books and neuroses, in brief

I finished Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert the other day on the way to work. Had it not been for recommendations first from the Badgers and then from breadandroses, I would probably have avoided the book out of sheer preemptive irritation and must-be-nice-itis over the very idea of someone getting paid to split a year among Italy, India, and Indonesia and writing a book about it. Sometime I'll get over resenting other people for 1) having wayyy more chutzpah than I do and 2) not getting smacked down for it. Also I'll fully eradicate the creepy sense that "devoting thought to discerning what I want" is a greased spiral slide straight to "releasing a monstrous evol id that will EAT THE WORLD." And my hair will NEVER be frizzy and I'll pack my lunch every single day and call my grandfather on Sunday afternoons and have perfect pitch and know every derelict in Center City by name and food preferences.

Anyway, the book is not one-eighth as twee as I would have feared, had I come across it without the recs. It's honest and articulate, and strikes a good balance between "I realize this will probably sound odd" and "look, I'm just going to relate my experience."

The book includes a quotation worthy of cross-stitch samplerdom, to wit: "There is no problem so terrible that it cannot be solved by a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer." Granted, the quotation comes up as something that doesn't work for the writer, but I find it reassuring to think that there are few personal problems which cannot be ameliorated by the application of those things. Genocide, not so much, but Vocational Angst, perhaps.

Last night I started reading Are You Somebody? The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman which is intriguing while also showing strong signs of being a suck-one's-will-to-live sort of book on a par with Angela's Ashes, of which I never read more than a few pages. So that may go back on the free book table.