30-Day Book Challenge - Day 11

Day 11 - A Book You Hated

I considered Maguire's A Lion Among Men, because it was god-awful and completely unnecessary. But then I remembered Eat, Pray, Love by the insufferable Elizabeth Gilbert.

In my initial review on Shelfari (before I was blogging), I was kind of nice about it:

Well, I must admit that I actually enjoyed Indonesia. Not enough to raise my opinion of the entire book, Ketut, Wayan, and Felipe were wonderful 'characters'. Gilbert focused more on the culture in this section than in any other.
I was very grossly disappointed with this book. At the risk of being accused of being 'close minded' - it just wasn't what I expected. When I'm told I'm going to read about a woman who went on a spiritual journey through 3 amazing countries/cultures in the course of one year, I want to read about a woman who went on a spiritual journey through 3 amazing countries/cultures in one year. I wanted it to be deep. I wanted to feel something. Hell, with all the shit that's happened in my life this year, I NEEDED to feel something. I thought, maybe this woman can show me how to look for God in the face of personal tragedy. Instead, I got distracting sidebars and unamusing anecdotes that lent nothing to the narrative or the point I thought she was hideously trying to make.
That's not to say that this was a BAD book. Like I mentioned before, I can see why the general population has fallen in love with Elizabeth Gilbert and her sassy journey around the world. It was just entirely too informal for my taste and completely lacking in any true emotion. To me, she'd almost get there, and then very annoyingly tack a couple (parenthesis) stating "I remember something my friend said to me once ten years ago word for word..." I couldn't take it. 

Shortly after that was posted, all hell broke loose. People started telling me off, saying they 'felt sorry for me.' To be honest, I felt completely betrayed by Elizabeth Gilbert's superficial approach to these gorgeous countries/cultures. By her making a dime off of her pretense. I really hate her and this book for it.