Elizabeth Gilbert Fills the House

This past Friday night I was privileged to introduce "Eat, Pray, Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert to a crowd of 800 people filling the Burnsville Performing Arts Center. She is currently on a book tour promoting her new book, "Committed: A Love Story," which was just released in paperback. It details the process she and the man she met in Bali (during "Eat, Pray, Love") went through when faced with getting married in order to keep him in the country, even though they had both vowed never to marry again.

She was a dream of a speaker - engaging, funny, sharing from the heart. She took questions from the audience and signed a zillion books. Truly a wonderful evening.

I had not planned on reading "Committed." I started it at home, and when it got to "the history of marriage" I stopped reading. I seem to find this a lot in nonfiction books. Someone wants to tell a personal story but for some reason feels compelled to give "the history of dogs" if it is a dog book or "the history of cooking" if it is a story about their mother's cooking. I'm the kind of reader where I really want to read the personal story or memoir, and could care less about "the history of... ."

But when Elizabeth Gilbert read from her book Friday night, it was so funny and interesting (I guess I didn't get that far) that I decided to give it another try. (FYI, the hardcover version is called, "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage.")

Let me know if you've read it, and what you thought.

Update: I read "Committed" on my recent trip to Florida. It was delightful. I will admit I skipped the academic parts that I find tedious. But Gilbert's personal story was just as fresh and interesting as you would expect from this author.