Saturday, February 21, 2009

Eat, Pray, Love ............


The BBC was recently superbly hosted by Helen, who made the choice of "Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia", a memoir by American author and memoirist Elizabeth Gilbert.

At 32, Gilbert was educated, had a home and a husband, and successful career as a writer. However, she was not happy; she was depressed with her marriage, often spending the night crying on her bathroom floor. She divorced her husband and entered into a relationship with another man, but this relationship did not work out either. She decided that she needed a change. She spent the next year travelling the world. She spent four months in Italy, eating and enjoying life (Eat). She spent four months in India, trying to find her spirituality (Pray). She ended the year in Bali, Indonesia, looking for "balance" of the two, and love (Love).

The escapades of a silly and spoiled American? surprisingly not it seems, from the readers, who felt she had great heart, and an intimate and humanistic tone to which they could easily relate.

Five members present had read the book and returned the following scores:

Natalie 8.5
Kevin 7
Leanne 8
Henri 8.5
Helen 8
Score 8

Mark & Andrew were also present but hadn’t read the book (oh the shame of it all), but nevertheless managed to inject gratuitous and irrelevant commentary into the discourse, thereby maintaining BBC’s existing standards of intellectual aridity and tedious self referential allusion.

The next choice is “Secret History” by Paul Theroux chosen by Kevin and also to be hosted at Casa del Kevin in Potts Point on March 11.

We look forward to welcoming Mary to the BBC, and hope that she is able to endure the shock of our secret initiation ceremony (just in case you are reading this Mary).