[.ca] The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search ... (ISBN 0679776117)

From Amazon.com:
Pico Iyer's book of essays about international locales contends that the modern world-scurrying citizen, pushed by business demands or political migrations, can easily lose both roots and sense of home. Airports have morphed into cities where scores of languages are spoken, thousands work, and millions travel through mazed villages of McDonalds, massage parlors, and self-help groups that twist along for miles; the Dallas-Fort Worth airport alone grabs more space than Manhattan. And city life is no different: Iyer's apartment building also houses an immigration office, banks, four cinemas, dozens of restaurants and nearly 100 boutiques; the technologically plugged-in businessman with whom he stays has five phones across the world, a dozen international bank accounts, and travels more than a pilot. Whether in Toronto--where in larger schools nearly 80 languages may be heard--London, or at the Olympics in Atlanta, Iyer witnesses the overlapping of hundreds of heterogeneous cultures, often pushed by corporate concerns toward commercial homogeneity and powered by technology that offers an office in the sky. The picture painted by Iyer--himself a confused and well-traveled multicultural citizen--is extreme, sci-fi, and futuristic even though set in the present: a global village turned spinning metropolis, with so many fragments set loose in its gyrations that it threatens to explode the minds of its residents. But even this shell-shocked world traveler finds peace, concluding that a simpler life may be a richer one and that home is simply where the frazzled mind decides it will be. In an era when new frontiers open monthly, when frequent flyer miles serve as currency, and constant change may be a lifestyle demand, Iyer's frantic words and dizzying images may prove as prophetic as Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. --Melissa Rossi

Struck by Disconnect - Customer v. Editorial Reviews:
I had already begun reading this book (have read only a/b the first 50 pages), when I logged on to Amazon, with a view to e-mailing a friend a link to the book. Started browsing through the editorial and customer reviews -- all the editorial reviews v. positive, but majority of the customer reviews quite negative. My bias is gen. towards the customers (and esp. in this case, since they seem to be more actual travellers, vs. editors who merely review travel writing). Yet, and I find this odd, I actually like what I've read so far (caveat: haven't read it all), though I would agree, to a degree, with some of the negative comments. Perhaps it's because I can relate. Work in finance. Born & raised in Bombay, studied in the US, lived in China learning Mandarin, now in Toronto and a soon-to-be Canadian citizen. No family, no strong ties to anywhere. Perhaps some those readers who dislike the book can't relate. Some of the comments I agree with. There is repetition. Tone can sometimes be "whiny", as a few readers note. Iyer should pick up some language skills - I can feel at ease in Bombay or Beijing in large part because I have speak both Hindi and Mandarin. Other criticisms I don't agree with. E.g., some have commented that Iyer's "global soul" relates to a v. small number of people. Well, that's the going-in position. The book is made of observations about being raised, living and working in multiple cultures/geographies. By definition, it's not going to be relevant for most of the 6 bn + people on the planet. They're not the target audience.

Smart, humane , edgy and I couldn't stop reading:
I love this book. I'm sending it to all my relatives who, like the author, are modern post-ethnics with no true sense of ethnic allegiance. His insights are quite droll: a person with no deep national loyalty may be staunchly loyal to one airline. And some huge portion of all airmiles are earned on the ground! He captures the absurd, the sad, the hopeful aspects of being a bourgeois post-ethnic in today's climate. I take my hat off to this man for writing a book that can be said to speak for an entire generation. That may sound audacious but those are the feelings he inspires in one reader! The book is not only about travel. You can be a reluctant traveller (like me) and still enjoy his narrative. The great thing about this book -- it can be read out of order. I read the Toronto chapter first. I read the Empire chapter next. I read the first chapter last. It works. This is a book I will re-read. It has some errors, which other reviews here have rightly pointed out, but in total it's a...good read and its insights are substantial.

Pick yourself up off the ground, Pico!:
I'm not eager to read a whole lot more by Pico Iyer. He seems very jaded with the world and despairing -- a killjoy for anyone enthusiastic about travel, such as myself. His go-nowhere anecdotes in this book seem like the unbearable whining of a guy who's barking up all the wrong trees looking for happiness. The reason I don't feel for Pico is that a lot of his woes seem to be directly caused by choices he's made. Don't like airports and strip-malls? Bike or walk the world! Find Japan utterly dehumanizing? Learn the language, so you can make some friends there and talk to your wife, for chrissakes! I don't feel for people who set themselves up to be miserable, let alone ones who take it out on the reading public by sowing seeds of despair. For an uplifting look at an Indian Brit who's made the best of his situation and shown a good deal of chutzpah, listen to the group Cornershop!

A little too much?:
Iyer is an entertaining writer. That's why I read him. This book, although not excellent, is good (I like "The Lady and the Monk" better though). I really enjoyed the last chapter of the book about his experiences as a foreigner in Japan. I could relate because I too, lived as a foreigner in Japan. But the remainder of the book came across to me as a little bit too much. In other words - exaggerated and overdone. But this is not a worthless book. It's merit comes in remembering that these are the author's ideas and experiences - not everyone else's.

A bit tedious:
A not very original contribution to the now quite vast literature on postmodern, global society written by a world-weary globetrotter. That's not to say that there no interesting observations made in Iyer's essay-like chapters, but there are no marked aspects of "The Global Soul" that make it stand out from other books of the same genre. Iyer's tendency to whine about just about every place he visits becomes almost incessant and tends to detract from any relevant criticisms or observations he's trying to get across. Even more annoying are his frequent lamentations about his own lot - basically he seems to be trying get his readers to feel sorry for him because he has a job that gives him the opportunity to travel all around the world, frequently. However, it seems that despite some of the obvious drawbacks like jetlag and occasional feelings of alienation, most people would find such a lifestyle enviable. Generally though, Iyer's book deals with a class of rootless travellers who by no means come even close to representing a significant portion of the world's population, even if the poorer, so-called Third World is excluded. He as much as acknowledges this in his chapter about Hong Kong, when he admits that he largely failed to discuss the Chinese, who make up 6 million of the city's 6.2 million people. Perhaps the best chapter is the last, in which he talks about his new-found home in a provincial Japanese city. Quite telling is his statement that he is drawn to Japan because of its "ability to draw a strict line around itself - to sustain an unbending sense of within and without..." In other words, Iyer, the rootless 'global soul' living in a post-national world, finds the well-ordered nation-state that Japan represents appealing. Perhaps this can be taken as a metaphor for the world as a whole, since it may not be as borderless and populated by 'rootless souls' as our popular culture would have us believe.