Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

I found this to be short, beautifully written, and thought provoking book. “Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours” “Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there” These two quotes will stick with me forever.

Read this in high school (1977) based on recommendation of a buddy. Became a formative cornerstone to my character.

A great read for that young teenager starting to ask the biggest questions of all: Why are we here? It is not a manual instead it opens the imagination to possibilities. It is for any age but I first read it in high school and it had a positive effect on my life direction.

Great book, no one should miss this read. It is a classic and its rather low key presentation has a tendency to disguise the true wisdom in its pages.

I have always been familiar with Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and I only picked this up during a Kindle sale wanting to check out some of the pilot-writer's other work. Without much surprise, Illusions is another philosophical deep dive into the transitory difficulty navigation of a world we make much too complicated. The germ for this story is in the title. Donald Shimoda is a messiah who has given up on the messiah lifestyle to become an anonymous pilot that gives rides to people in small farming communities for a few bucks. When he meets up with a writer-pilot named... Well, Richard Bach. The book becomes a simple fairy tale of a mentor-mentee relationship that transpires in the skies above, the water upon, and the earth below Illinois. As with Seagull, Bach’s breezy and optimistic prose carries us through their developing relationship, the curious nature of the enigmatic Shimoda, and the Siddarthan journey upon which we come to many conclusions about the true nature of the illusion of life itself. I enjoyed this book for the sheer joy and easygoing pace of a story told well and simply – something Bach and other writers of the nineteen-seventies were well known for. I certainly didn’t feel like I wasted my time on it, and while some aspects of the novel (much like Seagull) can be perhaps distilled down into core maxims and slogans that can be considered a bit too cheesy for some tastes, the many lessons that can be taken from his simple, impactful, deliberate prose can be quite striking if you’re able to scrape the saccharine glaze from... well... the cynicism that we all carry that his work effortlessly attempts to unburden us from. In this case, as is the case of Seagull, I think he is quite successful.

I read this one when I was younger, and it impacted me so much that I used to carry around quotes from the book in my wallet. I suggest giving this to any boy or a girl in their late teens, as my father gave it to me when I was 17 and it really did impact me. In a good way.

I’ve read this book at least 1/2 a dozen times. I sent this copy to my son, & he really enjoyed it.

I first read this book 38 years ago when I was barely 20. I have read it numerous times since then. I once bought a case of 12 copies and just gave them away to people I care about. The book itself sums it up the best. It is more than a great national best seller. It is a great way of looking at life.’