The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg

I started reading The Year of Pleasures on April 10th which was Do Nothing But Read Day on LibraryThing, and the theme of the group I was reading with was First Birthday. I chose The Year of Pleasures because it went with the theme and is a book from my To Be Read Challenge list (it's been on my shelf since 2/10/08).

I did more than read on April 10th (don't tell!) so it took me longer than a day to read it. I've been putting off reading this book because I thought the author was the same woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love which I didn't like, but that's Elizabeth GILBERT. My bad. Also it's about a woman whose husband has died and I have been trying not to read books with dead husbands. This book wasn't overly sad though. The widow gets in her car and drives until she gets to a town she feels she should live in. The citizens and her long-lost college roommates help her put her life back together as she tries to make sense of the little notes her husband left her to find after he died. I liked this story because it reminded me of The Mitford Series by Jan Karon, where one person's problem is another person's solution.

My favorite quote:
There is a story about a Navajo grandfather who once told his grandson, "Two wolves live inside me. One is the bad wolf, full of greed and laziness, full of anger and jealousy and regret. The other is the good wolf, full of joy and compassion and willingness and a great love for the world. All the time, these wolves are fighting inside me." "But grandfather," the boy said. "which wolf will win?" The grandfather answered, "The one I feed."