cotton candy overdose
Sometimes 140 characters isn't enough. And this is one of those times:
'Eat, Pray, Love' reads like a very long article in Cosmo, O mag, or a compilation of self-absorbed yet insincere blog posts. Not a fan, but
That's how far I got on Twitter. Even after deleting some words and trying to rephrase the tweet, I still wasn't even close to articulating my thoughts. Hence, the blog post.
Basically, my criticism of Elizabeth Gilbert's book can be summed up by going to Amazon.com, reading the reviews of customers who ascribed 1-star, and compiling them. Or, you could just read this one (and the comments in response to it) because I think it best captures how I feel about the book [1]:
So, I'm not going to provide my own in-depth review of the book here. I will say that if you read Eat, Pray, Love and liked it, maybe I understand why. It might be the same reason as why I sometimes find myself watching Oprah (and enjoying it on some level) and why I used to religiously read magazines like seventeen, Sassy, Jane, and O cover-to-cover. Guilty pleasures that I'm not proud to admit to (although Sassy and Jane are less embarrassing than the other two). I'm actually cringing as I type.
Somehow, I can justify magazines - fluffy content that is quick and easy to digest - as guilty pleasures. I find this harder to do with books. In my mind, books are supposed to be intellectually stimulating, hearty, and ought to require additional inputs (i.e., thinking) to digest. While I do enjoy small amounts of cotton candy periodically, Eat, Pray, Love is like being served 108 sticks of artificially-coloured pink cotton candy and being asked to consume all of it without feeling nauseous. Perhaps I'm an elitist when it comes to books. I can accept that, though, without cringing.
As an aside, having perused Amazon's reviews of this book, it's clear to me that the online experience is much more valuable than what is offered in-store when it comes to buying books. Traditional methods of selling books relies on the assumption that everyone who bought the book subsequently liked it and the discretion of the publisher to extract and showcase the most favourable reviews (or sections of reviews, or parts of reviews that can be made to sound favourable with the replacement of text with ellipses). By offering transparency, Amazon.com changes the game.
The accolades printed on the covers of Eat, Pray, Love, combined with its best-seller status, present the book as a safe bet. But, less than half of Amazon reviewers loved the book, while 20% hated it. Overall, the book garnered 3.5 stars out of 5. I probably wouldn't purchase a book based on those stats. Would you?
[1] I have not read The Human Stain but now think that maybe I should. Cows on an organic farm as a metaphor... sounds interesting.
