My sister bought me the book eat, pray, love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, for my birthday back in September. I just started reading it last week. I'm only about 50 pages in but so far I love it.
First, I love the writing style. It's the exact type of humor that I love the most. It's sort of blunt, and sarcastic. It is how I wish I could write. I don't know how best to describe it so I'll copy a paragraph as an example. I hope it isn't ruined by being taken out of context.
I don't have these qualities. First off, I don't blend. Tall and blonde and pink-complexioned, I am less a chameleon than a flamingo. Everywhere I go but Dusseldorf, I stand out garishly. When I was in China, women used to come up to me on the street and point me out to their children as though I were some escaped zoo animal. And their children -- who had never seen anything quite like this pink-faced yellow-headed phantom person -- would often burst into tears at the sight of me. I really hated that about China.
Second, I was drawn to the character. It's written in the first person and it feels like I am listening to a friend tell me a story in person. I was sucked in right away. The main character is a woman in her mid-thirties and just trying to figure things out. Get her life in order. She does it through a year of traveling; 4 months in Italy, 4 in India, and 4 in Indonesia. It made me start planning my trip to Ireland which will hopefully happen later this year.
I haven't gotten very far into it yet, but I am totally recommending this book.
What's the last book you read? Would you recommend it?
At the moment, I am reading two books. "America Alone" by Mark Steyn, which is kind of heavy reading so I am balancing it with "Faithful" by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan. The first one is very eye-opening but like I said, heavy. The second, I wouldn't recommend unless you are a baseball fan, specifically a Red Sox fan. Otherwise? I cuold see how you just wouldn't care. The last book I finished was "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" also by Stephen King. I am not a huge fan of Stephen King's books mostly because I live alone & have to then stay up worrying about Things That Go Bump in the Night. ;-) This was a very good book though. Short, quick read but very engaging.
Side note: I use a site called GoodReads to organize & rate the books I've read & want to read. There is a link to it in one of the sidebars on my blog. If you read a decent amount, I totally recommend this site!
I'm currently reading Angels & Demons. I tend to prefer murder mysteries to anything else - even romance. But you sure make this sound interesting!
I have actually never read a Stephen King book. My older sister, on the other hand, I think has read every single one. I've seen a few of the movies from his books though and did enjoy those.
At the moment I probably don't read enough to warrent using GoodReads. That does seem pretty cool though. Maybe I can use it to find more books that other people recommend. Right now I count on my younger sister to tell me what's good and what I might like :)
I used to read a lot of Mary Higgins Clark and John Grisham. For the last several years though I've been reading a lot of "chic lit" (from wikipedia -- they generally deal with the issues of modern women humorously and lightheartedly).