Sara Phillips

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Sara Phillips rated a book it was amazing

Eat, Pray, Love

by Elizabeth Gilbert (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in October 2006

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Sara Phillips said: " I have been listening to a book on CD, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Journey through Italy, India, and Indonesia, by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I am loving it! I don't always find/make as much time to read as I'd like, so books on cd are sometimes a good I have been listening to a book on CD, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Journey through Italy, India, and Indonesia, by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I am loving it! I don't always find/make as much time to read as I'd like, so books on cd are sometimes a good alternative to get a literary fix (although I do miss NPR a little bit, when I keep the cd in all the time!). It's taking me kind of a while to get through the whole thing, because this particular book is an 11 cd set, and I really only listen when I drive to work, yoga, errands, home, etc, and my daily orbit is fairly small. I am kind of glad, though, that this book is taking me a while to get through because it is such a complete pleasure to listen to.

It's the true story of the author, who, in her early thirties (she's 36 at the time of the publishing), had a young-life crisis of sorts and realized that she didn't want to be married, didn't want the house she had just bought, didn't want to have a baby (she and her husband had been trying to get pregnant), didn't want the whole life she thought she had wanted -- had always been told she should want. She had a spiritual awakening, and eventually (soon after), divorced her husband, and was fortunate enough to get an advance from a publisher that allowed her to spend four months each in Italy, then India, and finally Bali, Indonesia, with the end product of all that travel being this book -- Eat Pray Love.

Gilbert is totally delightful, funny, and accessible, and her story-telling is intimate and riveting. One has the sense that the reader is her friend, and to be blessed with the details of her journeys -- emotional, spiritual, and physical -- is truly a gift. I have had rare moments of irritation with her -- for using an annoying cliche (like "being stuck on the NJ Turnpike in rush hour traffic at Christmas" to express frustration) or sounding a bit too much like she is writing for the Glamour-reading crowd (ok... I read Glamour ) or you know, just being jealous of her privilege to live this kind of life, but that hasn't stopped me from really loving the book and her story overall. Her self and spiritual explorations, and her yoga (which plays the biggest role, logically, in India), speak to (as in literally converse) my own efforts in these regards, so it's all been good food for thought for me. And speaking of food -- Oh my God, the descriptions of the meals in Italy!!! Though I wish I could eat them myself, there is a certain satiety that comes just from hearing her describe them.

I do plan to actually own this book in hard copy (the cd set is borrowed from the library), but I have to say that listening to Elizabeth Gilbert read her own story has been a pleasure of its own. She has a very ear-pleasing voice -- sort of like a sultrier Dar Williams -- and it's great to hear the inflections and emphases that she intended in her own writing, as well as some of the Italian in the Italy section, and her reproductions of the accents of the people from all over the world that she met in her travels (she does everything from a Texas accent to an Indian one to Irish to Balinese to surfer dude, and yes, even more).

I have always been sensitive to good storytelling... even as a kid, I would feel different after spending time reading -- like I'd been somewhere else, transported out of myself into this other experience. No matter how I felt before reading, my emotional body would be changed after the reading. That's how I feel listening to Eat Pray Love - Gilbert has taken me on her journeys, and I feel better for it. ...more "

Jul 10, 2008 06:51PM · see review

Sara Phillips is currently reading

Little House on the Prairie (Little House, #3)

by Laura Ingalls Wilder

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Jul 10, 2008 06:30PM

Sara’s Quotes

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.”
― Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water

tags: environment, nature, wilderness

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