The best part about reading Eat Pray Love in 2012 is getting to tell people you’re doing it: Now that the book has been out for nearly a decade, most people with even a passing interest have already picked it up, and so I was treated to all manner of reactions—ranging from the intrigued to downright disgusted—when I shared with various friends that I was finally reading this runaway bestseller.
As with Never Let Me Go, EPL moved to the top of my pile once HBO started playing the movie, although I’m not entirely sure why I hadn’t gotten around to it sooner. Sure, the book gives off a generally annoying self-help vibe—I left The Strand’s $1 price sticker on the front of mine all week, lest anyone think I’d paid full price for the thing—but there was a time when you couldn’t sit through a subway ride without seeing at least one person reading it. That alone is usually enough to pique my interest (see: Twilight, The Hunger Games, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 50 Shades of Grey.)
More importantly, EPL’s concept is undeniably appealing: Who wouldn’t want to Eat, Pray, Love their life? Sure, maybe I’d forego the crippling depression that motivates Elizabeth Gilbert to start her journey, but I’m definitely on board for the rest of it: taking a year off to relax/eat in Italy, relax/pray in India and relax/relax in Indonesia. I’d perhaps alternate the order, or the goals (my memoir would be called Eat, Eat, Eat) but the overall idea—a fully financed year of self-discovery in three unique cultures—is awesome. In fact, The Great American Bookstore Tour is sort of my own mini-EPL (the truncated domestic version available to those of us who didn’t get six-figure advances on our travel memoirs.)
Continue reading “Naples-gazing”
couldreads 