Eat, Pray, Love

Ok. I have to admit that I am not really a fan of non-fiction. It just doesn't draw me in like fiction and all of its sub-genres do. But, I enjoyed this memoir.

Maybe it's because I listened to it as an audiobook and that Elizabeth Gilbert was the one reading it. Somehow I just felt like I was sitting in her house, listening to her recount tales of her travels through Italy, India, and Indonesia. She made it fun for me.

I did thoroughly enjoy her story in general though. I probably would have gotten bored if it had been an actual book in my hands, but I was able to sit back and listen to all these wild and occasionally humorous tales of this journey that she had to take to find peace and balance in her life after her mess of a divorce.

It also helps that it had a very positive ending that made me think that she had finally found happiness in her life after going through so many struggles just to get to the point where she could even begin her year-long trip through these three vastly different countries.

What the Dickens

Ok. This was just a fun story. I've read other books by Gregory Maguire, and they tend to leave me feeling generally happy. I think it's because he can take stories that we all know and love and make them into something new and different.

In the case of What-the-Dickens, he has transformed the basic idea of the tooth fairy and made it into an almost empowering story of someone different thinking he needs to conform, but discovering that what makes him different is the best thing in the world.

I think I just needed something fun after a bunch of books that are heavy in nature. But What-the-Dickens has just cemented my love for Gregory Maguire's books.

The Golem and the Jinni

It took me a while to warm up to this book. I liked it from the beginning, but it really wasn't until about halfway through the book that I started to really enjoy it.

I think it took me a while because it needed the chemistry between the two disparate main characters - Chava, the Golem and Ahmad, the Jinni. They're so different, but at the same time, they have similar stories. Both of them find themselves in New York, out of their element. The Golem is a clay woman, created for a man who dies on the passage to America. The Jinni comes out of a copper flask that a metalsmith is tasked with repairing. Neither of them really belongs in New York, but both of them have to find some way to survive.

The story has some interesting plot twists and characters that are necessary for the development of Chava and Ahmad.