eat pray love.

This book grabbed me right at the beginning. I love the author's style of writing. It's so readable, like someone conversationally telling you a story. And she is funny and sarcastic {which I like}. It is the true story of a woman {Elizabeth Gilbert, the author} whose troubled marriage ends. She decides to take a year to travel, spending 4 months in Italy, 4 months in India, and 4 months in Indonesia. Her hope is to find pleasure, prayer, and ultimately balance & healing. I absolutely loved the Italy section of the book. Her descriptions of Italy {where she went to find pleasure, obviously!} made me want to go there soooo badly. The food! The scenery! The characters! I loved it. The India section I was not a big fan of. I still enjoyed reading it because I like her writing so much, but I just have different views on God, religion, the universe, heaven & hell, etc. The Indonesia section was my least favorite. Still loved the writing, just didn't love a lot of the content. What was consistently good throughout the book was the characters. EG has a way of describing people that makes you feel like you could know them. The whole theme of the book really intrigued me {because it has always rung very true with me}: We are the creators of our own happiness. I love this quote from the book:

{elizabeth quoting one of her gurus}

"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments."

I enjoyed it, but I don't know if I would recommend it because of some strong language and sexual content. If you're going to read it, come borrow my copy. Most of the naughty words are crossed out and the inappropriate sections covered up by sticky notes :)

Have you read it? What did you think?