BOUGHT
Hateship, Frienship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage - Alice Munro
A Worldly Country - John Ashbery
Howard's End - EM Forster
The Five People you meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
Dress your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris
Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
READ
A Worldly Country - John Ashbery
Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
I love Ashbery's poems - one of my favorites was my comissioned for my city and resides on a bridge I ride underneath every week. Eat, Pray, Love was so different than what I normally read, and there were parts of it that took solipsism to a whole new height (for crying out loud, I read four pages about the author's bladder infection), but there were also true gems of wisdom and revelations about happiness. My favorite quote:
"All the sorrow in the world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in
the big global Hitler'n'Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal
level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of
unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or at the very least
inconvenience to those aroud me. The search for contentment is, therefore,
not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift
to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You
cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to everyone else."
Posts
2 comments:
I -really- want to read Eat, Pray, Love (and I want a hard-cover copy), but I don't want to shell out the money yet. I usually get books after I've read them to make sure that they are books that I'll keep & enjoy & re-read for a long time to come (this also cuts down on the clutter). But EPL is obviously the book of the year and I am #20484218439 on my library's waitlist.
sigh.
Hateship... etc. has been on my list for a while. I read the first story in a bookshop and have been waiting to come across it in a used bookstore ever since. I like leaving a lot of my book purchases to serendipity like that.
And I really loved Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim. It's not as good as Me Talk Pretty Someday, but David Sedaris is one of my favorites, so he could do just about anything and I'd laugh (with appropriate levels of ruefulness).
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