Hello and welcome to worst bestsellers, where we read about one woman's book deal so you don't have to.

I'm Renata.

And I'm Kate.

And for this episode, we read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth

Gilbert. Joining us to discuss the memoir that inspired Julia Roberts to eat spaghetti is Meredith

Goldstein, author of books including Can't Help Myself, and the host of the Boston Globe's

Love Letters Column and podcast. Hello. Hi. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for returning. Yes. It's always good to talk with you, Meredith, and to have an excuse to

eat pizza and watch movies with you. Yes. What a delicious, literally and figuratively treat to be able to see the

pre-love movie with both of you before recording this. Yeah, we ate and we loved. And I don't

know about prayed, but we didn't, but I will say, because I feel like I should disclose

this at the start of the episode that I am recording this while

being a little under the weather and perhaps a little bit on cold medication. And, you know,

we watched that movie and then I got sick and did this reading. And I noticed that in the phases of my

head cold journey, I was really hungry. And then I was, you know, sort of bargaining with the world to get

better. And then when I started to feel better, I felt a lot of love. So I feel like I... You did it.

Wearing my pajamas in my, you know, apartment for the last week have really, you know,

basically done the same thing that she did in this book. Let's see.

Before we get too deep into this, let me say this was our Patreon choice episode.

Every year we let our Patreon patrons vote on a book for us to read.

And this is what they chose.

And, you know, honestly, I'm going to thankfully pray and love about, I don't pray to the patrons.

...