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 enlarge | Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: Viking
Category: EBooks
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $5.20
You Save: $9.80 (65%)
Rating:  1737 reviews
Sales Rank: 65
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.4
ASIN: B000PDYVVG
Publication Date: April 11, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Getting in Touch November 23, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I picked up Eat, Pray and Love several times in the bookshops since it was published in 2006. I put it down. Several friends asked me: have you read the book? I hadn't. Finally, at the bookshop a few weeks ago a friend asked, you haven't read it? Let me get it for you. OK, I said. I finished reading it a few days ago. It reminded me Sarah McDonald's Holy Cow. Written in a breezy style, I felt it lacked depth. However, I was empathetic with the Gilbert's need to do what she as doing and needed to heal. The strengh of the book is that Gilbert does carry out her dreams and helps herself. Many women I know have this need, but not the courage to cary it out. For those I think the books is inspirational. It talks of following your heart and geting in touch wiht your heart.
 Reading this book was just a waste of time and money! November 23, 2008
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
I really expected a lot more from this author as her book was advertised all over and became popular. I thought it can teach me something I don't know. But the whole thing was about this woman's shallow thoughts and feelings here and there and her boring journey with her exaggerating some unimportant happenings in her life and making an annoying cliche out of them. I forced myself to finish this book and could easily throw it in the garbage afterwards. I don't recommend it to anyone.
 Full circle November 20, 2008
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is brilliantly written in that it captures the emotion of the author giving the book substance. The narrative from beginning to end is clear. This is a book about 'transition', and none the less 'transformation', and solitude in the arm's of non medication, meditation. We see Elizabeth Gilbert transform from none the less a convoluted neurotic woman disturbed by a life awakening, a relationship break-up, to a very calm and peaceful soul by the end of the book. This book goes from low to high. Highly recommended.
An Insult to Thinking Women Everywhere November 20, 2008
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
Sadly, the fact that this book is by a woman mostly aimed at women is embarrassing. This book was planned by the publisher and by the author; it was no true journey of the soul but more like a carefully crafted publicity angled journey.
Gilbert has a problem with the Bible, but easily accepts the doctrines (teachings) of her Guru, the Balinese medicine man, and others, including written Hindu scripture like the Upanishads. The only doctrine Gilbert has any problems with is that which denies that there are many ways to God or teaches that there is only one way to God. This is what she is talking about.
Let us consider where you end up if you think doctrine doesn't matter. It can take you to a place where there are no distinctions between anything because there are no authoritative boundaries between what is good or evil, or what is true or false. Everything is determined subjectively. This is exemplified in the medicine man in Bali, Ketut, who thinks all religions are "same-same," and heaven and hell are ultimately the same, as well. In fact, he says that hell is love. This is even startling for Gilbert, although she believes everyone is divine. So if that is true, and if there is a hell, then it would be full of divine beings as well. No distinction between good and evil means that good and evil don't ultimately matter.
Gilbert gives the idea that everything is spiritual as you long as you "feel" it. This book exalts that which is shallow and self-absorbed, not what is truly spiritual.
Love Hate Relationship November 17, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I was loaned this book from a neighbor who also told me that the author was a selfish, self absorbed sorry excuse for a woman...but she also added it is very interesting because of her travels...Thus began the love hate relationship for this book...
The authors style is witty but sometimes on the verge of droning. You want to read more about the mozzarella but then you endure through the self pity. The descriptions of Rome are enchanting as are the thoughts of leaving your life to simply learn a new language and indulge in a romantic culture, but then thoughts of ex-boyfriends, ex-husbands ,depression and then the wakeup call of "oh yeah I actually have a real life and it would be practically impossible strike that IMPOSSIBLE to actually be able to take 4 months and move to some place of my wishes just because I can't take it anymore"....
O.K. enough of the self pity in the book I think you get that already...I give it four stars simply because it allowed me to escape to that place that would be fun and maybe I have dreamt of, but I know I'll never do, nor want to do. She does explore those selfish ambition thoughts that creep into the mind of any young woman under the pressures of modern day society and she actually justifies them - well at least in her own mind she does. The book contains delightful insights and tips into cultures I will only dream of visiting and in the end I think she makes the reader grateful for your own normal or maybe not so normal life...At least maybe more normal than hers anyway. It would be interesting to see if her acquired self-peace actually sustains through a relationship on four different continents...somehow I wouldn't be surprised to find out in the end of her life or at least her current relationship she finds herself back on the bathroom floor sobbing.
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