Eat Pray Love - Elizabeth Gilbert

I'd heard so much about Eat Pray Love, book and movie, but what really caught my attention was the fact that Julia Roberts was in Bali just before we were there a year ago in October filming this very movie. Exciting, lol! It's autobiographical, one year out of this author's life whilst she went travelling to find herself. Who hasn't gone travelling for an extended period of time to find themselves and thought about writing about it? (My manuscript is still sitting hidden away in some obscure location in my laptop.) If you haven't then you're either one of those 'found' types, lucky you, otherwise you don't know what you're missing! However, what she experiences, it's not exactly life and death adventure. Which may give you an idea of what we're talking about, and also makes me wonder why it was made into a movie. Ms Gilbert spends a lot of time lamenting about her ex-boyfriend, who she met right after divorcing her ex-husband, and whilst she's on her journey writes about fighting off sexual temptation the whole time she's in Italy. She also says she's not been alone since she was 14. Really - most of the people I know have been single and desperate for years; some have been single all their lives. I get the whole obsessing with the ex thing and that it can take months to move on and she's writing about her own life experience; it's just that it kind of made the whole thing a little slow. But, that is just the kind of book it is and she's sold a million copies of it, so I shouldn't criticise too much.
What I did like about it was the last third of the book where she's describing Bali as it brings back good memories of our holiday there. There's also a  bit on where she describes a whole family including baby balanced on one moped speeding along a dual carriageway, which I saw a lot on our holiday but had forgotten all about until I read that bit in her book. I also liked all the talk about meditation, I'm interested in meditation myself and it was very interesting to see her account on how she practised it.
It took ages for me to read it, I picked it up and put it back down several times over a period of several months, only picking it up properly when I went on maternity leave and came to HK. The movie was still playing in the HK cinemas, but I didn't want to see it until I'd finished the book. And then by the time I'd finished the book the cinemas had taken it off their screens, due to it being a bit of a flop - I still would have watched it out of interest and having lots of time on my hands.
In summary, the book's slow but it's a nice little story on a real woman's travelling experience, aspects of which I identified with. She's about my age as well. Not sure about hooking up with a guy 20 years older though.

After Dark - Haruki Marukami

This is my first Haruki Marukami book, which I picked up from the library at City Hall in Central. Although it is not my first Marukami story, having watched 'Norwegian Wood' at the cinema a few days prior. Its kind of a long short story on the events that occur over about 8 hours in the period of one night, to a young woman who is unable to sleep but doesn't want to go home and has to hang out in various dubious locations around her locale. There are brief interludes referring to her beautiful sister sleeping in a room and being watched by a man with no face through a television which gives you the creeps a few times throughout and reminds me of The Ring, and made me wonder whether this was a Sci Fi book or not, not being familiar with Marukami's style. It ticks along and is entertaining in a 'I wonder what's going to happen next, I hope it's nothing too gratuitous because that would be such a cop out' and there's a constant feeling of waiting for something climactical for the story lines to lead to. But it doesn't, ending all story threads in the morning. So it was like, 'ah, so it's like an arty type book...' Which isn't my kind of thing, definitely glad its not a book I've bought, the cover's a bit creepy too. But as I say, it's entertaining enough in a slow, literary, arty way, and it's short enough too to not make you think jeez what a waste of time.