about other cultures.