A short collection of classic Kerouac meditations, "zen koans", and prose poems. If you're a fan of Kerouac, or just want to read more than "On the Road", this is a good, quick read. Recommended.

Small and quick read of meditations and poetry, some of them were a little scattered but overall a quick read. If you're a Kerouac fan you'll appreciate the beat style. The formatting was kind of off putting [e-book format] but a physical copy should be easy to follow.

This is a book of spiritual "poetry" or meditations written by Jack Kerouac, famous for his work, On The Road. It was a fairly short read, being under a hundred poems in the entire collection but it was quite difficult to navigate as I was reading an uncorrected proof (ebook) and the lines of poetry were spliced in odd places. The language just didn't flow as I believe it was intended to.

Other than that, I had mixed feelings about it. Some of the poems read like The Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield became a Buddhist and rambled on and on (i.e. "In other words, nothing can compare with telling your brother or your sister that what happened, what is happening, and what will happen, never really happened, is not really happening and never will happen, it is only the golden eternity." - #42 or "Cats yawn because they realize that there's nothing to do." - #59) while others were quite beautiful (i.e. "Perfectly selfless, the beauty of it, the butterfly doesn't take it as a personal achievement, he just disappears through the trees. You too, kind and humble are not-even-here, it wasn't in a greedy mood that you saw the light that belongs to everybody." - #57)

I'm quite analytical when I read, and to a fault sometimes, so I think that might play into my apathy for this book, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. I did not get any great spiritual enlightenment from reading this but perhaps others will appreciate it more than I did.

*I received an advance reading copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.*