This book was quite interesting. It would definitely fall into the category of allegory. It reminds me of The Legend of Bagger Vance. This was a book club selection and I cannot wait for this discussion. ( )

A wonderful fable. Get a copy and read it at your leisure ( )

It starts out very promising, with a thinking individual cast out from a narrow-minded group. The rest is too biblical for me, with its "afterlives", each one more "perfect" than the preceding one (much like the final Narnia book), the comparison of flight with "salvation", and the teachers spreading the word of "faith" among their "disciples". Perhaps it could be viewed just as belief in one self, but to me it was in-your-face religious.

Didn't like it, mostly just got annoyed by it. Also, the Finnish translation had poor language. ( )

This book is a response to the flawed and disappointing underbelly of humanity, revealed for Bach in Vietnam, the Kennedy assassination, the battles for Civil Rights and Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution. Unfortunately, it is not a work which embraces or explores those changes, but seeks to escape the conflicts surrounding them.

Perhaps it should be unsurprising that the author would want to escape the everyday anxieties which marked the changing world. Certainly, there is a sort of optimism in Jonathan Livingston Seagull, though it is merely the sort you get when you take ancient and complex philosophy and distill it down into meaningless fluff. It is from this feel-good denial that the whole New Age movement springs, giving hope without guidance, and offering self-help for our self loathing.

The surface of the pond seems calm and tamed from afar. The ripples almost insensible. It is tempting to hope that the whirling eddies of hate, the tumult of inequality, and the maelstroms of fear do not persist beneath it. We shall someday find, when we must navigate Scylla and Charybdis, whether we have melted down our statues and our cannons both to build a monument to those who will be lost. ( )

Jonathan Livingston Seagull was not like any other seagull. He did not fly for survival, instead he used it for experimenting and having fun. Eventually, the other seagulls called him an outcast and had nothing to do with him. I then think he went to a heaven for seagulls who are called outcasts and trains with the best. He then learns that he is a good flyer and becomes the trainer for future outcast flyers.
I would recommend this book to anyone. It is easy to read and has some photographs that children ould enjoy. This book is inspirational to use all. We all have these people who think we are a disgrace to their name. So they would abandon you, but you have to learn that it is your life and there are others like you. You just need to find them. ( )