The Global Soul : Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home

by Pico Iyer

Release Date: 13 March, 2001

Edition: Paperback

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Insightful, Interesting and Colourful

Awesome Book! As I read the Global Soul, I felt as if my attitudes towards the globe were being reshaped and broadened at a rapid pace that I found helpful and enjoyable. It was almost as if the molecules in my brain were being given music to dance by. Iyer can write in a way that keeps the reader interested and challenged. I was engaged in the book from the very first page. As I read the Global Soul, I found myself intrigued by the fast-paced insights that Iyer shares with his readers. He has the ability to view his experiences in the world with a disarming innocence that is open-minded and wise. He blends insights with quotes and references from the worlds great thinkers. His perspectives are rounded and compassionate, while being revealing and helpful. I highly recommend this book!

FutureShock, Generation X, and now the next step.

I ran and bought this book after reading an excerpt in a magazine (I can't remember which). I'd never read Iyer before and left the book impressed by a formidable intellect and attention to details.

I enjoyed magazine piece better than the book. The book was great for the first 50 or so pages and then bogged down I thought until the last few pages. He seemed to be saying a lot of the same things over and over.

I find Iyer does a fantastic job of describing the present world of "disconnectedness". Mind you, I can possibly relate more closesly with this than many readers, sharing a somewhat similar upbringing.

The place I thought this book "fell down" was that Iyer and his friends are not "normal, average people", although he says they are. Unless, of course, average people in your world have parents who teach at Oxford, send their kids to the North pole, and your friends make movies with international casts.

Had Iyer focussed more on (what I'd call) "normal average" people, it would have been great to see his present views on Quebec separatism in Canada, which he barely scratches and which are likely deeply influenced by a lot of what he describes. Nonetheless, his decription of modern Toronto is refreshing and exciting.

It would also have been interesting if he had focused more on the Bangladeshi villager now inundated with western images, the old-guard Torontonian now unable to understand nor read the writing on stores around his neighborhood. A global 2nd hand view of this would have been fascinating and made it a stronger book...in my opinion.