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One for the Books by Mary Louise Ruehr

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I've recently returned from traveling all over the world in my armchair, and I've come back with a new favorite book.

"Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia" by Elizabeth Gilbert has just about everything. It's a travel memoir, a romantic adventure story, and a woman's mystical search for herself. By page 11 I was laughing out loud. By page 16 I decided I'd follow her anywhere.

It's really three books, divided by her adventures in each of the three countries she visits: "I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two." She first explains her disastrous relationships with men and her blossoming spiritual curiosity, both themes throughout her travels.

In the "Eat" part of the book, she's in Italy -- and she eats a lot: "The waiter brings me airy clouds of ricotta sprinkled with pistachio, bread chunks floating in aromatic oils, tiny plates of sliced meats and olives, a salad of chilled oranges tossed in a dressing of raw onion and parsley." She studies Italian -- "a language I find more beautiful than roses" -- and finds the Italian men to be gorgeous: "They're like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud."

From there, she moves on to a yoga ashram in India -- "Pray" -- where she looks "for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water." The folly of her attempts at lengthy meditation made me laugh out loud, and I loved getting to know the characters at the ashram.

Finally, she moves on to Bali -- "Love" -- where she finds romance while appreciating her view of the countryside: "The unnecessary and superfluous volume of pure beauty around here is not to be believed."

This book is warm and delightful, and the author becomes our friend -- a woman with a bitter, broken heart who finds peace, joy, love ... and a couple of great pasta recipes. It's an absolutely marvelous book. I even set it aside and read something else for a while because I didn't want this one to end.

Our next literary trip takes us for "A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller" with Frances Mayes, author of the best-selling "Under the Tuscan Sun." Her writing is like poetry, painted with vivid images. Here, she travels around Europe, including Great Britain, and to Turkey and Morocco. She sails on the Mediterranean under a sky full of stars, she visits ancient ruins in Turkey, and in Mantua, Italy, she thinks of Shakespeare's settings. But she doesn't just travel -- she stays awhile. She asks, "What is home to those around me? Who are they in their homes, those mysterious others?" To find out, she rents houses, moves in and meets the neighbors to "learn the rhythms of their lives."

I recommend her for the intellectual reader, as she constantly quotes literature and discusses the lives of local artists at each stop. In France, she talks fervidly about the writings of Colette: "She peels and sections and bites into experience like an orange." In Bath, England, she finds herself "walking down streets where Jane Austen's skirts once grazed the stones." Her imagination is always present: "We felt like guests at a country house where someone is perhaps poisoned, the inspector droll, and all the weekend guests suspects." And, she says, "Any minute Peter Pan might have popped out from behind a rock. We might step inside a fairy ring."

Everywhere she and her husband go, they indulge in shopping, food, and flower gardens. Then they move on, summoned by "the lovely allure of tomorrow when a foreign city will reveal undreamed pleasures." Very nicely done.

In "Land of a Thousand Eyes: The Subtle Pleasures of Everyday Life in Myanmar," Peter Olszewski talks about living and working in the country we used to call Burma. Olszewski is an Australian, so he brings an interesting viewpoint as he discusses Burma's bloody history and describes the government's "repressive rule" and the "insidious, all-pervading censorship" by the Military Intelligence.

With him, we meet some of the local people. He describes "office girls" who at lunchtime buy "small tin containers of oily fried crickets, snacking on them, scrunching the obviously tasty delights in their delicate, pretty mouths." He describes his surroundings: "I see two women dressed in elaborate costume. They are proudly walking along a dusty village boulevard, dodging pariah dogs scratching furtively for food, stepping around scrawny, long-legged chickens pecking desperately in the dirt, and avoiding slothful pigs reeking from their wallows in the nearby nauseating open drains." He suffers through monsoon rains and the "screechingly hot" weather and goes on to paint with words: "Large red rhododendron-like flowers explode by the roadside, framing a view of green stepped-terrace paddies lurking behind wisps of mist."

For our last stop, in "The Places in Between," author Rory Stewart takes us with him as he walks across Afghanistan in an attempt to walk all the way across Asia.

It's 2002. The Taliban has just been thrown out, but things are far from peaceful, and he is assigned some unsavory characters to travel with. He doesn't know whether they will guard him or kill him. There's danger everywhere, but not everyone is out to get him, and he befriends a most wonderful dog. It's an interesting read, and his sketches make it feel like a journal. Keep it in mind for a Father's Day gift.

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What They're Reading: "Plainsong" by Kent Haruf will be the topic of the Randolph Library Book Discussion Group at 6:30 p.m. May 7 in the Randolph Community Center.

The Pierce-Streetsboro Library Book Discussion Group will talk about "All Creatures Great and Small" by James Herriot at 6:45 p.m. May 14 in the library's meeting room.

Send book news to Books@recordpub.com.