The One Eighty

During my time in Philadelphia, I dated a man named Frank. Frank and I met in a workout class. We were paired as partners by the drill sergeant sadist instructor for manual resistance exercises. The instructor happened to be a mutual friend to whom Frank and I both reported our attraction to the other. With my blessing, the instructor passed along my phone number to Frank who waited nearly three weeks to phone me.

Over the course of a year, Frank and I dated and broke up so frequently that even we had trouble keeping track of the state of our relationship. Our numerous attempts to rekindle our romance eventually ended in a mutual admission that maybe we ought to just be friends.

My success rate with rekindling the romance of ill-fated knitting project is on par with rekindling relationships, but it seems that I fare much better when it comes to testing the waters a second time with books.

Last June, I started reading Eat, Pray, Love thinking that Elizabeth Gilbert could have no finer audience than I. Well, I was wrong. Everything about the initial chapters rubbed me the wrong way, and I found the miasma of Ms. Gilbert's ennui too foul to endure.

Yet last week in a used bookstore, I spied a slightly worn copy that whispered to me, Take me home. I promise you will like me. And wouldn't you know -- I am utterly smitten with this book. I am smitten with Gilbert's style and way with words. In fact, I may be smitten with Gilbert herself -- in that innocent author-crush sort of way.