"Eat, Pray, Love"

[fiefoe]

The premises of the book is off-putting, and the first couple of 'beads' aka the backstory confirmed my worst fears. Only Elizabeth Gilbert's nice, disarming voice kept my finger from the PAUSE button. That, and her "Stern Men".

The heroine:

• I felt like I was some kind of primitive spring-loaded machine, placed under far more tension than it had ever been built to sustain, about to blast apart at great danger to anyone standing by.
• borderless despair
• I walked home that night feeling like the air could move through me, like I was clean linen fluttering on a clothes-line,
• Tall and blond and pink-complexioned, I am less a chameleon than a flamingo.
• As David once put it, "You have the opposite of poker face. You have, like ... miniature golf face."
• That's when they catch up with me. They come upon me all silent and menacing like Pinkerton Detectives...Depression is the witty one... Loneliness, the more sensitive cop.
• I can actually find Puritan relatives with names like Diligence and Meekness.
• Always remember that in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.

The first stop:

• What this congress decided would henceforth be considered proper Italian was the personal language of the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri.
• pickled wild hyacinth bulbs
• <Fans going to a bakery after Lazio's loss; Gilbert's excellent mimic of the long exhortation/rant by an old Lazio fan.>
• I have uncorked my tongue, and Italian is pouring forth!
• Italy:...disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down.