Cultured Travel Guide Books - Learning to Float: The Journey of a Woman, a Dog, and Just Enough Men |
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List Price: $22.95
Our Price: $2.25
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.7092
EAN: 9780767910033
ISBN: 0767910036
Label: Broadway
Manufacturer: Broadway
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2002-06-11
Publisher: Broadway
Release Date: 2002-06-11
Studio: Broadway |
| Spotlight Customer Reviews: |
Customer Rating:  
Summary: Road Trip to Discover Herself
Comment: The author takes time out from her journalist job and boyfriend conflicts to meander down the coast from Maine to the tip of Florida. She starts out with a dog and a small tent, but returns the dog to one of her men and continues on alone.
Her indecisiveness over committing to marriage is the overall theme running through the book. Trying to sort this out, she alternates between a well-turned phrase and some purple prose as she matches scenes from the road trip to her relationships over the years.
Sprinkled in are flashbacks of homespun moments with her grandfather at the family's cottage in Maine. The reader meets each boyfriend as she mulls over her failed and rejected relationships. She doesn't understand what works, what doesn't and the reader hasn't a clue either.
Along the way there are indifferent encounters with an assortment of characters. There are some nice descriptions of people and places.
It interested me enough to keep reading to the end, but never produced any real insights into love and relationships that I could see.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Learning to Float
Comment: I started reading this book after I found it on the Barnes and Noble book club list. I just got done reading a very depressing book and I was in the mood for something light and happy and that is just what I found. Lili Wright has an awesome writting style that reminds me of one of my favorite shows, Sex and the City. Lili reveals her past relationship flaws and insecurities she has in order to find more about herlself and about love. She travels to all the places that she spent time with past flames and doing this she feels she will gain closure. This just creates more confussion and she realizes she needs to find out about herself and not about the past men in her life. I enjoyed this book but at times her life seemed a little too much like a soap opera. Read this book if your in the mood for a crazy romantic tale but I wouldn't recommend this book to someone who doesn't like a lot of drama. I would give this book 3 stars.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Saga of a [woman in moral decline]
Comment: What begins as a promising self-study lapses into old war stories of late-teen bed hopping, drugs, and aimless amorality. Only a puerile mind could care about how Lili gets herpes and loses her self-respect.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An interesting experience
Comment: For anyone who has ever asked questions about the way they live their life, especially in relation to others, this is a book to explore. Following Lili Wright as she examines the world inside and outside herself, you can feel the learning and growing amid the struggling. As one who struggles while learning and growing, especially when looking at the world from the inside-out, I appreciated her honesty and candor about her experiences.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Inspirational Journey
Comment: When I picked up this book at a little bookstore at the beach, I was on a week-long vacation from a job I disliked and trying both to relax and to do some soul-searching. As Lili says, there are those people who have their personal lives in order and whose professional lives are a mess and those whose professional lives are in order but their personal lives are a mess. I had always lived in the second camp - but, at the time, I was facing chaos in my professional life and needed a break from reality.From the moment I started reading "Learning to Float," I literally could not put it down. Lili speaks to readers like an old friend - airing her dirty laundry and taking us through the painful, yet liberating, process of trying to figure out what she needs to do to be happy. "Learning to Float" is a deeply personal book. Yet, for others who are facing - or have ever faced - a time in life when we have to reassess our priorities and figure out what we need to do next, "Learning to Float" reassures us that we are not alone and provides inspiration that we, too, can find our way.
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| Editorial Reviews: |
Lili Wright is a thirty-something woman on the emotional lam. Faced with a choice between two men--Stuart, the steady veterinarian, and Peter, the dreamy writer--she climbs into her car and leaves them both behind.
With only a borrowed dog named Brando for company and a map of twelve states in her pocket, Lili sets out on a road trip, hoping that by setting herself in motion she will find a way to settle down. Charting a course from Cadillac Mountain in Maine to the faded glory of Key West, Florida, she camps out on beaches and crashes on couches, in sketchy motels and even in a cop's trailer. She travels not only south, but also back in time, trying to figure out why previous relationships with a Nantucket waiter, a French tennis clown, a Utah ski bum, and others flared and fizzled.
Along the way, Lili meets a string of unlikely gurus, including a well-worn shrimper, a vegan astrologer, and even a woman who marries herself. These and other unassuming strangers offer offbeat wisdom and guidance as Lili struggles to understand the nature of love, the voodoo of sex, and how couples can settle down without settling for. Between adventures, Lili tackles tough questions: Why does everything love touches turn risky? Does staying with the same person mean staying the same? Where does love come from, and where does it go? By journey’s end, this restless traveler begins to see how she can share her life with just one other person, and how love, like water, can make a body float.
Lili Wright’s engaging memoir from the road updates the tradition of the picaresque traveler’s tale. With unflinching honesty and refreshing wit, she captures the torn emotions, comic misfires, and inevitable trade-offs felt by young people everywhere.
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