It doesn't happen very often, I think the movie was better than the book. Our gal here has problems for sure. One of them is communication with people you love. Lucky for her Penquin books picked up her travel tab, we should all be so lucky. I won't read the follow-up book. She's just too shallow.

I was a little disappointed in this novel, given all the hype around it (especially after the movie was released). I had trouble getting through the "India" chapters- I felt as though I was wading through a quagmire of self-serving navel-gazing and was bored by it. The Italy segment of the book was fabulous and made me want to visit all the sites Liz saw along her journey.

I really liked the book. Yes the author was fairly self entitled, but overall I liked her sense of adventure and the way that she wrote about her experiences. Quite humorous and fun.

This book made me want to start a book club. When reading it i wanted to talk to every and anyone about it. Each section was perfect.

I didn't read past the first few chapters due to the fact that the narcissism of the author interfered with any supposed story she was trying to tell. She is really taken with herself, but it doesn't mean the rest of us have to be!

The subject: Excellent The movie: Also excellent The writing style: Simply not to my taste -- too much babbling and digression, straying from the juicy stuff.

Yeah. It's ok. I don't really 'get' its extreme success outside of the USA. I do understand that it is a person's search for self and that necessarily means that it is very self absorbed/obsessed/interested so those aspects don't grate as badly for me. I loved the time in Italy. I do think that is the strongest part of the book so don't worry if you give up 1/3rd of the way through. With a sufi grandmother I found the bits in India fascinating and evocative. I can understand that someone without a personal interest might find this bit tedious but it was a quiet reminder to me that I do want to visit the place in QLD where her ashes lie. I'm not even vaguely interested in her followup book.

AVOID. I found the author selfish and self-absorbed to the point of being extremely unlikeable. I couldn't relate to her at all (I wanted to yell at her "oh for god's sake millions of people are starving and below the poverty line, get over yourself!") and by the time she got to India let alone Indonesia I didn't care what happened to her at all. This was one of the very few books I wanted to throw across the room in annoyance.

It's too bad the book didn't have James Franco in it, like the movie!

Given the recent lacklustre film version, I was surprised how much I enjoyed reading the book. I'm not sure that I'd like the author, were I to meet her, but I appreciated her thought processes. The book can also be read as a satisfying travel memoir, for the Italy and Indonesia segments. Strongly recommended even if you don't usually like "Oprah" books.