Am I the only person who hadn’t read "Eat, Pray, Love"?

With the film version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best selling novel coming out later this year, I thought I had better read the novel. Yes, I must be one of the few women over 35 in the English speaking world who had not read this novel. Talking to my friends I get the impression that many have read it, not necessarily because they were drawn by the blurb on the back cover, but due to the strong influence of word of mouth. Let’s face it, peer pressure to be in the loop is a strong seller of any product. Somehow I had managed to avoid being dragged in to the “rip” as I had heard that the novel wasn’t so much a story of Gilbert’s travels as her journey in finding “God” and this sort of subject is not really my thing.

In succumbing to the pull of conformation, I have to say that I have mixed emotions about the book. I found the first half which covered Gilbert’s marriage breakdown, divorce, and subsequent trip to Rome for four months engaging, sad, and the philosophical discussions on beliefs and life fitted in to the story well. Similarly, the last quarter of the book, where Gilbert returns to Bali to for fill the prediction that she would return which was made by a Balinese medicine man she had met on a previous visit, was suitably broad in content to keep me reading and thinking about some of the ideas that she was putting forward.

However, Gilbert just about lost me in the beginning of the second half of the book when she goes to live in her Guru’s Ashram in India. There is a lot of background on the faith system that is practiced in the Ashram and I felt that this part of the novel lacked the depth of story about the people and environment in which she was living - something that characterised the other parts of the book. I suppose the problem was that the Ashram is an enclosed environment, and this part of the book covers four months in this environment. I felt that there wasn’t enough substance to warrant the number of pages devoted to it. Needless to say, I did find this section of the book a little “preaching” in tone.

For those who would like to continue Gilbert’s story where she left off at the end of Eat, Pray, Love, the sequel Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage is out now.  Would I recommend reading Eat, Pray, and Love?  Yes, if only to be part of the conversation which is sure to arise over dinner with friends when the movie comes out. Although, I suppose you could cheat and just go and see the movie.

Non Fiction Bestsellers - "At Home" and "Dukan Diet"

According to The Age newpaper’s bestsellers list for independent booksellers (week ending June 5) two new non fiction books have made the list – At Home by Bill Bryson and The Dukan Diet by Pierre Dukan.

I’ve been reading a lot about the former in The Age lately as it has been featured a few times in different sections. While I am a newcomer to Bryson’s books, I did find interesting his history of science in A Short History of Everything, which you may recall from an earlier post, I listened to in audio book format on our long drive to Sydney at Easter. This time, Bryson tackles the theme of domestic history, primarily in Britain and America, using his house built in 1851 as the blueprint for stories about the people, craftsmen, and health of the time.  I’m not sure whether this book will capture the imagination of all his followers, as the appeal of this topic is probably not as universal across genders as that of his previous books. Maybe one to have a look at though.

My initial reaction to the second book, The Dukan Diet by Pierre Dukan, was that it sounded like a new fad diet book, so I googled it to find out why so many people are buying the book. In an article by the UK newspaper, The Daily Mail, in April this year, phrases such as “Have you ever wondered why most French women appear to be so effortlessly chic and slender, whatever their age? “ and “It acknowledges the innate pleasure to be had from eating and, incredibly, promises efficient weight loss while eating unlimited quantities of real food” caught my attention.

It appears this diet has been popular in France for 10 years and reminds me of the CSIRO diet that was popular in Australia a few years ago, in that it focusses on protein as the secret to its success.  It advocates one day a week being a protein only day, and features a staged approach, in that after the initial restricted diet to drop the desired weight quickly, it then reintroduces healthy food progressively into diet. I recall that at the time that the CSIRO diet was popular, there was a lot of criticism by nutritionists and dietitions about the high amount of protein that was recommended in the diet.  A while ago I read the book French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano which was interesting. Unlike the Dukan Diet, Guiliano maintains that the secrets are controlling the portion size, minimal consumption of processed food and the amount of physical exercise all those Parisian women get climbing the stairs to their 5th floor apartment!

Michael J Fox - A Lucky Man

If you grew up in the 1980’s like I did, you will remember the sitcom Family Ties, and the blockbuster Back to the Future movies. If not, you might have watched the Spin City TV series in the 1990s. Michael J. Fox starred in each, but disappeared from our screens after the fourth season of Spin City finished in American in May 2000. You may have wondered why he was no longer starring in the hit sitcom that revived his acting career after a number of Hollywood movie flops – a puzzling development. Lucky Man is Michael’s story about his early acting career and the effect that being diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease had on not only his career, but his family and his outlook on life.




This is a candid look into the life of a very private person. Unlike today’s celebrities who strive to be on the front cover of every magazine and having their personal life displayed for all to see, Michael J. Fox took great pains to keep his personal life as private as possible. No magazine spreads for his marriage in 1988 to Tracy Pollan, and his four children are rarely seen in the limelight. So it is admirable the way in which he has taken up the gauntlet to be the face of Parkinsons Disease. Parkinsons is a disease that affects the older part of the population, usually being diagnosed between 50 and 60 years of age.  Michael was 30 when he was diagnosed which puts him in the rare group of less than 10% who are under 40 when they are diagnosed. This group tend to keep their symptoms hidden for as long as they can in order to protect the welfare and finances of their families. As Michael puts it, fear of being marginalised and misunderstood – stigmatised – is prevalent amongst the younger people who suffer from the disease and loss of their job is a very real possibility when employers are made aware of the physical issues that accompany their disease. As a celebrity and already set up financially for the future, Michael recognised that he could do more than most.

This is not a depressing book despite the subject matter. Michael J. Fox tells his story in an uplifting way, and as he says, the ten years between being diagnosed and writing the book have been some of the happiest of his life. The diagnosis made him take stock of his life and the excesses that came with the success he was enjoying. In his eyes, he is a lucky man.

Lucky Man is well written and I enjoyed the insight into the world of television. Most of all I found his humility and optimism something we should all aspire to as this is someone who seems to have everything, but has to deal with a life crisis just like any one else. I picked up his new book , Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist, which was released last year, at the bookshop yesterday and I am looking forward to reading the latest in his journey.

Excellence – A Result of Effort or Talent?

This morning I listened to the ABC’s Life Matters programme and caught an interview with Matthew Sayed who has written a book called Bounce: How Champions are Made. The book asks the question: Are people who are held up as at the pinnacle of their fields there because of an inherent talent, or as a function of the amount of effort they put in? Sayed concedes that many sports people such as Roger Federer or Ricky Ponting do start out with an enhanced ability in their chosen area, but he argues that they become “excellent” due to hours and hours of practice, honing their reflexes and their ability to read the opponent’s body language rather than the ball. He argues that when it comes to a task characterised by complexity including but not exclusively motor skills, we can all become excellent at it (although not necessarily the best of the best as this does require that extra “wow” factor). Whether it be in art, music, sports, or business, we are not born with all the attributes we require, but we build them up through years of practice.

It’s not just any type of practice either, but practicing what you can’t quite do. This explains why someone whose been doing a job for several years might still have not attained that level of “excellence” at their work that you might expect. Research has shown that we tend to practice within our capabilities - what we can do - and thus we don’t challenge ourselves and consequently our brains and anatomy don't grow. The result is that many continue doing the same activity without improving.

Supporting this is research on how to encourage a "practicing" approach. A study that looked at whether the type of praise impacted on how people approached things had an interesting outcome. It found that when you praised someone’s talent for achieving a result, they were reluctant to attempt a harder challenge in case they failed, whereas praise for someone’s effort resulted in that person wanting to continue challenging themselves in order to do better. The study coordinators concluded that if you believe that talent is what makes success then when you fail at something you will give up because of you assume you lack talent to succeed. If you believe that effort results in success, then you keep striving to get better even if you fail at first. This has interesting implications for the way we parent and teach our children as it implies that we should encourage effort, rather than give praise for having a certain talent.

This sounds like an interesting book and I’m going to add it to my ever growing “to read” list.  If you want to listen to the interview, click here.

What are you getting for Mother's Day?

Do you give gifts for Mother’s Day? My children use to buy something from the Mother’s Day stall at school for me but now my older two like to buy something from the shops. We try to make it small so, for me, a book is my ideal gift as I can’t think of anything I would rather do than while a way a few hours reading a book. Hopefully I might get breakfast in bed as well!

I was thinking – what books would I like this Mother’s Day? I looked at a book store catalogue of a major chain that arrived in my post box this week and I thought the selections were very stereotypical.  In the catalogue were:

• Jodi Picoult. I don’t mind her books but I’m not sure that that’s what I want to read on my special day;

• Family meal type cook books. While I love cookbooks, unless it’s got some kind of story woven in, a book about slow cooking or family meals in a flash is like giving me electric appliances for my birthday which my husband knows is a “no no” if he wants to stay in my good books.

• Chick lit. We might choose these books for ourselves to read, but our better halves and children should beware that they’re not implying we’ve lost all our brain cells raising said children;

• Biographies about inspiring women. I’m not sure Susan Boyle is my idea of a role model, and some of the others just make me feel inadequate as I look at my daily routine of taxi driver for the kids, cook and housekeeper for everyone.

• Travel to far away places – not for me this year. My son is going on a more exotic trip with his school than I will have this year.

• Body and diet. These made me really laugh.  I'm not sure that it's a good idea for a man to give The Feel Good Body by Jennifer Fleming and Anna Louise Bouvier, for example, to his partner on behalf of the children and I not sure how I would feel if my teenage sons gave it to me or how my mother would feel if I gave it to her.

What I’d like to get for Mother’s Day:

For my foodie passions: Sunday’s Kitchen by Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan.

Those living in Melbourne may be familiar with Heide, the home of John and Sunday Reed, and sanctuary at various times to many Melbourne artists and writers such as Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and Charles Blackman. This is part history book, part cookbook and sounds fascinating. A review of the book can be found here.

For the fiction reader: The Second-Last Woman in England by Maggie Joel

This book intrigued me after I read about it in a blog called Bookbath which I follow (you can read the review here). Set after World War II, the story starts with a murder. It is not the murder that is focus of the book though, as apparently the perpetrator is know at the outset. It is the relationships between the main characters during the year prior that are important.

A biography to make us think how fortunate we are: Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox.

I, like many of my age group, loved the Back to the Future movies and TV shows that Michael has appeared in during the 1980’s. When he wrote his first book, Lucky Man, on living with Parkinson’s disease after being diagnosed at the young age of 30, I meant to read it but have never got around to it. I now have it beside my bed to tackle soon. I think he is such an inspiring person, and I’m sure his approach to life is very different these days from when he was at the pinnacle of his acting career. It’s good to be reminded sometimes as to how lucky we are.

Conquering Everest - two tales from different perspectives

I am not a big reader of non-fiction but I do like reading biographies. To my surprise, I have read a number of sporting/extreme sports biographies that I have really enjoyed so I thought I would share two of them with you.

Over the summer holidays I picked up Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, an account of an expedition up Mount Everest in March 1996 – a climbing season that saw the largest number of deaths on the mountain, with eight from the group that climbed to the summit on the day that Jon did. Jon, a journalist and seasoned climber and mountaineer, joined the expedition on assignment for his magazine to write an account of how attaining the summit of Everest has been made accessible to everyone, no matter their climbing ability, as long as they can pay.

To me, the commercialism of climbing Everest revealed in the book was eye opening, as I grew up in New Zealand where Sir Edmund Hillary's summiting of Everest was the subject of many school projects. Up until now, my perception was that reaching the summit of the world’s highest mountain was something that only very few could do, a feat of awe and wonder. Reading Jon Krakauer's book made me feel a little sad that this was no longer so. The descriptions of the camps with the sewerage and rubbish, the gastrointestinal upsets experienced by all, and the attitudes of the different groups to each other - not one of help and assistance for mutual benefit, but competition and only looking after your team – definitely removed any sense of wonder that I use to have. Throughout the book I kept asking myself why the people climbing couldn’t see that there was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Obviously, I am not an extreme sportswoman!

Prior to reading Jon’s experience, I had read an account of a more recent climbing season in Lincoln Hall’s, Dead Lucky: Life After Dead on Mount Everest, where eleven people died. In May of 2006 Lincoln Hall was left for dead on Everest after collapsing from altitude sickness and being unable to be revived by the two Sherpa he was climbing with. Like Jon, Lincoln hadn’t climbed at this level of challenge for sometime as he was devoted to family, but couldn’t resist this last crack at the unobtainable.

While covering similar ground, these books have stories told from two different perspectives. Jon’s book on is the story of reality - how could this happen, and why has this beautiful, unique area been allowed to be denigrated by “tourism”. In contrast, Lincoln’s story is more uplifting in nature, focusing on man triumphing over nature and miracles do happen. Unlike a lot of non fiction books, both are written well and were worth reading if only to shake my head in wonder at why men and women challenge themselves in this way.

Blog to Book - "Living Oprah" by Robyn Okrant

I heard about this book on the "Life Matters" show on Radio National yesterday, and given my post earlier this week on the Julie/Julia Project blog and the book and movie that followed, I had to find out more about Robyn's blog and book. From the website of the book's publisher in Australia, Harper Collins:

"On January 1, 2008, Robyn Okrant kicked off a year-long experiment to find out what would happen if an average 35-year-old woman put her life in the hands of television′s most influential personality, Oprah Winfrey. Using The Oprah Winfrey Show, O, The Oprah Magazine and Oprah.com as a roadmap for her journey, her rule was whatever Oprah says, she does. From her wardrobe to her marriage, diet, spiritual life, finances, home and beyond, the author redesigned her entire life according to Winfrey′s ′best life′ advice.

Why Oprah? Hers is the quintessential rags-to-riches story, and her ′Live Your Best Life′ theme inspires millions to strive for happier, more productive lives. And of all the cultural influences on women, Oprah is one of the most prevalent and powerful."

Do you watch Oprah? I don't, but a lot of people do – approximately 23 million people each week.

I think the interesting thing for me is why these blogs are so popular. Here are two women who have attached themselves to celebrities via these challenges they have set themselves, and other people are willing to spend time everyday logging in to read about what happens. Is it because we all believe that the blogger can’t possibly achieve what they have set out to do? Maybe, we feel that the blogger identifies with our own thoughts – can a normal person actually cook like this or, by following Oprah’s advice, make themselves into a better person? Are the meals in this cook book and the advice given on this talk show just something that we aspire to but don’t really believe can be achieved?
As a society, we love to watch self improvement shows, cooking shows such as Masterchef, reality TV shows such as Biggest Loser, and to read books about how to improve our lives such as “The Secret”.  Are we really interested in putting into practice what we watch/read or are we just happy to be caught up in the sense of belonging to this fantasy world where everyone can be a celebrity.

"Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen" by Julie Powell

On Saturday night I was home alone – my husband in Bendigo, my younger children in bed, and my oldest son out at a party. I poured a glass of wine and popped in that DVD that I’m sure my husband wouldn’t be interested in watching – Julie & Julia. I was dying to watch it as I missed it at the cinema and I had read Julie Powell’s book, on which the movie is based, last year.

The book tells the story behind the blog, “The Julie/Julia Project”, that Julie Powell wrote in 2002/3. At the time of starting the blog, Julie is working in a government job answering calls from people affected by the 9-11 Twin Towers collapse, approaching the big “3-0” milestone, and feeling she has nothing to show for it. What she needs is a challenge!  Using her mother’s copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, published in 1961 by pioneering American TV chef Julia Child, Julie decides to cook every recipe in the book in 12 months, and to write about it in a blog. Surprisingly, the blog caught on, and Julie’s fan base grew.

You can still read Julie’s blog online and I had a look today. Why was the blog such a success? Maybe it was something to do with the newness of blogs. Since the advent of TV we have become obsessed with celebrities, and anyone can become a celebrity by posting their life on the internet. Blogs were embraced then, much as today’s younger generation have taken Twitter to heart today. Maybe it was the style of the blog – it was witty and funny, and written in a style that made you think you were having a conversation with a friend. Maybe it was the subject matter. I’m sure that many of us can identify with Julie’s ups and downs as we try to cook new dishes. The triumph of doing something complicated well, and the despair when things don’t turn out to look as the picture in the cookbook does.

The movie is slightly different than the book as it runs as two parallel stories – the one written by Julie Powell, but also that of Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep), an American diplomat’s wife based in Paris after the WWII, looking for something to do with her time. I was fascinated with Julia’s story and would love to read the book based on it, My Life in France, by Julia Child and Alex Prud’Homme.

Our Father Who Wasn't There

I've taken to listening to Radio National in the morning as I do all those things around the home that comes with having a husband and three children, and I particularly like the "Life Matters" and "The Book Show" segments. This morning I was listening to an interview with David Carlin who has written a book called "Our Father Who Wasn't There", to be launched in Victoria at Readings in Carlton on 17th February.

It is a non-fiction book, but reads like a detective novel. That's because David Carlin never knew his father, Brian - he died when David was six months old. As David grew up, he noticed that no one talked about how his father died.  It wasn't until  he was 14 that he found out that his father committed suicide but even then the "why" was unexplained.  In the community where David lived - a country town south of Perth, the 60's were a time when death wasn't talked about and suicide was a taboo subject. Fourty five years after the death of his father, David pieces together the puzzle to understand who Brian was from the memories of friends, family, and publically available information such as Brian's military records. David discovers a man who was successful in his career, funny, and popular, but in private, a deeply troubled man suffering with bouts of mental illness, and struggling to deal with events in his past.


This story caught my attention and held it because it echoed many conversations I have had with friends and family over the last few years about the cohort of 40 plus year olds in our society who are not in a stable relationship, and who are battling with the acceptance of living alone, not having the family that they always assumed that they would have, and living in a the community which is too busy to draw these people in and provide that sense of belonging that we all need. There are many "Brians" in society today, and the issue of how we as a society support people in this sort of need is still one that we haven't come to grips with.

You can listen to this interview, by taking this link to the Radio National website: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2010/2801766.htm