Eat Pray Love III: Summary (Sorry it's such a quickie summary. I've got stuff I'm trying to get checked off my list, here.)

I really enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love. It was well-written, engaging, personable. It made we want to keep reading. It also made me want to pause so that I could digest a little of what this woman wrote.

However. I will not be keeping it. I will not be selling it used. I'll be destroying it. It's got the very worst permissive, postmodern "there are lots of roads to the top of the mountain of holiness" theology I've read in a long time. It's blasphemous. I'm not going to let it fall into anyone else's hands at all...it could do a lot of damage.

That being said, let me list some things I really liked about this woman's writing.

1) She explains the cultures of the three places she lived during her 'year of odyssey.' It's a travel book. I love getting a peek into the minds and hearts and ways of the Italian people, and of the religious Indian people, and of the Indonesian people. They way others think and operate fascinates me, and I feel like I gained a new perspective on these people groups for reading this book.

2) I never did get why yoga-people do yoga. It's good for your body, to be sure: your balance improves, your muscle tone and your core muscles get stronger. But the religious yoga-people do yoga to increase their ability to meditate.

3) For that matter, she explains why she's so drawn to meditation and religious-yoga. She does a good job clarifying that for little old me. I'm curious, and I get to find out what the big deal is.

4) She openly shares about her struggles with loneliness and depression. She's a good writer, and she makes me feel like I could overcome them too, should they ever come knocking. She writes like she's sitting down in my living room, chatting with me like I'm her good friend.

5) She also writes with purpose. Each chapter seems haphazard as you read it, but when you look back on the structure of the book, look back on the beginning from the end, it's a brilliant book.

Summing up: if you have godly, Biblical discernment and the strength to tell truth from lies, then go ahead and read this book. It's brilliant.

Under the Tuscan Sun I

Whew! It has been a long, long time. I'm sorry. I've been reading...just not blogging about it. So sue me! Hah.

I have been reading Under the Tuscan Sun and loving it. Frances Mayes' descriptions...her vivid language, verbs, adjectives....her observtions of Italian life and consequently, American life...it's been great.

It's nothing like the movie. I like the movie, but the movie is no Citizen Kane or Little Women. It's not a watch-again-and-again movie, if you get my drift. But the book! It's been good, good, good to read a book 'thats more setting than plot.

Why can't I write like this? Oh, Tolkien, you're...you're...you are the bomb. Diggity.

(Yes, yes, it's another description. Deal with it; Tolkien is wonderful at description!!)

Sam wanted to have a song composed about his adventures with Frodo, and he got his wish! After all the pain, struggle, suffering...they listen to the song. Read this description of their response:

And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the mistrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.

Seriously...I can't have been the only one ever to have had my attention caught by these phrases!
"wounded with sweet words"
"their joy was like swords"
"where pain and delight flow together"

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Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Ballantine: New York, 1955.

Joyousness

After Sam and Frodo succeed in destroying the Ring, they are saved from a terrible volcanic death by Gandalf. They wake, and after they ascertain that they are not dead, Gandalf asks Sam how he is. Read this and take note of the descriptiveness:

"How do I feel?" he cried. "Well, I don't know how to say it. I feel, I feel--" he waved his hands in the air-- "I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!"

Whew! Future writers, take note. This is how to describe!

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Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Ballantine: New York, 1955.

I'm There. (Tolkien's Descriptiveness)

I read halfway through the Lord of the Rings some years ago, and pooped out. I have to say, Tolkien gives sooooo much history, backstory, detail...so many, many names of characters...so much detailed description.

But this time, I'm making myself slow down and actually read the words he wrote. There's no speed-reading here. There's no surfing and skimming through. It's actual reading.

Guess what I have found? I found myself staying up late last night because Tolkien's description of Lothlorien was so beautiful, I couldn't bear to 'leave.' I also stayed up to keep reading because his descriptions of the Mines of Moria are so haunting that I had to read myself out of the darkness of caves and depths.

I remember being young and visiting the Tom Sawyer cave in Hannibal, Missouri. The tour guide had clearly given many tours already that day, and when she droned about turning the lights off so we could see how dark Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher had it, I didn't really hear her...but I remember the darkness. It was dark, and I can't (with my little talent) describe it other than saying 'It was dark!' But Tolkien had me, with my imagination, in the Mines of Moria, with the threat of the creatures the Dwarfs had awakened, with the Dwarf hero Balin having died of those creatures...I was there, people.

Here are a few paragraphs of description from the end. I'm recalling all the days I've ever been on a river, been near rapids, been in fog, been in dusky evenings. He's got me there. I can see it. I'm there, in my mind.

One by one Aragorn and Boromir carried the boats, while the others toiled and scrambled after them with the baggage. At last all was removed and laid on the portage-way. Then with little further hindrance, save from sprawling briars and many fallen stones, they moved forward all together. Fog still hung in veils upon the crumbling rockwall, and to their left mist shrouded the River: they could hear it rushing and foaming over the sharp shelves and stony teeth of Sarn Gebir, but they could not see it. Twice they made the journey, before all was brought safe to the southern landing.

There the portage-way, turning back to the water-side, ran gently down to the shallow edge of a little pool. It seemed to have been scooped in the river-side, not by hand, but by the water swirling down from Sarn Gebir against a low pier of rock that jutted out some way into the stream. Beyond it the shore rose sheer into a grey cliff, and there was not further passage for those on foot.

Already the short afternoon was past, and a dim cloudy dusk was closing in. They sat beside the water listening to the confused rush and roar of the Rapids hidden in the mist; they were tired and sleepy, and their hearts were as gloomy as the dying day.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. 1955: New York, Ballantine.