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March 18, 2008
Books I Read While Falling Apart
New Total: 142
Eat, Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
by Elizabeth Gilbert
I was prepared to hate this book, having heard so many 20-something girls gush over its deep insight into love and loss and recovery. In fact, it sat on my bookshelf untouched for months before I slipped it into my carry-on on the way to Key West. Dear reader, I devoured it--seeing myself as that put-upon character, and sobbed my way through the India third (while sitting on the beach, no less), and had it wrapped up by the time I got back on the flight home two days later--feeling like the solution to my problems would be to stay in an Ashram for four months and then pick up a Brazilian lover in Indonesia. If it worked for her, I thought I had a fighting chance.
Self Storage: A Novel
by Gayle Brandeis
This book was the result of National Novel Writing Month, which I have tried to participate in (but never gotten past the second week of a horrid chick-lit autobiography). The author, in a nutshell "manages to weave Walt Whitman, 9/11, and secondhand goods into a provocative story about the nature of one's self and the intrinsically human need to find meaning in life." Although there were parts of me that totally identified with the ambivalent "going through the motions" main character, I thought that the book overall was just okay. Good for a beach read (assuming you like burqa'ed Afgani refugee stories), but not something that took me out of myself--which was what I was looking for.
The Testament of Gideon Mack
by James Robertson
I finished this "cleverly framed autobiography of a Scottish minister who confronts the devil" at 2 a.m. last night. Now here was a book that took me out of myself...and I loved every page of courtship, adultery, faith and faithlessness, near death experiences, and talks with Satan. It's a shame that more people didn't read this book, since I am dying to find out what other readers thought.
