The Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tzu

My review

This was a ‘book’ that I had been assigned to read selections from when I was in my English 101 class. I had been quite intrigued by the parts I had read, so I was looking forward to reading the rest of it. When I went to the bookstore in search for it, I had no idea how long it actually was, and imagined I was in for another really long, tough read. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was 159 pages long with Chinese on every left hand page and English on every right. So It was only really 80 pages. It took me the whole of 2 hours to read.

Just like it had been in my Eng 101 class, the rest of the book was also intriguing. It’s a sort of religious text for the Chinese, and had a lot of truths in it. (While it had some things I wasn’t so sure were truths…) It is all about humility, seeking for simplicity, doing only that which is necessary, not seeking to be acknowledged, etc. etc. It talked about governments and what makes them successful or unsuccessful (something that definitely graps interest from me in election times). It talked about the heavens and their role in man’s life.

I gave it a 2 (“it was ok”) because it didn’t leave me feeling changed or empowered or anything like that. Not to mention that I wasn’t necessarily riveted. The only reason I went ahead and read it for 2 hours straight was to be done with it so I could move on. That’s not to say that it’s not interesting and that I wouldn’t go back to it and quote it and such…I actually marked a lot of parts with stickys so that I could do just that, it just wasn’t anything special.

Oh well, definitely not a waste of 2 hours, and I get to put another FLAG on my reading list. Hooray!

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