Summary: As the subtitle says, the book exposes “one woman’s search for everything” during a year spent travelling. After a painful divorce, a failed relationship, and a prolonged battle with depression, Liz has decided to take her life into her own hands and, for once, try to find her own self, as a person rather than a part of a relationship. She went to Italy to pursue pleasure, to India to find God, and to Indonesia to find a balance between worldly pleasures and the divine. This is her story, raw and honest, detailing her experiences during her journey.

I was initially reluctant to pick this book up because of the huge hype around it, and also because I feared the tone might be too dry (or too self-help-ish, if there is such thing). I was happy to discover I couldn’t have been more wrong: the book is in turns funny, heart wrenching, philosophical and informative. A pleasure for me to read, especially as it touched some of the topics I’m interested in (meditation being one of them).

There are people who call Liz too narcissistic, and are disappointed that this book revolves around her. I disagree with that, especially since this is a memoir, so it’s only natural for it to relay the experiences of its author, right? I do not know how to best describe Liz (since she is a real person, and as such hard to contain into just a few words), but I didn’t think her narcissistic at all. Quite the contrary, I ended up liking her quite a bit (and was very amused by the fact that I, as many other reviewers, refer to her as “Liz” instead of “Elizabeth”, or “Ms. Gilbert”, because we think of her as a close friend after all the personal things she shared with us).

Perhaps the reason that I liked this book (and Liz) so much is that I very much related to some of her experiences. For example (the part that touched me the most) the moment when she writes an email to David, letting him know that she thinks their relationship is over for good. She knows that this is the best thing for them both, and yet deep down there’s a part of her hoping that there’s still a chance their relationship will work, that he’ll reply with “COME BACK! DON’T GO! I’LL CHANGE!”. A moment so charged with emotion, and so raw. And oh, how I relate to that (actually, don’t we all?).

You know, if I had to choose a favorite country between the three I would be sort of hard pressed to do so. Italy, for example, is mostly a hymn to enjoying good food. As a sidenote, this is the very reason why I first noticed this book, the fact that it had “eat” in the title, a thing that I have found quite original in this age of dieting and size 0 models. I happen to live a lifelong love story with food and, while I am not fond of the idea of the weight gain it implies, I very much resonate with the idea of simply enjoying the small pleasures in life (good food being one of them). India is the very opposite of Italy: the needs of the body fall to the second place, the spiritual needs taking over. This is the place where many interesting ideas relating to God are enumerated, and I have found a plethora of new things to muse on, so needless to say I loved this part :) And Bali (Indonesia), being the most balanced of the two, fascinated me through the cultural differences. The fact that most of the children (or was it all of them?) are named according to their birth order (First, Second, Third, Fourth, and then it starts all over again, the fifth child is named First, and so on). There are a few questions everyone asks anyone (“Where are you going?“, “Where are you coming from?” and “Are you married?“, this last having as an only tactful answer “Not yet.“).

My favorite part of Bali though was their relationship with the smiles. Children are taught from very young ages to always meet difficulty with a smile on their face. Not only that, but there is a special kind of Balinese meditation, and that too involves lots of smiling:

“Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. [...] Too serious, you make you sick. You can calling the good energy with a smile.”

Here are a few more quotes:

I remember asking myself one night, while I was curled up in the same old corner of my same old couch in tears yet again over the same old repetition of sorrowful thoughts, “Is there anything about this scene you can change, Liz?” And all I could think to do was stand up, while still sobbing, and try to balance on one foot in the middle of my living room. Just to prove that — while I couldn’t stop the tears or change my dismal interior dialogue — I was not yet totally out of control: at least I could cry hysterically while balanced on one foot.

—-

“In the end, what I have come to believe about God is simple. It’s like this–I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, “What kind of dog is that?” I would always give the same answer: “She’s a brown dog.” Similarly, when the question is raised, “What kind of God do you believe in?” my answer is easy: “I believe in a magnificent God.”

—-

Ham-sa.
In Sanskrit it means “I am that”.
[...]As long as we live, every time we breathe in or out, we are repeating this mantra. I am That. I am Divine, I am with God, I am an expression of God, I am not separate, I am not alone, I am not this limited illusion of an individual.

—-

“God dwells within you, as you.”
[...] God dwells within you as you yourself, exactly the way you are. God isn’t interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves. We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality. This is a classic example of what they call in the East “wrong-thinking.” [...] To know God, you need only to renounce one thing — your sense of division from God.

I did say I have found some interesting notions about God in this book, haven’t I? Not to mention the part where Liz is told by the Balinese medicine man that Hell is love, since the Universe is circular and no matter whether you go up or down you end up in the same place. How revolutionary/challenging is that? I am not saying I agree (what do I know about God/Heaven/Hell anyway), but I find it an idea worth thinking about nevertheless.

Although I liked this book to bits, there is nevertheless one qualm I’ve had with it, namely that sometimes while reading I had the same feeling as the one described in this article:

Eat, Pray, Love is not the first book of its kind, but it is a perfect example of the genre of priv-lit: literature or media whose expressed goal is one of spiritual, existential, or philosophical enlightenment contingent upon women’s hard work, commitment, and patience, but whose actual barriers to entry are primarily financial. Should its consumers fail, the genre holds them accountable for not being ready to get serious, not “wanting it” enough, or not putting themselves first, while offering no real solutions for the astronomically high tariffs—both financial and social—that exclude all but the most fortunate among us from participating.

I do not know how to describe it better, other than as a vague feeling of nostalgia (as in ooooh, how I’d love to do that myself, but I could never afford it). Sure, I do understand that this is the story of Liz, not of the average female (so I shouldn’t necessarily expect to identify myself with her circumstances/way of life/etc.), and yet at times that nostalgia made itself felt.

Thoughts on the title: I love it :) Each of the words is a reference to one of the countries visited, and whoever designed the cover has taken advantage of that too: “eat” is a reference to Italy and is written in pasta, “pray” is India plus rosary beads, and “love” is Bali and exotic flowers — can it get any cooler than that? :)

Thoughts on the ending: In a way it sounded simply too good to be true :) (as in, does this woman have everything or what). However, since this is the memoir of a living person, I do not see it as an ending but merely as an intermediary step. Although to be honest show spoiler

What I liked most: Lots of things :)
Choosing at random, I loved the Introduction, explaining the importance of the number 108, and the fact that the book has precisely 108 chapters (36 for each country) — I thought it a nice touch.

Also (another random moment) I was touched by the moment when Liz, tormented by her feeling that her marriage was over, was crying at night, on the bathroom floor. And then an inner voice gave her the best advice ever, in the circumstances. “Go back to bed, Liz.”

“Go back to bed’, said the omniscient interior voice, because you don’t need to know the final answer right now, at three o’clock in the morning on the Thursday in November. ‘Go back to bed’, because I love you. ‘Go back to bed’, beacause the only thing you need to do for now is get some rest and take good care of yourself until you do know the answer.”

show spoiler

What I liked least: Nothing bothered me that much to be worth a mention here :)

Recommend it to? This seems to be one of these books you either love or love to hate. I do encourage everyone to at least give it a try though :)

Buy this from amazon.com | Buy this from bookdepository.co.uk | Elizabeth Gilbert’s official site | Elizabeth giving a TED Talk on creativity/genius

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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Summary: At forty, Carrie Host’s life seemed complete: she had a wonderful loving husband, three beautiful children (aged 13, 11 and 10 months), she was happy with her role as a housewife and mother, and enjoyed hiking with her friends. But all this is about to change all of the sudden: Carrie is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, immune to chemotherapy and necessitating immediate surgery. The blow numbs her at first, and she feels like she is thrown into a raging river with no boat to save her. But she is the survivor type, and step by step her mindset adjusts to her new life and challenges, discovering new dimensions of herself in the process.

I picked up this book knowing that whatever else happens in it at least it would have a happy ending (today the author is in perfectly good shape). It is nevertheless a very moving story, the harrowing account of the thoughts of a mother that knows she might have to leave her children before long, the story of a woman all too aware of the emptiness she would leave in the lives of her loved ones — her husband, her parents, her kids, her friends. Ms. Host has chosen a very honest approach, not hesitating to bare her soul and exposing her innermost thoughts during that trying time. Reading this made me cry more than once, although, as I said, I knew it was all just a phase, I knew it was going to pass, I knew it was going to end well.

The first word that comes to my mind when I think of Carrie after reading this book is (predictably enough perhaps) “strong”. She managed to find within herself the resources she needed in order to battle cancer, in order to keep her sanity, in order to keep being there for her loved ones. Even now, years after what she went through, she keeps fighting the fight: she is on board of directors of an organization (Caring for Carcinoid) that is dedicated to discovering a cure for that particular condition. She is also a public speaker (and now a published author) trying to motivate people not to give up, wanting to show them that there may be life after carcinoids, and I deeply admire and respect her for that.

And yet, while Carrie’s strength is a defining trait for her, it is not the one I have liked most. That mention goes to a most likely less useful one but the one I very much enjoyed reading about: her artistic side. The fact that, even when she is down, she imagines her life and (possible) future events as short stories or even paintings. The fact that she is the kind that notices the minute details of life, the fact that she encourages her kids to go out there and make life beautiful for themselves. An unexpected trait that one doesn’t often see in books and that I delighted in because of that.

It was also interesting to get to know some of the cast of characters in Carrie’s life. Amory is simply perfect, with the way he devised a plan to find someone who could help Carrie, with the way he never stopped being there for her and helping her with the small things and the big ones, always showering her with love. Carrie’s mother, an ex-nurse, is also a mountain of strength, never leaving her daughter’s side. Carrie’s sister Marisa and Carrie’s sister-in-law Trina are other two relatives very supporting in time of need. At first I thought that well, Carrie is incredibly lucky to have only positive people in her life. But then I realized, reading between the lines, that the truth is that she has chosen to focus on the positive only, on the encouraging experiences — there are also negatives, friends who leave, people who try to impose their believes on her, doctors not paying enough attention, there have to have been moments of discouragement, of anger, of tensions now and then (how can there not be when one has to live with such a threat), but all this is mentioned only in passing, if at all, enforcing my opinion that Carrie is, above all, a positive person and has written this book to encourage others not to complain of her fate.

A few quotes that I have liked:

“I am a poet. As such, I am a hopeless romantic about life. For me, details are worth noticing. I believe that a bath can cure practically anything that ails you, and what the bath can’t cure, hot tea and music will.” (Carrie about her pre-cancer self)

“You want to hit delete and go back to the old description of yourself, the one without the medical terms mixed in. You can’t.”

“Anger is unnatural. Like holding our breath, it becomes more debilitating the longer we do it. Love comes naturally, like the urge to breathe. Forgiveness is the extension of that urge. It’s taking that breath. It’s that satisfying.”

“Buy yourselves flowers, kids. Fill your lives with the things you love, don’t wait for someone else to do it.”

“Sometimes our lifelines are thrown to us by angels — not the ones in paintings, but the ones right here in our lives.”

What I liked most: The way Carrie relates to words. Ever since she was a child, when she has received a letter from Nixon himself, she has been impressed by the power words have. At that moment she has decided she wanted to become a writer, she wanted to help words take particular shapes. Later on though, after her diagnose, there are a few moments when she feels the opposite: words, as the medium which brought her the bad news, became the enemy. For some reason I find this an interesting way of looking at something as widely used as words :)

What I liked least: How can I even dare criticize someone who’s been through that kind of ordeal? Not that there’s actually anything to criticize. Nevertheless even if it were I wouldn’t dare mention it ’cause I am very much aware that (lucky for me) I don’t know the first thing about having to deal with all that.

Recommend it to? It’s a honest memoir that relates having to deal with cancer. As such I would recommend it to people who like reading real life stories, cancer survivors and — and anyone else actually. A fast read filled with the simple truths one discovers when one’s life is on the line.

See also
The author’s site
Carrie’s account of how she first met Amory (scroll down to the last)

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

To tell the truth I am not sure whether I liked Chris Gardner or not. He is being brutally honest in his book, revealing even the things that put him in a bad light, such as planning to kill his step-father (perhaps understandably enough, as the guy viciously beat up everyone in his family), trying to steal a few times, and not giving a damn about the women in his life (with the exception of his mother, who seemed to be a special person indeed). Chris also has redeeming qualities though, such as his willingness to do his very best at every job he ever had, even when the said job consisted in changing adult diapers. He seemed to really care for his patients when he was a doctor or a nurse, and I admired him for that. To be honest there are a lot of things about him I don’t quite get — but then again I have never been a black male in a said to be racist society either. I don’t even get his attachment to his son: he says he loves him and cannot part with him, yet keeps Chris Jr. with him when he’s living on the street and gives him back to his mother when he starts making good money. Either way, I couldn’t help but admire his ambition and hard work and was glad all the while reading the book knowing that he will overcome all his adversities.

I have seen the movie with the same title a while ago and have found the story absolutely touching. Finding out it was made after a true story impressed me even more so for me this was a must read book. And yet, I couldn’t help being a disappointed as there are very few common things between the movie and the book: mostly the fact that Chris has a son and one day Chris sees a guy with a red Ferrari, a thing that has been the root of his trying his hand at becoming a broker. But the Chris in the movie was a lot more humble and a lot more likable than the one in the book. While neither of them is perfect, the one in the book is perhaps a tad too imperfect for my taste.

I couldn’t help thinking that, while Chris was blaming white people of being racists (which I have no doubt that some of them actually were), he was actually kind of a racist himself, only on the reverse. I’m not going to say here how he mostly dated black women as each person has his own tastes, but I was a bit annoyed at the niche he had found for himself. Oh I will make a company to serve black people. Not a company to help people in need of good services, but black people. This didn’t ring very well with me — although it seemed to have done wonders for him.

As a bit of trivia, Quincy Troupe, the guy who helped Chris Gardner write his autobiography, has previously worked with Miles Davis. A coincidence since Chris seems to cannot stress enough how much Miles Davis means to him — I bet he was really thrilled to work with Quincy after reading his credentials. :)

What I liked most: I think the title was extremely well chosen. There is a particular day-care where Chris wants to enlist Chris Jr., only it is kinds expensive and they only accept potty trained children. A note on the wall proclaims it to be a place of “happyness”. In a way, this becomes the most tangible thing Chris has come to want: to earn enough money to get Chris Jr. accepted at that particular day care. When Chris is working his butt off, calling hundreds of people mostly uninterested in what he has to say, this is the very thing he is dreaming about: sure, he would like a red Ferrari, a million bucks, a home (not particularly in that order), he would like happiness on the long term; but on the short term is the place of “happyness” that Chris is pursuing, a way for him to make sure his son got the attention and care he deserved.

What I liked least: The fact that the book was written sort of “slang-style”. The thing that annoyed me most was that he kept using the word “cat” instead of guy (while I was aware of this meaning of the word, it kept confusing me nevertheless). On a close second it’s the way he called every black woman she met a “sister”. While I have nothing whatsoever with black people or the way they talk I didn’t enjoy those bits nevertheless. Perhaps because I was expected the language to be a bit more educate as opposed to the usual ghetto talk.

Recommend it to? Let me think. First of all, I saw lots of people complaining about the language (I sort of ignored it because I was caught up in the book), so if you don’t like bad language, you might not want to read this one. The book shows a different Gardner than the movie did; it all boils down to whether you want to get to know the real Chris Gardner or not.

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The book is a lot less about Ms. Nafisi’s own life than about life in Iran in general (especially life for women). We are told about the political environment of those years, about the manifestations, the death of Khomeini, the Iran-Iraq war and many other things. On another plan we get to see Ms. Nafisi’s relating to her students: her attachment to “her girls” and her worrying for them, their lives and lack of liberties; the way her more radical students, especially men, behaved in school; and more, turning everything in a kaleidoscope of characters and feelings that (probably) accurately describe those years in Iran.

The book has lots of characters, mostly people Ms. Nafisi has met at the University, students or colleagues. There are so many of them that I occasionally lost track of one or the other (a thing that doesn’t happen to me very often). To my deep chagrin, I cannot say I got an accurate image not even of the author’s private students, “her girls” as she uses to call them. I can of course say their names and I do remember a thing or two on most of them (especially Nassrin, she was my favorite for some reason), but on the whole I cannot present an accurate characterization on any of them, not even a sketchy one. There are very few characters I can actually venture to write about. I have liked of course the author herself (although we see her mostly in the lights of her experiences, naturally enough she does not talk very much about herself), her husband Bijan also seemed a nice enough chap, and, my favorite of them all, the one the author calls “my magician”, an ex-teacher to a Tehran university too, a guy that seems to always have the ability to say the very thing that needs saying at any given moment.

This is probably a very shallow thing to say, but I was amazed at how unfair life was for women in Tehran in that particular period. They could face imprisonment for one year if they were caught painting their nails! Every single day was filled with little (or less so) nagging things, ranging from having to wear the veil, to being given an inferior room in a restaurant when unaccompanied by men, to being imprisoned for the slightest offenses and being given forced virginity tests. I have a hard time even trying to imagine such a life and I cannot help feeling sorry for the life the poor girls had to endure back then (some of it even now actually, from what I have understood the morals are being more lax now but not nearly the way they are in the US or Europe, the way I think they should be).
Here is a quote I have thought to be representative of the situation:

I wonder if right now, at this moment, I were to turn to the people sitting next to me in this café in a country that is not Iran and talk to them about life in Tehran, how they would react. Would they condemn the tortures, the executions and the extreme acts of aggression? I think they would. But what about the acts of transgression on our ordinary lives, like the desire to wear pink socks?

What I liked most:  All the parallels made (or the contrasts evidenced) between life in Iran and the books the author chose to talk about. Actually, every single bit that spoke about books was very interested for me, opening up new vistas and perspectives, even on books I (used to think I) knew quite well. Speaking of which, I am fairly certain Ms. Nafisi’s students are very lucky to have her as their teacher, she seems to love books, and open them up to interpretation very well also.

As an example of the parallels previously, mentioned, here’s something about the very Lolita:

Take Lolita. This was the story of a twelve-year-old girl who had nowhere to go. Humbert had tried to turn her into his fantasy, into his dead love, and he had destroyed her. The desperate truth of Lolita’s story is not the rape of a twelve-year-old by a dirty old man but the confiscation of one individual’s life by another. We don’t know what Lolita would have become if Humbert had not engulfed her. Yet the novel, the finished work, is hopeful, beautiful even, a defense not just of beauty but of life, ordinary everyday life, all the normal pleasures that Lolita, like Yassi, was deprived of.

a comparison made even more pregnant later, by saying about “her [the author's] girls”:

Throughout, from start to finish, I observe that they have no clear image of themselves; they can only see and shape themselves through other people’s eyes-ironically, the very people they despise.

Just like Lolita is only seen through the eyes of the narrator only. We don’t know her absolutely, only reflected in Humbert’s eye. As the author put it:

“Lolita belongs to a category of victims who have no defense and are never given a chance to articulate their own story. As such, she becomes a double victim: not only her life but also her life story is taken from her. We told ourselves we were in that class to prevent ourselves from falling victim to this second crime.”

It’s this kind of passages that were my absolute favorites, making me discover new angles when it came to both books and life in Tehran.

Also, there are two other quotes that I have absolutely loved and agreed with:

We in ancient countries have our past-we obsess over the past. They, the Americans, have a dream: they feel nostalgia about the promise of the future.

While this is an absolutely novel thought for me, having never crossed my head, I can nevertheless see its truth (especially as I am not an American so I have first-hand experience of this “obsessing over the past” the author talks about).
And the one, this time about reading:

A novel is not an allegory [...]. It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don’t enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won’t be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience.

I think its pretty obvious why I like it so much :)

What I liked least: Something that is not necessarily a fault of the book’s but my own. Each of the four parts of the book takes place in a different time, without respect to the chronology. Every now and then the author recounted scenes that happened before or were to happen later, between the moment of recollection and the book being published. All this going back and forth had me confused every now and then, especially as I had no idea about the history of Iran and the order of the actual events.

Recommend it? All throughout reading it (despite my occasional getting lost in characters and events) I had the feeling it was a very well written book. A reason enough for me to recommend it :)


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Kopek is a British Inuit, quite a large dog, playful and, despite his antics, with quite a friendly temperament. I was amused by him, of course, but I was even more interested in his “parents”. What can I say, I love animals, so I am kinda subjective when it comes to them. Which means I was bound to like the couple in the book — the author and his wife, Ronnie. I have absolutely loved them actually. They were both dedicated animals lovers and could hardly say no to an animal in need of a home (and lucky for them they did have a home large enough for that). They both appreciated all their pets and felt gratitude for the time they got to spend together — their feelings for their dog Tim after he passed away almost made me cry. Another thing I liked very much about them was that their love for animals was unbounded, completely disregarding the race (given that they had rabits, a guinea pig, a cat, a dog, almost ended up buying a goat once) — just my kind of people, as I never could understand the whole “I’m a dog person but I hate cats” thing, in my mind one either cares about all furry creatures or doesn’t, nothing in between. Oh, and they love to read! Need I say more? :)

Speaking of the author, the moment when he went to the pet store and bought a rabbit simply because it “was all on his own, with no friends to play with or keep him company” melted my heart (I know just the feeling, I have it too every now and then when I see a sad-looking pet at a pet store). Same goes for the way he got his cat, Gucci. So “aaaaaaw” :)

The book is subtitled “Causes of Indigestion for a Wolfy Puppy“, and once I started it it drew me in and had a hard time putting it down. I actually read the first a hundred-odd pages in one sitting. Here and there there are a few pictures of Kopek in various stages of his life, plus lots of events I was amused by and related to at once. Such as, for example, the first nights spent by Kopek in his new house, his howling and his owners’ desperation (but also their not wanting to give in and go to him because he might get the idea that howling will get him things). That is precisely what happened with me and my cat, and still happens every now and then actually — of course my cat is not howling but meowing loudly. Also, I was amused to find out that Kopek’s name means “dog” in Turkish — I was always fond of this quirky way of naming animals (to this day I own an old plush horse whose name is “Horse” :P )

What I liked most: I absolutely loved Ronnie’s imagination :)

Ronnie has made up for her rabbits’ lack of personality by inventing a fantasy life along with a language for her rodents. [...] In her mind, when she was out at work, she could quite happily picture her rabbits playing poker, watching the television and getting up to all sorts of mischievous things.

Not to mention the Rodent Council (“an imaginary group of animals that looked after the interests of all rodents, and according to Ronnie, they also enforced rodent law“), plus all the references to animal personalities all throughout the book (such as when Tim the dog chewed off the years of Joey the wooden rabbit the author muses that perhaps “Joey was a better poker player than him [Tim], and after losing a whole week supply of Bonios, he [Tim] took it out on his years“), and more.
There are no words to say how charmed I was by all this :)

What I liked least: The book is self published and at times it shows in the odd turns of phrase (i.e. “The other dog was fairly large, which we since learned was called Missy“), sort of understandable since the author did not have the privilege of an experienced editor. Nevertheless, these bits do not detract very much from the overall funny (and at times fuzzy) feeling of the book.

Recommend it? If you are a dog lover then it’s a must read. Even if you’re not the book is pretty funny at times plus a fast read, and I have enjoyed it despite my being a cat person (which isn’t to say I don’t like dogs, I just like cats more :) ).

See also
The author’s site (including a blog and publishing advice)
Flickr set with more pictures of Kopek (including his 1-year birthday cake I was a bit curious about :) )

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

Unfortunately, despite his bravery, strength, optimism and readiness to fight his illness, Dr. Pausch has died in July 2008, eleven months after his being diagnosed. Despite my not actually knowing him, I can safely say, after reading his book, that he will be sorely missed.

What can I say about Randy Pausch? Nothing comes to mind other than “I would so much like to be just like him”. He was a great teacher and a loving husband and father. However what I admire most about him (other than his smarts) is his optimist and his zest for life. After reading the book I watched the lecture video online and (although I knew by then what to expect) I was once again impressed (on the verge of shocked) by his words, his laughter and his jokes. As he called it himself, a huge “cognitive dissonance”: I knew him to be dying, I knew he had less than a year to live since that particular moment, and yet he was smiling, and joking, and acting like he had no care in the world (although I can only imagine how hard his situation must have been). I applaud him for that. If there’s be only one thing I’d love to learn from Randy, that would absolutely be his courage and optimism in the face of the unavoidable.

For me, this was, besides an inspirational book, also one of the coolest books ever, because I enjoyed reading about (what were for me) some really cool experiences that Randy had — at one point I was in full OMG mode: OMG, he has written an article for an actual (printed!) Encyclopedia!!! How cool, he thinks Wikipedia is as believable a source as any! And, OMG!!! He has actually met William Shatner!!!!! etc. What can I say, the guy not only had cool dreams (at least in my geeky book), but he also got to achieve most of them, which makes them doubly so (understandably enough — perhaps — this is one of my favorite parts of the book).

Not everything is OMG-ish though. Most parts are the kind that make the reader stop and reflect. Such as at the very beginning, when Randy tells us about how he thinks of his death in a practical way: he and his wife have bought a house and moved to Virginia, in order for her to have her family near after Randy will die. I can only imagine how hard it must be to go through something like that. Randy, the eternal optimist, the eternal Tigger, has jokingly managed to find at least a happy thing in his situation: at least he won’t have to go to the dentist’s anymore.

A large part of the book is filled with words of advice (what I called life lessons): in Randy’s words, things that he has done and have proven useful. The chapters are short, and usually also describe a situation in the author’s life where it (the advice in that chapter) has been useful and how/why. Perhaps this overabundance of personal details and events have made some people criticize this book for being egotistic, saying that the author is talking too much about himself (some even say he doesn’t talk at all about anything else). What these people seem to miss is that there is no better way to learn things other than first hand, through your own experiences — which is what Randy did, and now tries to share with the rest of us. In my opinion the book would be a lot drier, a lot less interesting and a lot less useful without Randy showing the practical (as opposed to the theoretical) part of his experience too.

Speaking of which, there’s another feeling I get when I read Randy’s account of his life (although he rarely mentions it, if at all): gratitude. He had wise parents that taught him to work hard, that taught him to search for his own answers rather than just waiting for them to be offered, that let him paint his room the way he saw fit. He’s been lucky to meet and work with wonderful people. He has had wonderful experiences, has met his other half, married her and fathered three beautiful children. He knows that he has been absolutely blessed in some areas and appreciates them, despite his illness. I have once read that gratitude and optimism go hand in hand — this book is a perfect example of that. And you know what? After achieving his own dreams Randy’s next step was, as he puts it, “enabling others to achieve their childhood dreams”, so that he could share that joy to as many people as possible.

Two of my (many) favorite quotes:

“Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.”

“It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you. “

What I liked most: My most-liked moment was, by far, the one where the young Randy went to Disneyland for the first time and thought “one day I want to make something like this too!”. Why? Because I can SO relate to that. Years ago, when I was more or less the same age as Randy at Disneyland, I have “met” a computer for the very first time. My thought that evening? “Wow, I want to make something like this!” (meaning the software not the hardware, of course, as I was fascinated by the way the computer does whatever one wants it to do at the touch of a button). So you see, I can totally feel for little Randy (and rejoice for big Randy when his dream has finally come true, as I too know how important such a dream can be to a person). In a way it was like reading about myself :)

What I liked least: Understandably enough the fact that the author died. I do realize that no man lives forever and that this book wouldn’t have been written if the author wasn’t dying. And yet Mr. Pausch has been such an extraordinary man and I am very sorry that his life was cut short like that :( He made the world a better place (one word: Alice) and who knows what his living at least a few more years could have brought. Not to mention the difference it would have made for his wife and kids.

Recommend it? Well, given that I think it one of the coolest books I’ve ever read (while also filled with most useful advice), I absolutely do. Especially if you are an IT geek as I am.

Links:
Watch Randy’s last lecture
Randy Pausch’s (sort of) blog — confirming the fact that he was a complete optimist until the end; looking at his posts one sees a guy focusing a lot more of the tiny details that went right other than the rest of them, the many that went wrong
An extra chapter that didn’t make it into the book

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I did not know many things about Obama at the time of my beginning this book. Now that I have finished it though I have to say that a)I admire him a lot and b)America is lucky to have him as president (I know only time will tell about the latter but that’s my opinion about it now). For starters, I think it’s wonderful that he had lived part of his life in a poor country such as Indonesia, because thus he has wider horizons than the average American. His mother taught him empathy as a child — in my opinion one of the most important traits a person can have. He loves what he does for a living and gets involved in his job. He loves listening to people and his main purpose in life is to be useful to others. What’s there about him not to like? :P

A large part of the interestingness and fun of the book stems from the fact that the Obama who wrote the book had no idea of the amazing future in store for him, of the fact that one day he was going to be the very President of the United States (a.k.a. the most powerful man in the world). See for example his thoughts when barely a member of the Illinois legislature, when he had moments of thinking he reached the top of his ladder:

I began to harbor doubts about the path I had chosen; I began feeling the way I imagine an actor or athlete must feel when, after years of commitment to a particular dream, after years of waiting tables between auditions or scratching out hits in the minor leagues, he realizes that he’s gone just about as far as talent or fortune will take him. The dream will not happen, and he now faces the choice of accepting this fact like a grownup and moving on to more sensible pursuits, or refusing the truth and ending up bitter, quarrelsome, and slightly pathetic.

Speaking of that time, it’s interesting to see how he started sort of low and how he didn’t give up but worked his way to the top:

I held press conferences to which nobody came. We signed up for the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade and were assigned the parade’s very last slot, so my ten volunteers and I found ourselves marching just a few paces ahead of the city’s sanitation trucks, waving to the few stragglers who remained on the route while workers swept up garbage and peeled green shamrock stickers off the lampposts.

I have to say that at times, throughout the book, I sort of had a sense of history in the making: while I am not necessarily a believer in predetermination, a few times I had the feeling that, somehow, Obama’s winning the race for Senate was his destiny and the destiny of the whole world too (given that his becoming a Senator was a step on his becoming President Elect, almost the most powerful man in the world, a few years later). I mean, there were times he and the people supporting him almost lost hope of winning the Senate election — and then something happened and Obama triumphed, although the odds were stacked against him until then (the Blair Hull episode for example).

What I liked most: Lots of things, so many I have trouble choosing. Obama’s sense of historical places and of the historical people that had populated them once. The fact that everything he says and every measure he suggests seems very well thought of. The visit at the Google HQ (for some completely subjective reason I cannot quite name). The way Obama talks about his mother:

Most of all, she possessed an abiding sense of wonder, a reverence for life and its precious, transitory nature that could properly be described as devotional. During the course of the day, she might come across a painting, read a line of poetry, or hear a piece of music, and I would see tears well up in her eyes. Sometimes, as I was growing up, she would wake me up in the middle of the night to have me gaze at a particularly spectacular moon, or she would have me close my eyes as we walked together at twilight to listen to the rustle of leaves. She loved to take children-any child-and sit them in her lap and tickle them or play games with them or examine their hands, tracing out the miracle of bone and tendon and skin and delighting at the truths to be found there. She saw mysteries everywhere and took joy in the sheer strangeness of life.

What I liked least: I was kinda upset by the chapter on immigration, as he speaks about immigrants this and immigrants that and oh how an important part of America were and are immigrants, and how they help the economy. The problem is that in reality it seems (to me at least) that America is doing everything it can to discourage immigration within its borders. I’m sorry to say this chapter was a bit two-faced (or that’s how I saw it anyway).
Also, the book was a wee bit too long. I loved it and found it extremely interesting, but my feelings towards it gradually evolved from “oh how I love this book” to “oh how I love this book but will it ever end??”. I’m not saying any of the topics should have been left out, as I enjoyed reading about them all (except the immigration part mentioned above), but perhaps just a few pages cut from here and there would have helped.

Recommend it? Definitely, especially now that Obama is President Elect. If you want to know what’s (hopefully) in store for America, this is the book to read.

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

First of all, let’s get Lketinga out of the way. I have never understood how Corinne could see him so beautiful, I have always seen him as ordinary at best. Now he’s fourteen years older and at times he looks like a really old man (though he’s not). As for his behaviour… I have always thought of him as “stuck in the tradition”. He never went to school so there are a lot of things that he doesn’t understand. The word that comes through my head on thinking about him is “wariness”, as one always has to be wary around him, he gets annoyed quite easily. Nevertheless he did his best to make a good impression on Corinne this time around — but I somehow never trusted him enough not to spoil everything though (I was wrong, he behaved sort of okay until the end). A character I have really liked in both books is Lketinga’s mother, Corinne ‘s mother-in-law. I can only imagine how surprised she had been at first on seeing that her son wanted to marry a white woman, a woman that knew nothing of the language and habits of the Samburu. Nevertheless Lketinga’s mother has grown to love the stranger and she and Corinne ended up really close. It’s sort of strange seeing the pictures of the woman, as she looks so… primitive — she sure is in a lot of ways, but she does know how to love and make herself loved. Yep, I have really liked her and looked forward to each of her appearances in this book.

As for Corinne… she is now in a sort of pilgrimage to her strange past, a past that she looks back at with fond eyes though it hadn’t been quite easy on her at the time. I liked her simplicity again — the way she just told the stories without trying to over embellish them. I think of her as a very brave woman — I heard some people referring of her as crazy, leaving Europe behind in order to go live in Africa, but I can only think about her as very brave, and I really admire her for that. Of course, the trip in this book had been nothing compared to what she did before, as she wasn’t alone now and she was sort of a minor star — I still admire her and think of her as brave, in the light of her past.

A lot of things have changed in this fourteen years. Modern life is starting to make itself felt even in the middle of the huts in Kenya (there are a lot of plastic bags everywhere now, a lot of stores, a lot of children now go to school). So much so that Corinne started feeling sorry (and I with her) that the people there are going to eventually lose all their wonderful traditions, everything that made them special (not that they have only wonderful traditions, mind you; for example they are still circumcising both boys of a certain age and girls before marriage). I know that eventually they’ll be forced into civilization as there have been others before them — and I cannot help being sorry for everything Corinne has known and found utterly beautiful all these years ago, such as the beauty of girls costumes or the impressiveness of warriors’ getups. The world will probably be a little less colorful place without them.

What I liked most: The changed way Corinne sees Barsaloi (her ex-husband’s village) now. She finds it beautiful but she sees it with the eyes of an European — this had never happened before. She had loved Lketinga so much she ended up disliking her home country and loving the dung houses village, where whole families lived in a hut no larger than a simple room. But now her love had passed and she sees everything like it is, like we the readers of her book saw it back then: different, interesting, beautiful at times but very hard to live in. And you get to realize: oh my God she really loved that guy.

What I liked least: The fact that…well, nothing actually happens in the book. There’s no intrigue, there’s no tension. Sure I was curious to see how Corinne’s family will treat her after all these years, but still. I would be hard pressed if I actually had to narrate the book, as it’s only a string of visits to formerly known places. While we still get to find out some facts about the Masai (such as the adults are never called by their name in their presence — after they have the first child they are called Mama name-of-child and Papa name-of-child; before that some generic words are used, “mparatut” (wife) and “lepayian” (husband)), there’s nothing as fascinating as there was in the first book.

Recommend it? Only if you have read the first book.

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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So, how did I feel towards the character Emmett James? I liked him a lot. Of course that I have disagreed with some of his choices (with hindsight he does too with some of them), but you know, I really could understand why he made most of them (such as forging a photo for a tabloid as he really needed the money). As for the author Emmet James, I was captivated by his raw honesty, his humor, and, most of all, for hardly complaining about anything. You can see life hasn’t always been easy on him (at the beginning of his acting career to name but a moment), but he chose not to focus on his hardships and disappointments — and I really like him too :)

I must say I fell in love with this book at the very beginning, when three-years old Emmett went for the first time at the cinema, with his whole family, in order to see The Jungle Book. He fell asleep at the beginning and slept throughout the movie, but despite that (and despite his young age) he noticed the power movies have:

“I wanted to share this thing that could transform people, I wanted his movements, now quick and bold and sure and light. Everything about [my brother] flushed with gaiety and energy, and erupted in short Tourette-like bouts of rapturous Disney song.”

Another moment I was really amused by was when the young Emmett gets so inspired after watching one of the Indiana Jones movies that he embarks immediately on his career as an archaeologist, by … digging a hole in the ground (OMG I did that too as a kid!! — wanted to start early as an archaeologist I mean). After few days he deems the hole useless for archeology but with a great potential for family trips: could be extended to reach to China! (OMG I did that too as a kid — trying to dig a hole to China, as silly as that seems now). And then Friday came and young Emmett gave up digging. :P

The book ends with a chapter named after the movie It’s a Wonderful Life (unsurprisingly enough, one of my favorites). I have totally loved it, as a sign that Emmett looks back at his life with joy and gratitude. After all, this book is a book about pursuing a dream. It looks to me like Emmett did succeed — he may not be a great A-list actor, but he works in the field he loves (and hey, who’s to say what the future holds :) )

After finishing reading the book (even before actually) I felt the need to watch Titanic once again, just to notice Emmett in it. Well, I know I could watch other movies of his (Lap Dancing? :D ) but Titanic is a movie I know quite well and to my shame I have to say I have never noticed any of the stewards and such — would really like to do so now though :)

As a fun bit I am fairly certain (99.9%) that Joe Macher in the book is actually Joel Schumacher, as not only he is the one who directed Batman Forever but he is also mentioned as having recently finished a movie where an ordinary person goes nuts and starts shooting people and the movie Falling Down was the first one popping into my head.

What I liked most: The way every chapter/story is associated to a movie :) (and the way each movie title has a short description just in case :) ).

What I liked least: I don’t know whether everything in the book is actually true. The ghost story comes to mind. Or the one with the picture of Nicholas Cage and Lisa Marie’s wedding picture — that sounded believable enough but I have found no such wedding pic online (with Cage wearing sunglasses), instead I have found more than one wedding pictures of theirs, all seemingly legit (well, at least she has the same dress in all of them :P )(you can find one of them here, see, no sunglasses and no bouquet :P).
LATER UPDATE: Hey, look at the picture GeekGirl has found, do you think this might be it (thus making the above story true)?

Recommend it? Yes, I loved it. I bet every movie buff will fall in love with it too (not that it is in any way restricted to movie buffs :P ).

PS You can find an interview with Emmett here :)

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

The real main character in this novel is by far Africa – and the little farm at the foot of Ngong Hills. Almost every little detail of the story is there to give out something more of life in Africa, of African people, of African fauna and so on. About three quarters of the book are spent thus, presenting the country as an idyllic place, hardships vaguely mentioned or at all. Unfortunately the farm wasn’t going as well as it should have so in the end Karen had to sell everything and leave — the fourth quarter tells about how this came to be, how they all struggled to keep it from happening but how she had to let it go in the end. Her love of Africa is as pregnant as ever in these last chapters though – even more so as she knows she’ll have to leave the land behind for good in a short while.

I was amazed to see it in the form it had: an endless account of simple happenings, in no particular order. There are a lot of people mentioned, both Native and Europeans, including Berkeley Cole and Denys Finch-Hatton, but none of them holds a place in the story more important than Africa itself does, they all seem to be shown as accessories to Africa’s beauty. I was expecting something totally different having seen the movie a while ago. I was happy to see in the novel none of the sentimentality that had bothered me at times in the movie — in the book Denys is never clearly presented as more than a friend of Karen’s (not that his merely being more than a friend of Karen’s had bothered me in the movie :) ). What’s more, the movie Denys was really annoying for me, the way he put himself always first and always did what he wanted without much care for another’s feelings (including Karen’s). In the book he is said to be totally without self interest — which, needless to say, made me like him a lot more in this version. :)

Animals also take an important place in the story – Karen’s dogs, Lulu (the tamed antelope), the giraffes, the lions – all mentions of them trying to underline the farm’s communion and Karen’s communion with the African wild life, with Africa itself.

What I liked most: The feeling I get while reading, that Karen was really fond of Africa and had really enjoyed her stay there (you can sense her love for that land and its people in almost every word) :) Also, the fact that the story is said in bits and pieces in a non-chronological manner, a thing that I wouldn’t normally like but it seems to fit perfectly here :)

What I liked least: There is a particular scene I have found a little hard to understand: One day Karen and Denys drive by a dead giraffe. A lioness was eating from the body and Denis shot it. Then they drove away. All well so far. Only after a while they drove by the same place on the way back. This time a lion was standing on the giraffe’s carcass and both Karen and Denis were impressed by how majestic it looked. And then Karen shot it (!). And then they had a picnic on the spot (!!)(near the bodies of the two lions and the carcass that was getting pretty smelly by the time of their first drive by). So yuck.

Recommend it? Yes, especially to those who love to read about faraway places :) It’s a wonderful book to find out about the Africa of the beginning of the 20th century.

Some quotes:
About Kamante the cook:

“He had a great memory for recipes. He could not read, and he knew no English so that cookery-books were of no use to him, but he must have held all that he was ever taught stored up in his ungraceful head, according to some systematization of his own, which I should never know. He had named the dishes after some event which had taken place on the day they had been shown to him, and he spoke of the sauce of the lightning that struck the tree, and of the sauce of the grey horse that died.”

Also about Kamante:

“Kamante writes that he has been out of work for a long time. I was not surprised to hear of it, for he was really caviare to the general. I had educated a Royal Cook and left him in a new Colony. It was with him a case of “Open Sesame.” Now the word has been lost, and the stone has closed for good round the mystic treasures that it had in it. Where the great Chef walked in deep thought, full of knowledge, nobody sees anything but a little bandy-legged Kikuyu, a dwarf with a flat, still face.”

About the Ngong hills:

“And were my faith so strong that it could move mountains, that is the mountain that I would make come to me.”

About life in Africa:

“Now, looking back on my life in Africa, I feel that it might altogether be described as the existence of a person who had come from a rushed and noisy world, into a still country.”

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.