I just started reading Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" for my book group. I'll let you read NPR's write up of it as they do a much better job at describing it than I ever could.
I'm only about 60 pages into it, and I must say that this section about Italy makes me insanely hungry for pasta, cheese, bread, wine, basil, tomatoes, cream puffs, and pizza. Here are a couple of examples of why...
"I eat my lunch in a quiet trattoria here, and I linger over my food and wine for many hours because nobody in Trastevere is ever going to stop you from lingering over your meal if that's what you would like to do. I order an assortment of bruschette, some spaghetti cacio e pepe (that simple Roman specialty of pasta served with cheese and pepper) and then a small roast chicken, which I end up sharing with the stray dog who has been watching me eat my lunch the way only a stray dog can."
And then then this a few pages later...
"There's not a menu. they have only two varieties of pizza here - regular and extra cheese. None of this new age souther California olives-and-sun-dried-tomato wannabe pizza twaddle. The dough, it takes me half my meal to figure out, tastes more like Indian nan than like any pizza dough I ever tried. It's soft and chewy and yielding, but incredibly thin....Thin, doughy, strong, gummy, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise. On top, there is a sweet tomato sauce that foams up all bubbly and creamy when it melts the fresh buffalo mozzarella, and the one sprig of basil in the middle of the whole deal somehow infuses the entire pizza with herbal radiance, much the same way one shimmering movie star in the middle of a party brings a contact high of glamour to everyone around her....You try to take a bite off your slice and the gummy crust folds, and the hot cheese runs away like topsoil in a landslide, makes a mess of you and your surroundings, but just deal with it"
I'm afraid that if the section on spiritually in India is as enticing as the eating party of the story in Italy, I may be shaving my head and wearing an orange robe very soon.
I'll be sure to post photos if that happens!
YUMMY. I love true Italian food; it was the culinary highlight of Europe.
Posted by: Margaret | October 06, 2007 at 09:03 PM
I bought this book at Costco in a what-the-heck mood. Elizabeth Gilbert's writing is fluid and fun, not unlike blog writing. It actually reads like a travel and personal blog with all the confessions, angst, non sequitors, thoughts that bled into the next "bead"/chapter and an incredible number of free form paragraphs. The amount of parenthetical notes alone blew my mind. The editors must have been chomping at the bit.
I'm enjoying it, don't get me wrong. And, I find the acceptance of such a voice encouraging. Perhaps we'll see Heather Armstrong/dooce, Eden Marriot Kennedy/Fussy and Alice Bradley/finslippy published in due time. Their storytelling is just as compelling, witty and wise.
Posted by: GraceD | October 06, 2007 at 09:43 PM
I read this book on my cruise last summer. Actually, I devoured it. then came home and read it immediately again. More slowly, cherishing it.
This book came into my life at a point when I needed to read it, having myself spent way too many nights crying on the bathroom floor. Her sense of adventure and joy was a gift.
Posted by: debra | October 07, 2007 at 10:36 AM
Just an invitation to add your blog to Writing Healthy, a new top list focusing on motivation, healthy thoughts, and diet tips from bloggers across the web working on weight loss
http://writinghealthy.gotop100.com/index.php
Posted by: R.E. | October 10, 2007 at 10:16 PM
I just started reading this after friends and family were recommending it.
Posted by: MotherPie | October 12, 2007 at 08:40 AM