Sunday, October 7, 2012

Make Love to the Universe - Phoenix Desmond


Not for everyone, I have seen a number of very positive reviews for it though so I know some people disagree.

Make Love to the Universe - Amazon
Quick & Dirty:
  • Worth picking up if you’re exploring your spirituality, if you liked the message of Siddhartha, (I think) you’ll like this book.  This will hit home to many people.
  • Some strange sentence structures stunt reading
  • The constant switching between story and spiritual lessons made this hard for me to stay interested in.
Long & Wordy:
Where to start!?  
I suppose a bit of a disclaimer, I’m not saying this was a bad book.  It just wasn’t for me.  I’m having trouble putting my finger on one specific reason so I’m going to list out everything I think is worth mentioning.
Starting with Siddhartha, this “Making Love” reminded me a bit of Siddhartha, same concept of someone going on a spiritual journey and finding answers etc etc.  I think it’s only fair to say right now I didn’t like Siddhartha either, considering many people liked that book, you should take my review with a grain of salt.
Desmond starts off the book a little self depreciating, saying things like, “In response to the inevitable cry of the skeptic, I will here emphasize that this book was not written with not written with the intent of proving anything…I would expect nothing less than for my readers to absorb only that which resonates with their innermost being, and discard the rest.” And “I realize that the mere mention of star beings will immediately raise a number of questions for many readers.”
Ok, I stopped and absorbed that for a minutes and decided whatever, I can read on and just see what he has to say.
And actually a lot of the basic message is “basic”.  One section my book seems prone to falling open to a section (pg 82 in the review copy if you want to read along…) in this section of advice he begins by saying you’re always going to have unhappy relatives and they fighting them about it won’t help, “If you wish for others to be happy, focus on achieving happiness within yourself, until the vibrations you carry become so strong that they inspire all who are touched by their waves.”  
Basically, lead by example.  I (sadly) work retail and I CONSTANTLY get comments about being so up-beat and cheery blah blah blah…basically, yeah, it does rub off…basic.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t need reminding every now and then.
So, I guess this is the smile turned upside-down section.  Here’s some of the things that made the book hard to enjoy.
Really the two biggest issues were in my quick and dirty section.  One is strange sentences and odd word choice such as, “Close the two eyes at either side of your nose.” or (speaking about Earth), “Amongst celestial bodies are found her lovers, her most distant relatives and her dearest friends.”
Perfectly understandable but it slows your reading and (I think) instead making you think about how the story is told, rather than what the story is about and the message it’s sending.  
Basically I think a bit more flow and I could have enjoyed this book a lot more.
I hope that this helps you make your decision!  If you’re still interested check out the book on Amazon here
3/5
***This was received as an ARC, this did not influence my review or rating of the book.***

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