⋙ Descargar Gratis The Global Soul Jet Lag Shopping Malls and the Search for Home Pico Iyer 9780679776116 Books

The Global Soul Jet Lag Shopping Malls and the Search for Home Pico Iyer 9780679776116 Books

Download As PDF : The Global Soul Jet Lag Shopping Malls and the Search for Home Pico Iyer 9780679776116 Books

The Global Soul Jet Lag Shopping Malls and the Search for Home Pico Iyer 9780679776116 Books

It turns out that there are two kinds of people--those who are global souls and those who aren't. In this book Iyer provides a useful definition of what a global soul is. Although he uses himself as a prototype (born in England to Indian parents, sent to boarding school in the US, current resident of Japan), throughout the book he provides lots of other examples. Global souls belong to lots of places at once--emotionally, physically, spiritually. They don't know how to answer the question, "Where are you from?" because the answer is anything but simple.

Iyer's book was quite useful to me because I've always been a global soul at heart. I love to travel and experience new cultures, and I feel at home in lots of different places. A few of my friends understand this because they too love to travel, etc. But many other people I know have a hard time understanding why I can't unpack my bags and stay in one place. The book gave me some clues to my own vagabonding.

Reading Iyer's book gave me insight into the dichotomy between these two diverse groups of people. The book inspires me to encourage others to explore their own inner "global soul"--there's no better way to create world harmony than by knowing more about the vast types of people who inhabit it.


Tags : The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home [Pico Iyer] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. From the acclaimed author of <b>Video Nights in Kathmandu</b> comes this intriguing new book that deciphers the cultural ramifications of globalization and the rising tide of worldwide displacement. Beginning in Los Angeles International Airport,Pico Iyer,The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home,Vintage,0679776117,General,Globalization,Internationalism,Internationalism.,Iyer, Pico - Travel,Popular culture,Popular culture.,Technological innovations - Social aspects,Voyages and travels,Voyages and travels.,Essays,Essays & Travelogues,General Adult,Non-Fiction,Popular Culture - General,Social Aspects,Social SciencePopular Culture,TRAVEL,TRAVEL Essays & Travelogues,TRAVEL Special Interest General,Technology & EngineeringSocial Aspects,Travel - General,Travel writing,road trip essentials;travel gifts;road trip;travel gift;travel writing;sociology;travelogues;biographies;travel book;history books;travel;travel books;history;travel diary;bucket list;sociology books;travelogue books;travel memoirs;travel memoir;travelogue;traveling books;travels;essays;anthropology;nature;photography;short stories;philosophy;bruce chatwin;biography;adventure;wanderlust;haiti;culture;writing;autobiography;anthology;iceland;journalism;american literature;journal;environment,travel writing; journalism; essays; culture; travelogue; biography; sociology; adventure; autobiography; history books; history; travel books; travel gifts; travel gift; sociology books; road trip essentials; road trip; anthropology; nature; photography; short stories; philosophy; travel memoir; wanderlust; iceland; biographies; travel; travel diary; travel book; bucket list; travel memoirs; travels; traveling books; travelogues; travelogue books; environment; nepal; social; ecology; geography; paraguay; journal; business; food; reference,Essays & Travelogues,Popular Culture - General,Social Aspects,Social SciencePopular Culture,TRAVEL Essays & Travelogues,TRAVEL Special Interest General,Technology & EngineeringSocial Aspects,Travel - General,Travel,Travel writing

The Global Soul Jet Lag Shopping Malls and the Search for Home Pico Iyer 9780679776116 Books Reviews

I was forced to read this book for my dreadful English 1101 class. Probably my least favorite book that I have ever had to read. Very smart man, slow and droning read about the same, highly unrelatable topics. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
Great read. Honest thoughts on being a citizen of the world.
I loved "Video Night in Kathmandu". It was one of the best books I have ever read. Iyer's vivid anecdotes in that book allow a reader to know more about the places he visits. Reading that book gave me a real sense of life in many parts of Asia.
The anecdotes in "The Global Soul", in contrast, only tell me more about Iyer himself. Too much introspection, too little description. Way too much repetition. "The Global Soul" is an interesting magazine article (which I think I read somewhere) stretched into a very thin book.
This is actually a pretty good book.The Pico is kind of a fluffy writer, if you're into that, but overall I think his description of Atlanta is spot on! As an Atlanta resident, even 20 years later a lot his observations still apply.
What happened to the Pico Iyer who wrote the wonderful 'Falling off the Map'? Mr. Iyer was once able to capture the spirit of a foreign place, and his humble, amused, and always acute observations of distant, exotic cultures reflected a keen intellect as well as a keen eye.
Now Iyer, as the world-weary 'Global Soul' comes across more as an ordinary, grumpy foreign correspondent than the wonderful travel-writer that he used to be.
Gone is the loving eye that he had cast on quirky, wonderfully undiscovered lands. Instead, he turns his hardened, more-bitter-than-sweet gaze towards Atlanta, London, and California, with nothing but critical remarks and a barely-tolerable condescending air. Granted, he spared Toronto and Kyoto (but not the rest of Japan) of his barbs for the most part, but it is clear that Mr. Iyer's love of his job is not what it once was. His gift, and the gift of the best travel-writers, was to revel in the differences, good and bad, of foreign cultures and places, and to take with them the good experiences to be had in the *PRIVILEGE* of traveling. Mr. Iyer, who once seemed happy to be alive and experiencing the privilege of globe-trotting and soaking up different cultures, then writing about them for a living, now seems to trudge through most of what he sees, and the sense of the world's splendor in his eyes is now gone.
This is a shame, too, with a man of Iyer's talents and background. While this book does fill in much of his highly unusual, mysterious background, rather than making it intriguing, Iyer seems to only reluctantly fill in the background. He says that while his parents lived in California, they sent him to boarding school and university in England. This was back in the 70's, back when doing so would be even more exorbitantly expensive than it would be now. Yet, Iyer maintains that his parents, as academics, were of only modest, middle-class means. What gives?
I loved some of Iyer's early work, particularly, 'Falling off the Map', in which his love of things new and foreign was palpable, and in which he was able to bring the reader closer to another place through his enthusiasm, playful wit, and keen, insightful observations. I was looking forward to savoring 'the Global Soul', yet found reading it to be slow-going, unenjoyable work. Particularly trying is Mr. Iyer's fondness for endless listing of meaningless specifics-- "(Int'l Blvd) offered a Hard Rock Cafe, a Planet Hollywood, a McDonald's outlet, and a seventy-three-story Westin hotel.."..."Indian cricket teams were Indian, Australian were Australian, English were English, and West Indian were 'Indian, Negro, Chinese, white, Portuguese mixed with Syrian'..."
In fact, endless, meaningless lists dominate this surprisingly tedious-to-read book, as if Mr. Iyer felt that his painstaking attention to specific minutiae and proper nouns were a testament to the breadth of his ability to remember and assimilate details of current world pop-culture, yet still quote from english classics. The resulting mix is a nearly unreadable mix of words, structured so that the places Iyer explores come across as a massive deluge to the human senses. I am sure that this was his intent (his message being that the world is assaulting him with heaps of meaningless sensory overload), yet if this was his true impression, it is not surprising that he did not get much positive out of his experiences at the time.
Mr. Iyer would do well to note that his readership approaches travel-writing for an escape, to be transported and enjoy the thrill of exploring that which can only be experienced through extended travel. Even not-so thrilling, but sobering and eye-opening experiences are of course fascinating and enriching. Most of us with regular jobs are not in a position to thorougly experience many foreign cultures and places, so we must read about it and see it through the eyes of those who are lucky enough to experience it first-hand. If we wanted amateur negative commentary on what is wrong with our respective societies, we can do so much more easily and succinctly by watching the news or reading the newspaper. After all, Mr. Iyer has the nerve to slam the city of Atlanta for its poor and homeless, yet unashamedly whine about his treatment as a 'Global Soul' (and a privileged one at that) at the hands of English and Japanese officials while he globe-trots between the two countries.
Despite everything you read in this book, the world is *still* a wonderfully wide, diverse, and stimulating place!
Iyer's romantic vision of the "Global Soul" (i.e., Iyer and people like him) is insufficiently self-critical in respects to its essential economic location. What Iyer imagines as cosmopolitan seems to boil down to those who are wealthy enough to occupy a rarified socio-economic -- and hence, geographic -- location. Rather than a new type of person, the Global Soul seems to be someone who likes sampling lots of different kinds of ethnic foods, dress, custom, etc. Yet the Global Soul's essential and parasitic dependency on these stable and "authentic" ethnicities, nationalities, etc., is completely unremarked-upon.

Additionally, Iyer's prose, while often terrific, lapses about a thousand too many times into a simple (and simplistic) juxtaposition of adjectives to demonstrate our new global reality "a Chinese girl eating American apple pie wearing Italian Adidas shoes made in India...jeepers, isn't the world one big place now!" (This is hopefully obvious as a paraphrase) But these descriptions float by without attendant analysis, which makes me question Iyer's journalistic chops. Too often it appears we are simply looking at the surface of reality through his eyes, without gaining insight into the phenomena boiling under the surface.
It turns out that there are two kinds of people--those who are global souls and those who aren't. In this book Iyer provides a useful definition of what a global soul is. Although he uses himself as a prototype (born in England to Indian parents, sent to boarding school in the US, current resident of Japan), throughout the book he provides lots of other examples. Global souls belong to lots of places at once--emotionally, physically, spiritually. They don't know how to answer the question, "Where are you from?" because the answer is anything but simple.

Iyer's book was quite useful to me because I've always been a global soul at heart. I love to travel and experience new cultures, and I feel at home in lots of different places. A few of my friends understand this because they too love to travel, etc. But many other people I know have a hard time understanding why I can't unpack my bags and stay in one place. The book gave me some clues to my own vagabonding.

Reading Iyer's book gave me insight into the dichotomy between these two diverse groups of people. The book inspires me to encourage others to explore their own inner "global soul"--there's no better way to create world harmony than by knowing more about the vast types of people who inhabit it.