Introspection and Innocence (69, 78 & 84)

To round out the massive numbers of books I've reviewed, I'm going back to some more of the fabulous adult books I've read this year. I read a lot more YA because A) that's my actual age, not that I've ever stuck to reading just my grade-level books and B) that's what I'm writing. Still, it's nice to break away from the same style of books and read some more nonfiction.

Eat, Pray, Love

I mentioned Eat, Pray, Love when I was reading it and I feel the same way about it as I do know. I realize the whole "journey to find myself" is a very privileged white European/American kind of thing, but this book does make some excellent points about what we should all value in life. I especially love all the diverse people that Gilbert meets in her travels.

Plus, the way she writes is so witty and friendly. The book itself is pretty big but it took me very little time to speed through its three sections. This was made easier due to the fact that she went to three beautiful countries and I'm very jealous of all the things she got to see (although I have been to Italy before, it wasn't for months and months).

Committed

So Elizabeth Gilbert meets a guy at the end of Eat, Pray, Love and due to his foreign citizenship, they have to deal with their negative feelings about getting married so that he can live with her. This book got me thinking even more about my own life and the various goals/dreams that I have. I guess from the various family-oriented classes that I've taken (diversity, relationships, etc.) I have a better understanding than she did of what to expect from a marriage, but I still learned a lot about the institution from her research.

I love when other people do the hard work for me - researching the historical background and looking through statistics. I found her findings (and again, the interactions with people all over the world) endlessly fascinating, especially the idea that a marriage can be revolutionary, in that it's the one place where governments cannot exert total control over individuals.

Room

Man abducts woman. Man rapes woman. Woman has baby boy who grows up thinking everything outside Room is Outer Space. You might think that a book that explores such dark aspects of humanity would be hard to read, but Room was so compelling and honest that it was difficult to put down. I think that's because it's narrated by an innocent 5 year old boy, who doesn't realize that his mother has been kidnapped and imprisoned for seven years in the shed he calls home.

It's all too easy to forget that there are people behind breaking news stories - mothers and children dealing with the fallout of being held captive, raped, sold as slaves, etc. It's so easy to forget that they have permanent scars, physical and mental, that trump our morbid curiosity and deserve more than passing pity.

Because it's Christmas and this is only supposed to be a book review, I'll spare you my whole rant on this subject, but you can expect me to bring it up again.

More Blessed Word Count: will probably not be updated before this automatically posts