A Man's Guide to Eat Pray Love
by Bryan Curtis  at The Daily Beast
Bryan Curtis is a senior editor at The Daily Beast. He was a columnist at Play: The New York Times Sports Magazine, Slate, and Texas Monthly, and has written for GQ, Outside, and New York.

Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert in "Eat, Pray, Love." (Photo: François Duhamel / Sony Pictures)

As the Julia Roberts movie opens, here’s everything a regular guy should know about Elizabeth Gilbert's mega-selling book. Bryan Curtis on the author’s slick writing, magnetic personality, and surprising spirituality.

If you are a male, you have perhaps been looking to Friday, August 13, with confusion and a little trepidation. You’ve heard about a cultural behemoth called Eat Pray Love that’s lumbering toward a theater near you. For years, you’ve seen the book—in purses, atop nightstands, stacked up triumphantly on the front tables of Barnes & Noble. And through basic cultural osmosis you learned its broad outlines: woman, travel, freeing of spirit, yoga. But you still don’t understand what Eat, Pray, Love is, and you fear that you’ll be dragged to the Julia Roberts movie version unawares.
Relax.
I read Eat, Pray, Love (this week). I did some hard thinking about it (yesterday). I am going to try to explain the book, the movement, the mythology—and why, heaven forbid, you might even like it. So close your eyes, block out your ambivalent feelings, and step into my ashram.

Read Bryan Curits' guide for men at The Daily Beast