bookshelves: best-books-my-list, summer-reading-list-2009
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Jessica
took the never-ending book quiz.
| questions answered: | 1619 |
| correct: | 1028 (63.5%) |
| skipped: | 58 |
| best streak: | 15 |
| questions added: | 0 |
bookshelves: currently-reading
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bookshelves: summer-reading-list-2009
I liked this book, but really, nothing more than that.
While its a interesting story, I found it too remote for my tastes, both the boys and their obsession with the Lisbon girls felt remote and removed and the girls themselves were remote and removed. The whole book itself felt a little like a prelude to a suicide. A time and space where things become faded and less vibrant and even love and obsession lose their edge.
I can defiantely understand why so many people liked it, its beautifully written, and painfully understated, and takes on a powerful subject matter, but still, I felt I was left a little cold by the experieince. ]]>
Noelle wrote: "Oh one of my top favorites is Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice and I loved Leisel Meminger from The Book Thief, she really got to me."
I'm with you, Noelle, Elizabeth Bennet is one of my all time faves. I also really love Dolores Claiborne ]]>
bookshelves: best-books-my-list, summer-reading-list-2009
I've resisted this book for the longest time. I've seen it in bookstores and spied it on other people's Must Read lists, but always avoided it. I only have the vaguest notion of why I steered clear of this book. Maybe I was turned off by the "wonky" spirituality the book gave off. I finally gave in when I saw this book in my local Costo. I think this book finally called to me in a time in my life when I was questioning a lot of my long held, never inspected dogmas which have molded my life.
Well, the long and the short of it, I really enjoyed this book. Elizabeth Gilbert has a beautiful, natural, compelling voice that draws the reader in immediately. It feels less like a read and more like a long conversation with a close but infrequently seen friend. While Glibert's life and journeys can hardly be described as ordinary, her search for peace, for happiness and for balance struck me as universal. The reader travels with Gilbert through her very human choices and mistakes and learns with Gilbert that the path to peace is not through artificially pious perfection, but through these very human life choices and errors.
About halfway through the book Gilbert tells the reader something an old woman told her: "There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who is in charge? Everything else is somehow managable." It is this statement that Gilbert explores in each county and eventually learns to come to peaceful terms with.
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bookshelves: currently-reading, summer-reading-list-2009
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