Jonathan Livingston Seagull
October 1st, 2008by Richard Bach
I bought this book over twenty-five years ago in a second-hand shop. (Holy crap!) I spent the then, to me, significant amount of $5 on the hardcover mostly because I was captivated by the seagull photographs. Some were printed on translucent paper, and the play of light and the birds in flight was something I had to have.
I had no idea who Richard Bach was at that time. I didn’t run out and read all his stuff afterwards, either, though I do still have a copy of Illusions. Turns out, I remembered more about the photos than I did the story. It is about flight (literally and metaphorically), freeing yourself from constraints, and passing the lesson along.
I still like the seagull photos, but they seem a wee bit less magical to me now than they did then. Maybe this is because I’m more cynical as a full-grown person, or maybe this is because I’ve spent a lot of time on photography in the intervening years. Still, I’m glad I have the book, and that I reread it as part of my keep-sane-until-vacation reading list. [Yes, I'm really behind in posting reviews, that this is going up only now.]
