Double entry journal!

I have recently finished my book of choice in International English which was Illusions by the famous author Richard Bach. He has also written "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" which became a success. This is his second book and I must say I enjoyed it almost just as much as his first book. The two books are kind of similar in the way they are written and because of the double meaning that they both have. Even so I must say Illusions was even more difficult to read than the first one, because the language was more advanced and the story was harder to follow. In this blog entry I have written a double entry journal where I have taken an extract from the book and described a bit about it afterwards.

From the book: Illusions - by Richard Bach	Your own reflections
1.       Relationship The book only consists of two main people. Therefore the relationship between Donald Shimoda and Richard. "For half a minute I watched him,too, looking at the mystery of his calm. I wouldn't have been so cool just to sit there and watch another plane land in a field with me and park ten yards away. I nodded, liking him without knowing why." Page 26	My example is taken from the beginning of the book, just before Donald and Richard meet each other for the first time, and we see already here that they have some kind of a bond with one another. The relationship between Donald Shimoda and Richard is what characterizes the book from the start. Donald is what Richard thinks of as a perfect human being or a Messiah in this case. He looks up to Don and becomes almost an apprentice following and learning from him at all times. A typical example from the book would be that Donald comes with statements or questions that he wants Richard to reflect upon and answer as good as he possible can. The relationship between the two of them can be quite complicated at times, but I believe it symbolizes how many normal friendships might be. Despite the fact that Donald and Richard spends almost every day together after they meet and have a pretty intense friendship in my perspective, I think a lot of people look up to their friends maybe as a role model and takes after them to become just as "good" as they believe their friends are. The dedication towards their friends doesn't necessarily have to be as strong as we see in "Illusions", but in a similar way as in a smaller scale.
2.       Self realization Richards self realization: "As always. Richard, you are going to lose ninety percent of your audience unless you learn to keep it short!" "Well, what's wrong with losing ninety percent of my audience?" I shot back at him. "What's wrong with losing ALL my audience? I know what I know and I talk what I talk! And if that's wrong then that's just too bad. The airplane rides are three dollars, cash!" You know what?" Shimoda stood up, brushing the hay off his blue jeans. "What?" I said petulantly. "You just graduated. How does it feel to be a Master?" Page 120	My second example, I picked out from one of the last parts of the book. This is where Richard starts to get really skilled at what he has learned from Don and this part is also where he achieves self realization, something he strives for throughout the book. I believe the main theme of this book lies in the name; "Illusions". From the start we see Richard meeting his ultimate messiah, Donald Shimoda. He teaches him about life in a way he never taught existed and opened his mined so he could see his own life and every one else’s in a whole new perspective. Both Don and Richard do what they like the most, flying, and this is also how they meet the first time. Throughout their friendship Richard becomes more and more aware of what life really implies. Don makes him see that every aspect of the world, surrounding them, are all just illusions, that they can decide for themselves what is right and what they want to believe in and how they want to live. They don't necessarily have to depend on the rest of the world, but the world depends on what they want it to be. Also he makes him believe that every person lives in a world of their own creating their way of life, which is different from everyone else’s. At first I thought the book was just confusing and full of boring speculations and digressions about life, but after reading for a while and when I started to really get the story I felt that a lot of what was written was a little bit genius. Also when I finished the book I realized that it wasn’t just a book about life, but also a well thought of way of writing a story and that's actually what I like about Richard Bach; he writes both in "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" and "Illusions" a story with a double meaning which makes the book appealing. It makes it appealing, I believe, because there's so many ways of interpreting his stories. I don't think you should ponder to much about what he writes, he's only an author, but everyone can have their opinion of what the underlying story is really about and that's what I like about it and also makes the book fun to talk about with other who's also read it.