Cheap Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Book) (Elizabeth Gilbert) Price

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

A memoir about how to live a life
One of the best memoirs I've read in awhile. Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love tells us how she learned to live life after deep sorrow. She didn't just want to survive a divorce, but instead live life with more spirituality and joy. She manages to do just that and teaches readers something about finding pleasure and grace along the way. In prose that is funny, thoughtful, and poetic, Gilbert learns to speak Italian and find the best food anywhere in Italy; chant in an ashram when her knees have gone numb; and buy a home for a friend on an island where land is hard to come by. <
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>Read this memoir slowly. Her breezy prose is deceptive. You'll want to savor her descriptions of the food she eats and the places she visits, but you'll also want to consider the nuances of change in her experiences and perspectives. Then pass the book on, or buy a copy for a friend.

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UMMM, NOT SO MUCH. In fact, very, very very little, and that's being generous.
WHAT??? This author is incredibly selfish and I hate to sound mean, but she's pretty unevolved. She chose to leave her husband to travel the world (like college kids choose do to, dump their boyfriends to travel to Mexico for Spring Break. Why didn't she think ahead, think of her needs and wants and future desires BEFORE she got married. Silly girl) and then writes a very, very long book trying to get people to buy her book, to feel sorry for her (because she kept describing how upset her husband was and how "nasty" her divorce was. This was entirely her own doing, how could I possibly feel sorry for her??) and then find balance in our lives. This book is slated as a book to show people a "happier, better" way to live, by travelling. I'm ALL for travelling, believe me, but the author was paid to travel for the year by Penguin Books, her publisher. Gilbert wants us to travel the world to find peace and balance in our lives but who can do that? She was able to do so because her publisher paid for everything...She seemed very unevolved because she admitted that her depression came from the way she behaved in relationships and how men took advantage of her generosity, but, instead of learning from her mistakes in the way she treated men each and every chance she had, she went down the same path each time of pampering them like a mother would. She never learned her lesson but then makes a lot of money to write about it in her book, wanting us to feel sorry for her. Impossible to do so when her only problem in life is men and never learning from her mistakes. Honestly. Give me REAL problems do deal with and then I can have sympathy for her. I also swear she made up the whole "Richard from Texas" sections, what kind of nickname is "Groceries??" Please, it all sounded so highly contrived and fake. I cannot say enough about how self-centered, selfish and unevolved this woman is, so writing a book telling the readers a great way to find balance and love in this world is just such a slap in the face to us. Let me help you ou by summarizing this book: eat good food and not care about the calories. If you need help in life and are confused, meditate and pray. Love people in the correct way, not in the overly-generous way. There, that's the whole book. Save your money and buy a real book from a person with real troubles and real insight into life. She needs to become much more evolved in life and start thinking about real problems besides how she should act in relationships so she won't get depressed and NOT write books making us waste our hard-earned money on such trash. Get a real life Gilbert!! <
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>PS-I was tortured by listening to the unabridged audiobook. This Gilbert woman read the book aloud and read the conversations she had with the non-Americans in very non-American accents. It seemed extremely patronizing to me. She read their sentences in their broken English instead of correcting their grammar. I'm all for authenticity but the way I heard the words come out of her mouth seemed highly patronizing of these people. She's lucky enough to have found people in Italy, India and Bali to speak English with her but instead of making these highly intelligent people sound intelligent, she portrayed them as imperfect English speakers. She was almost mocking them. I couldn't believe the audacity of Gilbert to characterize her so-called best international friends by making them sound like bad English speakers. It almost sounded as if she did this in order to make herself sound smarter than they. Uggghhh. <
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>PSS - She spoke about how she stopped taking her anti-depressants in Italy-cold turkey. From what I know this is a highly dangerous practice. Weening off of anti-depressants should be supervised by a doctor and controlled by the doctor, not just stopped as Gilbert did. She made it sound like she gave up chewing her sugary gum or something. If you are in this position, DO NOT do what Gilbert did. I can't believe she didn't offer advisory warnings in her book to her readers. I hope nobody just stopped taking their tablets just as she did. Very wreckless and irresponsible of her. <
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>OK, forgive me for rambling. It's New Year's Day and difficult for me to collect my thoughts. I just can't wait to sell my copy and salvage at least some of my wasted money! LOL!

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An enjoyable book
Eat, Pray, Love is one of those books that I really enjoyed reading. The author, Gilbert comes across as an easygoing and a friendly person. In fact she goes to the extent of declaring that she could make friends with a dead man or for that matter even talk to walls. When I started reading the book I got the impression that the writer was sitting next to me and narrating her experiences in Italy, India and Indonesia. As an interesting aside, notice that all three countries start with the alphabet "I" and each country has a different dominant religion. However Gilbert's journey through these three countries is not about a religious quest. She undertakes this journey to find herself. Eat, Pray, Love is conveniently organized into three sections - you guessed it right - on Italy, India and Indonesia respectively. While in Italy Gilbert seems to be in a buoyant mood; she learns Italian and indulges herself in all the culinary delights that Italy has to offer (pastas, gelatos, cappuccinos etc). Not surprisingly, this section of the book takes on a light-hearted mood reflecting the author's state of mind. To focus on the spiritual side of her personality, she travels to India where she spends four months in an ashram close to Bombay. No more pastas and gelatos here, just wholesome vegetarian food. This is also an introspective phase in Ms Gilbert's journey of self-discovery. She spends a considerable amount of time meditating and doing some intense soul-searching. In Indonesia she is both a bit of a monk and a carefree soul. While I cannot say that the book inspired me to do something out of the ordinary (hence the 4 star rating), I still think that the book is a breezy read and Gilbert does a fantastic job telling her story in plain and conversational English. She has a keen sense of humor, which at times is self-deprecating. Last but not the least, she is candid and honest when it comes to talking about her relationships, be it her painful divorce or her disastrous affair on the rebound or for that matter, taking a Brazilian lover in Indonesia. All in all an enjoyable read.