Nice reminders to live here and now! ( )

AA Milne 5 stars
B Hoff 2 stars ( )

I first read this about twenty years ago, and maybe it just hasn't aged that well... or maybe I'm just not the right audience now. ( )

This is a gross misinterpretation of Taoism. The author adds Stoic principles into Taoism (life's suffering is a constant learning experience you must bear) and that it's ok to be "simple-minded." For an example of this simple-mindedness, he quotes a part in Winnie the pooh book Pooh doesn't know his left from his right. They also use P'u, the uncarved block, to describe Pooh because he uses his intelligence, not to be clever (Rabbit) or appear wise (Owl) or to complain (Eeyore), but just to be simple. Um, I like Pooh because he's a huggable idiot. I wouldn't want to grow up to be like pooh.

I'll admit, I only read the first 1/4 of the book, but this seems like an incredible waste of time. ( )

This book was very disappointing. While there is some wisdom in it - slow your life down, try to live more harmoniously, etc - this had way too much of the "don't try, just let things happen and it will all work out" message that was present in Coelho's "The Alchemist."(Maybe Hoff was channeling Coelho when he wrote this.) However what I found most deplorable was Hoff's flat out repudiation of science. His reasoning for this was ill-informed at best, willfully ignorant at worst; and, I'm quite sure he makes use of the inventions of science just as much as the rest of us. Science doesn't have all the answers concerning life, the universe and everything, but it has some (and clearly far more than Hoff bothered to educate himself concerning), and the number and quality of them is every-increasing.

If you want to read a useful book about engaging life and other people, get James Carse's "Finite and Infinite Games". It's a better book, better written and doesn't hypocritically tell you to ditch the very thing that made mass distribution of it possible.

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