Illusions, by Richard Bach

This is our next book club book, and in keeping with the club's theme, it's definitely not something I would have ever read on my own. Nor, to be honest, is it something I'm glad to have read. I find books that border on (or fully inhabit) spiritual teaching to be boring and rather useless. It's not that I think I know everything or don't have philosophical issues I need to figure out, it's just that I feel very strongly about dealing with those things in my own way and on my own time. We are all so unique, how can someone else's solution fit me perfectly as well? There are some truisms in "Illusions" that I recognize as important, but I don't need a book telling me then. Maybe others do, but I'm not in their shoes and cannot know. We all have our own paths to truth. So I found the book boring and pedantic. I would have preferred, I think, to have these ideas addressed through non-fiction instead of in thinly veiled fiction. Dressing it up as a story seems almost condescending to me, like the writer thought we couldn't handle thinking about his ideas in too serious a fashion, though I'll freely admit that its popularity over the last forty years maybe proves me wrong on that point. It will certainly make for an interesting, if somewhat awkward, book club discussion.