Book Review: Committed

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Elizabeth Gilbert's follow up from her beloved "Eat, Pray, Love" is a great romp through the institution of marriage. A mixture of opinion, facts, interviews, observations, historical interpretation, and memoir, "Committed" is probably not what most people expect from the woman who penned EPL. Weaving together both a personal narrative of her and her fiance's travels and ordeals with the US Immigration Service and reflections on what it means to be married, Gilbert offers an interesting look at the biggest commitment that two people can make to one another.

I enjoyed this book. I thought it was funny at times, poignant at others, and all around interesting. It has been some time since I last read "Eat, Pray, Love", so I didn't find myself disappointed with the tone, or subject matter, or the style of how the book was written - all that meaning to say, I wasn't trying to compare this book to EPL. And I'm glad that I didn't, because I think this book should be appreciated on its own feet. If EPL didn't exist, I think this book would be received as the interesting read it in fact is. It gave me lots to think about and reflect upon, and it was really interesting to read in light of all the other material that I have recently been reading about women, marriage, careers, and life.

I don't agree with everything that Gilbert says or presents as fact in the book - and I'm sorry, the history nerd in me would like a works cited page and footnotes for all the research and works cited throughout the book. The Acknowledgments section just didn't cut it for me. But then again, I am a big nerd.

But I do believe that anyone that is contemplating marriage or thinks about being married or would like to be married or is married, should take an afternoon or two and read this book. The last chapter was probably my favorite, since it was really in that chapter that I heard Gilbert's "voice" really come alive again, the way that it was in Eat, Pray, Love. All in all, a great read.

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Yikes!!

For the love of the Lord, I did not know that this beginning month of 2008 would be so flippin' congested with everything under the sun. That is kind of a vague statement, but I just need to blog about the craziness of my life right now before I can go back and continue trying to tackle it.

1. Young Life - Two of my teammates are leaving, I want to try to create a small group with girls, we are going to be doing All-Area clubs, I don't know what to do about camp this summer, there is a complete absence of other volunteers, Feb. Banquet, and we need to plan for the semester. It feels like it would be a lot easier if I just volunteered once a month at a soup kitchen. Which I probably should do anyway.

2. Work - Signature: Putting together Powerpoint presentation for our annual Employee of the Year meeting, setting that meeting up, planning for it, coordinating our Awards Banquet, working as a team leader, putting together that powerpoint presentation, helping my boss put together his presentations for those meetings, implementing a new HR system company-wide and conducting training classes, continuing to test the new HR system, creating a new company cultural program - the 4C's of Trust, creating posters for that program, coordinating employee development training, coordinating and putting together meeting arrangements for our Quarterly Business Review, putting together that agenda, finding a way to cater the event, getting the appropriate people to create their presentations. Baseball: Putting together financial statements for the Braves, meeting on Sunday for the Braves, collecting contracts, following up on documents and payments that still need to be turned in, start thinking about fundraising opportunities, coordination of golf tournament for 08, ordering t-shirts for winter campers, putting together a program for the marketing interns this summer, finding the interns, NVTBL financial refunds, requests, turning in documents to start new money market sweep fund, continuing to fill in for our administrator who suffered an aneurysm this fall, set up a meeting for ODL teams, website maintenance, alert and to-do maintenance.

3. Personal - Set up the financing for my new car (which, yes I did buy, and have accomplished one of my 2008 goals, yay!), sell my old car, change registration address on my new car, driver's license, town decals, and register with the Commissioner of Revenue(?). Continue working on my first half of 08 goals.

So much to do (and most has to be done by month's end!) and SO little time! But I'm going to try to make like the ants (thanks analogy that I read last night) and chip away at this a little at a time. Hopefully it will all get done without my hair turning completely gray!