The third meeting of the WIGZ Book Club took place on Tuesday evening in Kwadendamme.
The book under discussion was A New Earth, Awakening to your life’s purpose, by Eckhart Tolle. Tolle is a German writer, educated partly in Germany, partly in England now living and working in Canada. He shot to fame having been chosen to be included in the Oprah Winfrey Book Club with his book, The Power of Now.
A New Earth is his most recent book and can be read independently of the others.
As suggested by the title it is a life style book rather than a novel and encompasses a series of conjectures on the way we can better understand our reasons for the way we live and how we can improve. He achieves this by combining his own theories with that of standard religions and philosophies. His central theme is to encourage us to reach a heightened state of awareness through recognition of the damaging effects of the ego.
We had all managed to read it although some of us were more resistant to this particular genre than others.
Discussion started fairly quickly and took a general form as one topic led on to another.
Some of the discussion points and comments are as follows:
Was it an enjoyable book?
It starts negatively but improves, it can have a calming effect, and can provide the tools with which to manage your life. We felt that although the writing style wasn’t very engaging, it wasn’t a difficult book to read with regard to content. The style was rather pompous and better editing was definitely needed, the book would have survived a bit of pruning.
It is a book which may allow you to re-connect with your inner self, but which could also lead to over analysis.
We questioned the life style of the author and were curious to know if he practices what he preaches.
There is a distinct lack of notes for a book of this type. It would definitely benefit from a few detailed explanations rather than the two or three pages of do-it-yourself references.
We felt that after a first reading this could be a book to dip into from time to time.
Some of us recognized aspects of ourselves in some of the chapters. We all liked the breathing awareness passage! We found it interesting, condescending, thought provoking, shocking, (unintentionally) funny, and spiritual.
In conclusion, he has no definite answers, the book is generally benign but some of his specific statements are too controversial to be acceptable.
We gave it 3½ out of 5
Please read it (there may well be a few copies at the next book swap/coffee morning) and tell us what you think!
CSS | XHTML | Copyright © 2009 - WIGZ.nl webmistress : Miriam Michalak