Eat Pray Love

I was given as a birthday present this book called Eat, Pray, Love, a mega bestseller. It's the journey of self discovery of a self-involved, navel gazing woman, who, despite all of her discoveries, seems to be as self-involved and navel-gazing at the end of the book as she was at the beginning. Except before she was miserable, and after pasta in Italy, ashram in India and magic man in Bali, she is happy. (I would have had the pasta in Italy and left it at that). I hope my dear friend Sonia will forgive me for not liking this book. My eyes rolled so many times on every page, I was beginning to feel like that girl from The Exorcist. However, I couldn't put it down. Not because it was suspenseful or I wanted to know what was going to happen, but because it was so fascinatingly appalling, I just had to see it through. The writing seemed to me sloppy and witless and not particularly insightful or well observed (I guess powers of observation must be quite limited when you are gazing at your navel with such focussed concentration). But the book did give me something very useful. It actually gave me a meditation mantra. Readers, do not panic. I have not yet gone out of my spirituality-hating wits. But all of us, and particularly those of us for whom life is a catastrophe waiting to happen, can sometimes benefit from a little peace of mind. I have tried a couple of mantras here and there, mainly to lull myself to sleep, and the one the writer shares in this book is the only one that actually seems to work. So for that, I'm grateful to her.
If you must know, I am also learning Tai Chi. Soon I will be dispensing wisdom from a cave in a mountain.