About Leap!

I've been reading Leap! for the last week or so. I find the author sort of whiny and directionless, perhaps because the book is one long whiny search for direction. She is in her 50s, and has found herself no longer as much in demand as a television writer and journalist. She wants to find a purpose for her waning years, so she sets off in search of one, interviewing celebrity friends, visiting ashrams, taking workshops and volunteering for charity missions.

I have a tendency to internalize books and movies, so much so that I once saw Brother from Another Planet very late at night and forgot that I could actually talk. Ok, maybe I was just tired. Maybe that's how I ended up watching that movie in the first place. I still remember how much I cried after I read The Yearling.

If I read a book that is sad, I'm sad. If I read a book that is triumphant, I am temporarily transformed. Which is why I loved Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. Yes, I know, she was on Oprah yesterday, and women in the audience were gushing over the book, saying it had changed their lives. Today, Ms. Gilbert's site is coming up with error messages, probably due to the deluge of hits from gushers and wanna-be gushers. Usually I run the other way from Oprah recommendations, but I read this book first.

What was different about these two books was the tone, the character of the narration. Both women found themselves at a crossroads, searching for meaning and purpose. (I just realized this seems to be a theme in my recent reading...) Elizabeth Gilbert goes on a mission to see what it is about three different cultures that makes them so good at what they are good at. Her story is fun to read, a story told by a good friend over drinks in a cozy lodge, a friend you love so much and who has been through so much that you can allow her the pleasures you jealously want for yourself. I think Sarah Davidson went about it the wrong way, looking for a living, or looking for an end result. She hops from place to place, person to person, never sinking in or opening herself up to what the culture has to offer. She seems to be looking for a "thing" instead of looking for something in herself, and she seems dissatisfied and critical at every step of the way. On a volunteer stint in India, other volunteers tag her as "needy" and "critical". I don't want to hang out with her either.

I'll finish the book, but so far it's been difficult to pull any lessons out of it, because the visits with neat people are so brief and the writing style is so sparse.

If anyone has a suggestion for a non self-help, fiction book, I'd love it. I'm getting tired from so much purposeful reading. I always say that what I want is a story about someone like me, with a happy ending. But someone not like me works, too.