My mom says this book is the only time she believes that the movie is better. She LOVES the movie and was so excited when she got a copy of the book. I don’t even think she finished it, but maybe she did. She was absolutely heartbroken over how bad the book was.

Eat, Pray, Love.

The movie was one of my favorites, just a good pick me up and kind of inspirational in the sense you can go after whatever you want. I love memoirs, they’re one of my all time fave type of books, especially if I don’t know anything about who wrote it. And although I had seen the movie and knew a lot of the things that happen, I couldn’t wait to read about them in greater detail and all the things they had to cut out to make a movie.

Almost everything in the movie, does not happen in the book/her life. The book is about a privileged woman who travels across the world to complain about her life and act as a white savior (and literally says that she knows what she’s saying sounds like a white savior, but since a guy from Brazil said it too, its ok), and then judges the way another culture deals with important things and she completely disregards and talks down about Indonesian superstitions, while preaching that Eastern religion and practices are better in the same sentence. I am personally very superstitious, its just how my brain works so I was really off put by that. How can you be like “I love the way this view point is, its so gorgeous and cute, but also you’re silly for practicing every other aspect of your cultural view point.”

Also in the audio book version, she does, what I feel like, is racist accents of people from other countries. There was no reason for her to do an Indian accent while reading the Indian portion. She doesn’t do a Texas accent when reading the man from Texas’ parts, I don’t remember her doing a British accent for the brief moment she talks about a British person, but she does one for the Brazilian man, the Italian people, the Indonesian and the Indian people.

She also talks about how she is God and God is her and she spoke to herself in the past from this moment that she realized that they’re the same person/spirit and that she, acting as God’s spirit, saved herself and spurred the whole journey and if you don’t meditate then you’ll never be saved and your life will be bad for not knowing how meditate. I personally am not religious, I have dabbled in a few different ways of trying to connect to spirituality, have even tried meditation (because I saw how it worked for her in the movie and felt comfortable trying it) but nothing feels right to me, so I’m not bothered by other people’s religious views bc who am I to say you can’t connect to God through that specific type of prayer?

The whole book is a big skip from my point of view!

I would watch it with her and use it as a way to try and ease into talking about her mental health. I haven’t watched the show since the last season came out, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m not as depressed as I was, or if I’m just slightly burnt out on it bc I would watch it on repeat. I used to use the show as ways of like mentally checking in with myself like “do I just want to watch the show bc I like it Or because I need to feel better about being sad”

Update: upon telling him about this phenomenon & how often the book pops up on this subreddit, it’s not our answer for everything. What are you having for dinner tonight? Gravity’s Rainbow. What book do you hate? Gravity’s Rainbow. Best book in the world? You guessed, Rainbow. Thing you want to be when you grow up? You get it

My coworker is reading this book and ever since he’s brought it in, I’ve seen it mentioned at least 15 times in this sub! Its crazy how things like that time out

I typically do if I liked the one I just finished. But I learned a few years that one of my favorite books actually has a sequel and I’m afraid to read it because I came to terms with how the first one ended. Th sequel was on my “to read” list, and I just never put together that it was a sequel because this is the only book of hers to have a sequel. It’s “Pigs in Heaven” which is the sequel to “Th Bean Trees” by Barbara Kingsolver

“The Miniaturist” by Jessie Burton. I didn’t finish it, I got maybe 50 pages in and gave up. I looked the plot up on Wikipedia and I’m so glad I gave up on it. The plot was so slow, and I frequently read things like historical fiction (which I’d say this tried to be) but I feel like the topics in this book were (probably) not handled well based on the plot breakdown I read.

“O, Beautiful: A Novel” by Jung Yun. I felt bad not liking this one because I can tell that the author worked so hard to make it good. I read a quote from Her talking about how much she loved the story and all the love and work she put into it, but dear lord was it repetitive! If I didn’t know it was written by a woman, I would have thought the women characters were written by a man who didn’t know any woman based on how often the main character felt like no one took her seriously because “she used to be a model and was pretty”. In the first 100 pages, I’m pretty sure it’s mentioned 30 times she used to be a model, and that’s why her life was so hard because it’s hard to be pretty AND have a normal career. And most of the time, when it was mentioned it was things like “she went to interview someone, but they didn’t acknowledge her because she was too pretty to be the reporter” or “every man she’d ever seen cat called her because she’s so pretty”. It had so many possible good plot points but went nowhere slowly.

“The Hotel New Hampshire” by John Irving. I don’t know why I finished this book, I gave up on it 5 times. So maybe points for that. This was one of the most disgusting books I’ve ever read, I kept hoping it was going to have some redeeming message or symbolism or something at the end but it was just gross and violent for the sake of being gross and violent. I showed a friend the summary and he was like “this book sounds great! Maybe you should try it instead of that [if someone tells me how to spoiler mark something so it’s grayed out, I’ll update this] book instead.” And when I told him “this is that book”, he choked on his coffee in shock. Book was just full of f-ing triggers.

“The Miniaturist” by Jessie Burton. I didn’t finish it, I got maybe 50 pages in and gave up. I looked the plot up on Wikipedia and I’m so glad I gave up on it. The plot was so slow, and I frequently read things like historical fiction (which I’d say this tried to be) but I feel like the topics in this book were (probably) not handled well based on the plot breakdown I read.

“O, Beautiful: A Novel” by Jung Yun. I felt bad not liking this one because I can tell that the author worked so hard to make it good. I read a quote from Her talking about how much she loved the story and all the love and work she put into it, but dear lord was it repetitive! If I didn’t know it was written by a woman, I would have thought the women characters were written by a man who didn’t know any woman based on how often the main character felt like no one took her seriously because “she used to be a model and was pretty”. In the first 100 pages, I’m pretty sure it’s mentioned 30 times she used to be a model, and that’s why her life was so hard because it’s hard to be pretty AND have a normal career. And most of the time, when it was mentioned it was things like “she went to interview someone, but they didn’t acknowledge her because she was too pretty to be the reporter” or “every man she’d ever seen cat called her because she’s so pretty”. It had so many possible good plot points but went nowhere slowly.

“The Hotel New Hampshire” by John Irving. I don’t know why I finished this book, I gave up on it 5 times. So maybe points for that. This was one of the most disgusting books I’ve ever read, I kept hoping it was going to have some redeeming message or symbolism or something at the end but it was just gross and violent for the sake of being gross and violent. I showed a friend the summary and he was like “this book sounds great! Maybe you should try it instead of that [if someone tells me how to spoiler mark something so it’s grayed out, I’ll update this] book instead.” And when I told him “this is that book”, he choked on his coffee in shock. Book was just full of f-ing triggers.

“Pride and Prejudice” was so much more of a wild ride than I thought it’d be that I made someone that I work with read it so I could talk to someone about it. I hope you enjoy it!

I took a feminist lit class in college and we talked about how some authors of this time were dismissed for “being too dramatic” in their characters but every woman who read them (at time of publication) was like “this isn’t dramatic, this is reality”. She made very simple characters in the sense that there’s nothing overly amazing about any of them but still have believable flaws and reactions and did a good showing of realistic character growth