Tag: Eat Pray Love

The Critics: ‘‘Wild’ by Cheryl Strayed

Strayed’s memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail while reflecting on her life, including the death of her mother, is getting rave reviews.

This is a long way from Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods.” Apparently it’s no “Eat, Pray, Love,” either.

From Slate:

By laying bare a great unspoken truth of adulthood—that many things in life don’t turn out the way you want them to, and that you can and must live through them anyway—Wild feels real in ways that many books about “finding oneself,” including Eat, Pray, Love and all its imitators, do not. The hike, rewarding though it is, doesn’t heal Strayed. “I’d thought I’d weep tears of cathartic sorrow and restorative joy each day of my journey,” she writes.  “Instead, I only moaned, and not because my heart ached. It was because my feet did and my back did and so did the still-open [pack] wounds around my hips.”

I’m a big fan of Brad Listi’s Other People podcasts, featuring wide-ranging, hour-long conversations with authors. He spoke with Strayed in February:


Video: Interview with Author Elizabeth Gilbert

A thoughtful 20-minute interview with the “Eat, Pray, Love” author covering MFA programs and her novel-in-progress, which she refers to at one point as “another travel book.”


NYT on Luca Spaghetti’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Spin-off Memoir: ‘Pasta, Pasta, Pasta!’

Who is Luca Spaghetti? In case you’ve forgotten, he’s one of the dreamy Italian men who shows Elizabeth Gilbert around town during the Roman section of her bestselling memoir. He’s also, now, an author—his own memoir, Un Amico Italiano: Eat, Pray, Love in Rome, was released this spring, and the New York Times had a really funny gem of a review.

Here’s Sam Anderson:

It has a strange integrity: the purity of an actual, unremarkable guy telling his actual, (mostly) unremarkable story. Aside from a few Gilbertesque cutesy touches (“That Marlboro tasted a lot like life”), there’s no pretense of educating humanity or saving a soul or discovering a self. It’s just: Hey world, this crazy thing happened where someone put me in a book—so here’s my story! Pasta, pasta, pasta! Spaghetti’s only ulterior motive is right on the surface: he hopes the memoir will make James Taylor, the American folk musician he reveres above all other humans, notice him.

I count myself among the legions of EPL fans, but even as a cheerleader I can’t help thinking this is all getting a bit surreal.


Long-Term Family Travel and the ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Effect

While we were quiet on the publishing front, the Christian Science Monitor ran a seven-part series on the boom in career breaks and families traveling long-term—a boom inspired, writer Eilene Zimmerman contends, by Elizabeth Gilbert’s omnipotent memoir, Eat, Pray, Love.

Whatever the inspiration behind the rush, one takeaway seems clear: Long-term travel is moving towards the mainstream. Cheers to that.


World Hum Travel Movie Club: ‘Eat, Pray, Love’

A big-screen incarnation of author Elizabeth Gilbert heads to Italy, India and Indonesia. Eva Holland and Eli Ellison go along for the ride.

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Here Come the ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Product Tie-Ins

With the movie adaptation just weeks away, the Los Angeles Times books blog has an intimidating list:

By the time the movie opens in August, you will be able to get “Eat, Pray, Love” furnishings from Cost Plus; shop the “Eat, Pray, Love” way with the Home Shopping Network, get “Eat, Pray, Love” jewelry from Dogeared, spray “Eat, Pray, Love” eau de parfum from Fresh, wear organic “Eat, Pray, Love” T-shirts from Signorelli, and drink “Eat, Pray, Love” tea.

I’m holding out for the official “Eat, Pray, Love” Yoga Mat and DIY Ashram Home Decorating Kit, myself. (Via @julia914)


An Extra in Ubud: On the Set of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’

a temple in Ubud, Eat Pray Love iStockPhoto

Liz Sinclair gets her Hollywood moment in Indonesia, but the job is far from glamorous

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Julia Roberts: Eat, Pray, Offend the Locals

There’s trouble on the set of “Eat, Pray, Love” in India: Apparently, local villagers were banned from praying in their ashram during an important religious festival because filming was going on inside. Said one local police officer:

There are more than 100 policemen outside the Ashram Hari Mandir and almost equal number inside the premises, both uniformed and in civilian disguise. Nobody can breach this cover and no outsider is allowed to enter the ashram, no matter whosoever he or she is. We have strict instructions.

Now that’s what I call a “hearts and minds” strategy.


‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Update: Eating in Rome With Julia Roberts

‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Update: Eating in Rome With Julia Roberts Photo by fotologic via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by fotologic via Flickr (Creative Commons)

The actress has been spotted at restaurants and markets around the city as filming for the first phase of Eat, Pray, Love gets under way. Meanwhile, since our last update, Billy Crudup, Viola Davis and (rumor has it) James Franco have all signed on to the project—fine additions to an already outstanding supporting cast.


Elizabeth Gilbert’s Ex Lands a Book Deal

Eat, pray, grab a share of the limelight? Michael Cooper, the ex-husband whose divorce launched a three-country search for meaning and a phenomenon of a bestseller, will publish “Displaced,” a memoir about “overcoming the divorce and embarking on his own world journey,” in late 2010. For anyone who’s counting, that makes two “man’s version” spin-off titles so far. (Via The Book Bench)


‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Movie Update: Bardem Signs On

It’s been a couple of years since word came down that Julia Roberts would play the lead in the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s juggernaut of a travel memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love.” Now, Variety reports that Javier Bardem will join the project as Felipe, the Brazilian suitor who pops up in Bali. Richard Jenkins has also signed on to play Richard, the ashram Texan.

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Are Women Who Read ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ ‘Kind of Dim’?*

Charlotte Allen calls “Eat, Pray, Love,” Elizabeth Gilbert’s lightning rod of a travel memoir, “hysterical,” “superficial,” and “gooily sentimental,” and points to its success as an example of why women are “kind of dim.” She did all this in a Washington Post opinion piece this weekend called “We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?”, which, as of this posting, has 870 comments and counting.

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‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Driving Memoir Boom

Oprah sang its praises. Rolf Potts didn’t. But love it or hate it, Elizabeth Gilbert’s post-divorce travel memoir “Eat, Pray, Love” is among the popular books now driving a boom in new memoirs being published, reports USA Today.


‘Eat, Pray, Loathe’? More Reconsiderations of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Travel Memoir, ‘Eat, Pray, Love.’

Release. Praise. Bestseller. Julia Roberts. End-of-year lists. Oprah. Juggernaut. Now, two years after its debut, comes the next phase: Reconsideration of—and backlash against—Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love.”

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One Man’s Odyssey into ‘Eat, Pray, Love’

Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling trans-global travel book is a fun read -- but don't expect Rolf Potts to embrace the fantasy

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‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author Elizabeth Gilbert Does ‘Oprah’ Today

Elizabeth Gilbert goes where few travel memoir authors have: “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Gilbert is featured on today’s broadcast, and according to Oprah.com, “It’s the show Oprah’s been waiting months for.” The site adds: “Oprah says she has seen women carrying this New York Times bestseller with them everywhere. ‘I’ve been counting down the days to this show!’”

Related on World Hum:
* Elizabeth Gilbert: ‘Eat, Pray, Love’
* Three Travel Books: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Picks


Revisiting ‘Eat, Pray, Love’: A ‘Transcendently Great Beach Book’

Now that it’s locked into bestseller lists and Julia Roberts is making a movie out of it, Elizabeth Gilbert’s travel book “Eat, Pray, Love” is a bona fide cultural phenomenon. It’s a fixture on the World Hum Travel Zeitgeist, it’s the celebrity must-read of the moment and a go-to summer book recommendation. It’s also getting a second look from critics such as Slate’s Katie Roiphe, who calls “Eat, Pray, Love” “precisely the sort of inspirational story of one woman’s journey to recovery that I would never expect myself to pick up in a bookshop.” Yet she reads it, and likes it.

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Elizabeth Gilbert: ‘Eat, Pray, Love’

In "Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia," Elizabeth Gilbert turns to travel in an effort to find, well, everything. Frank Bures writes that her journey will leave you smiling in your liver.

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