Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The New Complete Edition
By Richard Bach and Russell Munson
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
Richard Bach
Richard Bach was a tactical fighter pilot, a motion picture stunt pilot, and flight instructor before becoming one of the world’s bestselling authors. His books include Illusions and, most recently, Running from Safety.
Read more from Richard Bach
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Reviews for Jonathan Livingston Seagull
2,989 ratings89 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enjoyable and thought provoking on my first read. I'll probably come back to it at some point. A fable, open to a few different interpretations.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5More pictures than prose. Easy to read. Interesting concept for a book. Many themes for such a short book. I read it based on a recommendation on a list of great books, I do not think I would classify this as one.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I read this one quite late, so it's a little silly now. I really wish I could go back in time and read this book when I was maybe 12, I would've loved it then!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book, enjoyed the pictures throughout and the story of striving for perfection. I read this one sitting on a 70's armchair in the sun and I would strongly recommend the experience. I think depending on the mood you are in you could find this cheesy or too happy go lucky but if you are feeling a little illuminated at the time I think this is a great one to maintain your mood.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read this when I was a teenager many moons ago growing up in foster care. Wanting to be "free" as Jonathan I definitely could relate..... Always will be a favorite of mine.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wonderful read about the individual fight for freedom and the right to be ourselves.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beautiful book. It's like a dream comes true. Absolutely must read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jonathan Livingston Seagull is not like the others of his Flock, he does not care for shrieking and fighting for every breadcrumb from the fishing boats, but rather spends his time learning more about and perfecting his flight. Inspirational? Yes. Banal? I do not think so. I remember I liked the book as a kid, and now reading it to my son I still found it enjoyable. The book has received a lot of bad reviews and critiques for being shallow and too simple. Of course self-improvement and following one's passion are not the only values in life, but they are still important concepts, and any way the story also focuses e.g. on helping others. And Jonathan's passion - flight - even has practical applications. Some passages may appear with a religious tone, butI think the book has more in common with fantasy, perhaps because there is no subordination to a god, just some fantastical elements.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What took me so long? Jonathan Livingston Seagull has literary and visual charm and makes for an easy read. You can take the story at surface value or interpret it across as many levels as you wish. Furthermore, Part Four adds to the overall texture and completes the narrative. The work is a classic, of course, and hard to approach without bringing the baggage of its popularity, but it's easy to see why JLS became such a hit.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How much can I love a book?I utterly adored this one. No need to say anything else.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book, enjoyed the pictures throughout and the story of striving for perfection. I read this one sitting on a 70's armchair in the sun and I would strongly recommend the experience. I think depending on the mood you are in you could find this cheesy or too happy go lucky but if you are feeling a little illuminated at the time I think this is a great one to maintain your mood.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I have really enjoyed this book and I definitely recommend it.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5An entertaining and charming story that just pokes at some interesting philosophy without making any opinionated choices. Mildly inspiring, but in a way that feels like it tries a bit too hard. Enjoyable, but not high-impact.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Odd very odd also short. Still interesting.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is metaphorical on many levels. I related to it as a 7th grader many years ago and still find many new truths in this story reading it as I approach retirement.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/52.5 starsJonathan Livingston Seagull is a seagull. He is not like the other gulls, though. He loves to fly. This makes him an outcast.This was a bit odd. Lots of philosophical stuff that I’m not that interested in. It was a very fast read, as it’s less than 100 pages, and many of the pages are photographs of seagulls flying.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I think i read this at school but couldn't remember any of it. It is a short read. The new fourth part offer a true indication of what happens to myth and ceremony. It covers getting caught up in the mundane and ignoring the beauties and challenges in life. Worth a read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I first read this book, many many moons ago, but something inside me, told me to read it again. I now know what and why.its a story relevant to what's happening in the world today, 2022. The struggle for freedom,, the need to live our lives in our own truth,as we want to,in pure love. I believe this is what the story is telling us, I thought so first time round, but now know it is. Well done Richard Bach, for having an insight in
to the future, fifty years ahead. Brilliant book. It should be put out there again, for everyone who hasn't heard about it, to read. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Once I started reading this book, it was hard to put it down. I will definitely recommend it. So much learning here, but I have to be honest a furtive warm tear kissed my cheeks during my read. Thank you!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I much prefer the "not complete" edition. There was elegance in its simplicity. This complete one is a bit of a stretch. Know when to stop.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Christian Call to Freedom of the soul and the critique of ritualistic dogmatization carries through the book in a pretty meaningful way. May we live our Myth
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A young seagull called Jonathan Livingston is frustrated with him regular life, but has a passion for flight and speed. He antic bring him into conflict with his flock and they cast him out. Upset by this he decides to continue his finding the limits of flight. He come to the notice of other who say they can teach him much more.
He moves to where other gull love to fly, and begins an almost zen like process to raise his flight to an almost sacred level.
Having achieved this, his teachers say that he now has to work on love, and that his freedom is tied to his ability to forgive. He returns to the flock that banished him, hoping to share his new outlook.
It is a short book, only 90 odd pages, and quite a lot of those a photos of seagulls in flight. I can fully understand why it is so popular, as it is quite spiritual in its perspective, holding freedom in the same regard as forgiveness, love and respect. Really 2.5 stars as it was really nicely written. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great resource for middle youth and teens religious education class. Read together and discuss ideas of both science (flight) and spirit. We all can be a savior if we have a fearless passion for life, learning and love of strangers.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'm moved every time I reread this book. It is one that should be read throughout the ages by anyone and everyone.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jonathan Livingston Seagull; (4*)I really liked this little book. It is a fast and easy read with wonderful lessons to be learned about friendship, freedom and the value of things that really matter.In it you will follow Jonathan's travels around the world and see everything through his eyes. One would not think one could learn anything from this wee book about a fictitious little seagull but this reader did. This is a lovely tale. I feel I can recommend it to youth and adult alike.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5amazing just like all of us and all of the "prophets" before and hereafter. we are all Buddha or Jesus or Allah. we are all greatness and perfection. They weren't meant to be idolized or to find a pebble for. they were models to follow. be like them. believe that you are the greatness that lies within each and everyone of us. beautiful book. such a simple message that is so easily overlooked by the flock.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Just didn't get this.
ETA - that four word review has gotten two likes. I wonder why. Maybe they're from folks who are glad to know they're not the only ones who rode that bandwagon back then? - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book, enjoyed the pictures throughout and the story of striving for perfection. I read this one sitting on a 70's armchair in the sun and I would strongly recommend the experience. I think depending on the mood you are in you could find this cheesy or too happy go lucky but if you are feeling a little illuminated at the time I think this is a great one to maintain your mood.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It's a decent story, but at the same time I wanted to slam my head against the table at how hard this book was ramming the religious allegory down my throat.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Read during my most impressionable years, in high school, along with many other Richard Bach books. I'm sure it will probably seem a bit naive to this old cynic now.
Book preview
Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
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Contents
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Last Words
About the Author
To the real Jonathan Seagull, who lives within us all
JonathanLivingstonSeagull.com
It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.
A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water, and the word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another busy day beginning.
But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one . . . single . . . more . . . inch . . . of . . . curve. . . . Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled and fell.
Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and it is dishonor.
But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve—slowing, slowing, and stalling once more—was no ordinary bird.
Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight—how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one’s self popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.
He didn’t know why, for instance, but when he flew at altitudes less than half his wingspan above the water, he could stay in the air longer, with less effort. His glides ended not with the usual feet-down splash into the sea, but with a long flat wake as he touched the surface with his feet tightly streamlined against his body. When he began sliding in to feet-up landings on the beach, then pacing the length of his slide in the sand, his parents were very much dismayed indeed.
Why, Jon, why?
his mother asked. Why is it so hard to be like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can’t you leave low flying to the pelicans, the albatross? Why don’t you eat? Son, you’re bone and feathers!
I don’t mind being bone and feathers, mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can’t, that’s all. I just want to know.
See here, Jonathan,
said his father, not unkindly. "Winter isn’t far away. Boats will be few, and the surface fish will