2008-07-16 A poor follow-up to a great first book

While I loved the first book, 'The Tao of Pooh', I found this follow-up (or more accurately, companion piece) hugely lacking in comparison.

When Hoff is content to focus on Taoism and its concepts/lessons/writings etc it's fine, and manages to capture the sense of the earlier work - both enjoyable to read and informative. However, this type of material only occupies around half of the book, and when the author then decides to go on a series of fairly unrelated rants, such as against the amount of radiation emitted by televisons and computers, or a truly bizarre diatribe aimed towards 'teachers who aren't very positive' (truly the scourge of western civilisation, and central to any explication of Taoism to boot) one is left the feeling that, when he doesn't stick to what is clearly his field, Naom Chomsky he ain't.

Readers who crave a continuation of the banter between Hoff and the characters of the original Pooh books may well find something of substance here, and given the obvious charms of 'The Tao of Pooh' it's tempting to delve in once more for this one. But for those looking (as I was) for more detail on the matters described in the first book, another purely Taoist-orientated title would probably be a better choice.