{"id":2696,"date":"2010-04-16T22:58:49","date_gmt":"2010-04-17T03:58:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/womantalk.wordpress.com\/?p=2696"},"modified":"2010-04-16T22:58:49","modified_gmt":"2010-04-17T03:58:49","slug":"giving-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/?p=2696","title":{"rendered":"Giving In"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s not the best book I’ve read in the last year – but aside from the occasional eyeball rolling, I did really enjoy Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Eat, Pray, Love<\/em>. I think I resisted reading it, despite all the hype (it seems to be a book club favorite – and people were always surprised I hadn’t read it), because of the word “pray” in the title. I sometimes get nervous that I’m unwittingly getting sucked into an evangelical tirade – a niggling worry that is not unwarranted here in superchurch land, where Rick Warren (of purpose-driven life fame) gives his Easter sermon in Angel Stadium.<\/p>\n

Did you understand that correctly? The local popular pastor gives his Easter sermon in a baseball stadium that seats 45,000 people.<\/p>\n

!!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Gilbert is an accomplished writer, so you’re on safe footing here. Her only foible (or feat) is her utter self-disclosure. She gives it all away. After a devastating divorce (having been through a miserable myself, her break-down was hard to read about), she takes off to travel the world, dividing a year neatly between three countries: Italy, India, and Indonesia and their three corresponding activities: eating, praying, and loving. You’ll hear every detail, so if working through a massive mid-life crisis, eating massive amounts of pasta, praying for massive amounts of hours in caves, and sex galore do not interest you – well, don’t read the book.<\/p>\n

A definite chick lit book, I was vastly entertained by my brother’s notes throughout the book.<\/p>\n

I first discovered his notes when somebody on paperbackswap.com requested the book from me. Yes, in my obstinacy, a copy of this book had even come into my very home, but I was refusing to read it – even flip through its pages – and I’d posted it on my paperback.com account. But when somebody requested the book, I took a minute to flip through and realized I was going to have to spend some time erasing my brother’s penciled notes…<\/p>\n

My brother’s notes? Well, by the time I’d busted up laughing over a few of the scrawled notes (“reminds me of high school journal entries”; “doubt it, sheesh”; “sounds so AA!”; “Leave no wreckage”) I’d decided that I should read the book – if only to read it through my brother’s eyes. He had, after all, bothered to sketch pictures of drawings described, made a half dozen guesses at what the middle initial “M” stood for, and more. He spends some time too wondering if he should even be reading it…<\/p>\n

So, I wrote the woman who had requested the book and told her it would be another week before I could mail the book. She was understanding.<\/p>\n

But by the time I’d finished the book, I didn’t have the heart to erase anything. My mom would LOVE to read this book. My mother-in-law would probably love it too.<\/p>\n

In the end, I ordered another copy of Eat, Pray, Love<\/em> from another paperbackswap member and had it shipped to the woman who’d been waiting for my copy.<\/p>\n

I’m keeping my copy.<\/p>\n

Anybody not read it yet?<\/p>\n

You can borrow my annotated copy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not the best book I’ve read in the last year – but aside from the occasional eyeball rolling, I did really enjoy Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Eat, Pray, Love. I think I resisted reading it, despite all the hype (it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.womantalk.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}