I’m a bit more biased toward liking this book rather than against it. It was something that my dad used to refer to – sometimes – and I had on my own volition read Richard Bach’s “One” when I was a pre-teen. Bach was for many years an airline pilot, and it heavily influences his writing.

I think that made me more receptive to the idea that I might like this one, and I wasn’t disappointed. The ideas in JLS resonate quite strongly with the present-Me: in that there is more to oneself than this self, and that the search for perfection can only be sought and felt in this very moment.

It’s not a preachy book, which I like – but also that it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than an allegorical tale of one’s own search for more. It’s a book that takes a very short time to finish but is food for rolling around in your mind for weeks at a time.

I can understand now why it fascinated an entire generation of readers, as it came at a time when I think these ideas (which seem so commonplace now) weren’t ready for release without the cover of storytelling.

It took me ten minutes to read this, which is probably on the long side. It’s nothing special; a self-help fable in the same style as The Celestine Prophecy or The Alchemist, except that it’s shorter than either of those and so less repetitive and ridiculous. I’m not the target audience for this: I don’t go in for the new age spirituality myself, whether it’s feebly disguised as fiction or not. Jonathan Livingston Seagull was a piece of fluff that I actually didn’t mind reading, which is more than I can say for those other two books. Not awe-inspiring, not awful.