Non-fiction

I read a lot, though I have to admit, not as fast as I once did because I fall asleep. But I always have a book going, usually a novel. Recently I've read two non-fiction books and each surprised me in its own way.

Eat, Pray, Love

Have you read this book? Seems like everyone has and everyone loves it—except me. Ugh. I really disliked this book. It is an account of a young woman's ugly divorce and how she regained her equilibrium and found love by traveling to Italy, where she ate, to India where she learned to pray and Bali where she found love. It's not that I am opposed to finding oneself, journeys of self-discovery—all that, but this felt very contrived and very self-indulgent. For starters, she paid for the travel with the big advance she got on the book, so it was kind of a foregone conclusion that this trip was going to yield amazing insights and colorful characters and the requisite happy ending before it even began.

I was annoyed with the author and her spoiled whining and what seemed to me like a very superficial spirituality. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood. Seems like people I know have problems and setbacks far graver than the author's, and they cope, and they work, and they find strength within themselves, and they learn to forge ahead in ways that don't require taking off for a year and finding a wise old guru to provide their answers. Like I said, Ugh.

Going Gray

I mentioned this book in my post a few months ago about my own gray hair and I was contacted by someone from the publishing company, thanking me for mentioning the book and offering to send me a copy. Well, sure! Why not? I honestly did not expect to like this book very much. I expected it to be pretty superficial and filled with angst about aging and losing one's youthful looks. I was very pleasantly surprised. I found it to be self-deprecating and thoughtful. The author (Anne Kreamer) found that her worst fears were unfounded and that, in fact, in many ways people responded to her more positively once she allowed her hair to gray, even men, when she experimentally signed up for an online dating service. She thought a lot about the value of authenticity and "if you can stop worrying about what others might think of your hair color, and of feeling obliged to wear camouflage, then you free yourself up to think about other things—that by abandoning the small stuff you may make room for the big."

I found her journey much more satisfying than the Eat, Pray, Love journey.