I remember when I had the job at a bookstore of taking off the expired magazines and putting the new ones on. The sheer number of titles was overwhelming, so the store had the magazines grouped by topic. Cars. Sports. Entertainment.

And I remember the guy that was training me walked to a particular section and said, "this is the 'woo-woo' section." It was filled with conspiracy theory magazines, various different religion and spirituality magazines, and other stuff that was simply bizarre.

I can't help thinking about any so-called New Age type stuff as "woo-woo" now.

And this book? Well, I was hoping it was going to be more about lessons learned in music that could be applied to life. And, to a degree, it is.

But it's also way too damn woo-woo for me. I got really sick of the author constantly trying to prove how "out there" this mysterious Michael was, and the author's constant reactions to him.

I'm sure this book has a place with some readers, and I'm sure it will prove to be helpful. Just not my type of book.

At all. DNF.

It's hard to decide what to think of this book. Taken literally it is a woo-woo Carlos Castaneda mystical BS-story. But stepping back there is some lovely stuff about attention, heart, deliberate practice (including when not to bother), and how to think about and feel what's going on musically. I suspect that anyone who has played for any length of time will find parts of it obvious, but I also suspect that almost everyone will come away with something new. ( )

Checked this out...a little too goofy for me. Probably packed with great nuggets from an incredible musician, but just couldn't do it. ( )

There are some good pointers in this book, but they are hidden inside a lame story. At about half way through I found myself skipping the fluff and sorting out what I thought was useful. ( )

Eric Bibb mentioned that he was reading this book during his recent concert in Sebastopol, CA so I had to check it out. The narrative is pretty silly, but the music lessons are useful (if I were the sort to use such a word, I would say, inspiring). ( )