A book about coincidences that I picked up by coincidence? Someone play the twilight zone theme song please?

I tested the cover art on my spouse and 13yr old, neither could see the optical illusion in artificial light -is that a girl thing? Why is it invisible to men?

However, both were duly impressed with the [a:Nevil Shute|21477|Nevil Shute|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1206158172p2/21477.jpg] connection both the references inside the book and coincidentally with the way I picked up the book in the first place while looking for OOP [a:Nevil Shute|21477|Nevil Shute|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1206158172p2/21477.jpg] books. Someone play the twilight zone theme song one more time please?


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I'm not sure I can effectively review this book. On one level, the plot is very simple. On a deeper/different level, it's exactly as complex as it needs to be.

If other works by Richard Bach have appealed to you, you'll love this book. I love it. It fell into my hands (via my local library) at exactly the right time; I read it exactly when I needed to read it. ( )

Richard Bach never fails to inspire and this book is another fine specimen that I read and will probably go back and read again. There's a lot here, a lot to ponder...which is his way. ( )

Everything you see, hear, feel smell and taste does not exist, they all are suggestions you have accepted. Entire life is hypnosis. This is a wonderful, exciting, mind blowing fable about finding the true meaning of life. If you have not read this, read it now. If you have already read it, read it again and again.

this was my third Richard Bach book and i’ve always enjoyed reading his work, but this one fell completely flat for me. it started out with promise and just got progressively worse. in the end, i had a difficult time just getting through the short 160 pages.

the first few pages of the book were extremely intense. Jamie Forbes is out on an uneventful solo flight when he finds a woman panicking because her husband has lost consciousness mid-flight. Jamie, an experienced flight instructor, calmly walks her through the procedures to make a safe and graceful landing at a nearby airstrip. having completed his good samaritan-like duties, he goes on to complete his flight and mostly forgets about the encounter. like i said, intense.

Jamie learns later that the woman, named Maria, is claiming that a man hypnotized her and led her to safety. this leads Jamie on a personal introspective journey of recollection and soul searching, in which he is trying to understand and bring to life the concept of manifesting your own destiny. and this is where the book flopped. hard.

what started off as a book with amazing potential turned into a book you might find in the self-help section that was preaching the ways of self realization. and on top of that, the editing left the book feeling like a rough draft, with some heavy stream of consciousness type stuff. the book would gain some steam and then lose it altogether before plowing back into the story. it felt like a bunch of really great ideas that never tied together and it left me pretty disappointed.

on the positive side, the book, much like Bach’s other books, raises a lot of good questions and provokes some really great questions. as for his other books, i still love Jonathan Livingston Seagull and would steer people toward that title instead of Hypnotizing Maria. good potential, but a dud this round for me. ( )