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 Writing.Com Item ID: #1412619
 Title:  A New Earth:
 Item Type: Static Item
 Brief:   Awakening to Your Life's Purpose --
A review of the book by Eckhart Tolle
 Last Modified: 04-11-2008 @ 2:54am
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I'm not particularly fond of reading books that "everyone" is reading. Even as a child I'd look for something I'd never heard of before, rather than what was suggested. It was with some reluctance that I picked up A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. I'm not sure why I did, especially since I'm not into new age stuff and that's what this seemed like.

I don't think Tolle is a great writer. The content was not hard for me to grasp, but I found the first couple of chapters annoyingly difficult to read. I persevered at this point only because I had promised my sister I'd keep up, for her, with Oprah's class on it. Ultimately, I'm glad I did keep reading. Tolle doesn't present anything through a religious belief, but I read with my Christian beliefs. There are things I don't agree with, perhaps don't quite understand, but I found that his basic premise of how we must be is in agreement with my faith. And I agree that it is powerful. Although I'm not sure of the terminology, because of my own connotations, I see the problem of ego as he presents it. By the time I got to the middle I had started to write notes and questions in the margins and the petty annoyances of his writing didn't bother me. (I think it's the amount of repetition, but I'm not really sure and I really don't think it matters. He's not a great writer, but he's decent enough. This book isn't about the writing. It's about the content.)

In the end Tolle says the book will either be gibberish or make profound sense to the reader. For me it was simple and profound, although not entirely new -- just presented differently. It's worth reading just to find out if it's gibberish or profound. If it turns out to be gibberish to you, take what you can from it and don't worry about the rest.