It's a true sign of a good book when you are still thinking about it a week after finishing it (while halfway into another book). I've wanted to write a review for a while but I've had a really hard time processing my thoughts on this book to get them into words and I wanted to say a little more than "I really liked this book".
From the very start, "Radio Shangri-La" felt a bit like "Eat, Pray, Love", with that vibe of journeying across the world to find ones own self. Lisa's journey is a bit different and in some ways maybe not as profound as Elizabeth Gilbert's, but at the same time just as important.
The subtitle of the book is "What I Learned in the Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth", and it is not just what she learned about herself that makes this such a good book and so interesting a story. As much, if not moreso, it's what she learned about Bhutan itself, and its inhabitants.
Through a strange twist of fate meeting, radio reporter, Lisa Napoli gets an offer to go to Bhutan and help the Kingdom start their first radio station. This is a Kingdom that rarely allows outsiders and when they do they charge a pretty steep travel surcharge. Until the mid-90's, the people there did not even have television. A one month trip to volunteer becomes several trips over the course of a couple of years and through her trips and her eyes we watch two parallel evolutions. We see how Lisa changes how she looks at herself and at life in general, and we see how the people of Bhutan change their outlook on life. Perhaps it is seeing possibilities that keep one from being happy?
Unlike Elizabeth Gilbert in "Eat, Pray, Love", Lisa didn't embark on this journey as a means of self-discovery or looking to change herself. It was just an opportunity that fell in her lap and bored with the status quo she decided to accept the opportunity, with little knowledge of what she would find when she got to there. In the end, I think that's what really seperates this book from the other. While Gilbert's book is internal, Napoli's is external. This book is less about her and more about others. However you choose to look at it, I think it's a great book, not only interesting in the story but interesting in an informative way of learning about a culture you've rarely, if ever, heard of.
I was sent a free copy of this book from Read It Forward, which is an online service that provides advance reader copies of various books (free) with the idea that when you are finished, you pass it on. I already know who this book is going to.
