Reviews - Illusions | The StoryGraph

362 reviews for:

I'd like to believe that I haven't grown up enough to understand the wisdom of this book. Or this book is not of the standards of 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull' or any good book.

I look forward to a future when this might make sense to me.

Until then, it is a humble two stat from someone who is not yet a Messiah.

m00ns33ker's review against another edition

4.0

This is the favorite book of a philosopher friend of mine. He referenced it many times when we worked together with our church teen youth group. I'd been casually looking for a copy for a couple years when I found it recently among books never unpacked from a prior residence. I was drawn in immediately by the mechanic backstory. My father-in-law and late husband were both auto mechanics who collected a group of "disciples" whom they mentored. I tend to think this story is mostly fantasy (and told from a perspective of white privilege), but I will keep it and probably give it another read at a later date to puzzle out some of the quotes from the Messiah handbook.

wordmaster's review against another edition

3.0

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.

You may have to work for it, however. (92)

Sometimes the stories of why we read the books we read are more interesting than the books themselves. Illusions was recommended to me by a coworker as one of his favorite books. In exchange, I suggested to him some of my favorites (and also pressed them on him from my personal library with an urgency that might have bordered on off-putting). I find it tricky to read someone else's favorite book, because there's a lot of pressure to say the right thing after. Illusions seems tailor-made for buddy reading and book clubs, though.

I was impressed by Illusions early on, and I'm glad the author had the sense to make his point and not drag everything out. I saw something of Hemingway in Bach's spare and economical sentence crafting. It's as if Hemingway wrote magical realism, kind of. Add in the gentle-but-stern sentimentality of Vonnegut and you've got a good idea of what to expect. The shared language of pilots, mechanics, and gearheads did not appeal to me but I see how it serves a purpose. Bach doesn't labor too hard on the dialect or make it difficult to follow by any means, but the jargon is present throughout. Still, the book as a whole feels warm and inviting. Truth be told, the saccharine sweetness of the main "there's a miracle worker in all of us" message is a bit hokey but it seems to come from a good place. There are quite a few parallels with a favorite film of mine: I Heart Huckabee's. The reminder that we can choose how we judge and react to things, that we can construct our own perceptions of the things around us, is a soothing and comforting one. Some of the more outrageous demonstrations don't do it for me, though.

3 stars out of 5. Divorced from all the personal context, the text isn't all that impressive. But our reading is never truly divorced from personal context, and I'm glad to have shared this one with someone.

sarahmaclaughlin's review against another edition

5.0

I needed to reread this.

seacrab1's review against another edition

4.0

I've had this book on my radar for many years, but I was reluctant (no pun intended) to read it, thinking it would be dated, some 70's hippie dippie-ness that sounds good but leaves me wanting more.

Well, I'm happy to say it was an inspiring read and I've written most of the quotes down so I can review them frequently. I could wonder why I waited so long, but I know the time was right only now.