I gave this book 2 and a half stars. Two for being another reason to re-read ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ and the half for a few popular quotations of Eastern thinkers. I would have added an another half-star for the several nice insights the author didn’t quite manage to spoil if not for the author’s annoying habit of trying to write in the simple, yet brilliant style of Milne and failing miserably.

Benjamin Hoff writes about what happens when you try to fit round pegs in square holes, yet this is exactly what HE does. He doesn’t accept Eeyore, Piglet, Rabbit, Tigger and Owl as they are, instead he describes Owl as ‘the dried-up Western descendant of the Confucianist Dedicated Scholar’ (not the only place in the book where he bashes Confucius and his followers) and ‘one who studies Knowledge for the sake of Knowledge, and who keeps what he learns to himself or to his own small group, writing pompous and pretentious papers that no one else can understand, rather than working for the Enlightenment of others’. Pure I-know-better criticism.

Therefore, instead of reading about ‘Nearsighted Science’ etc., just go and re-read ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’. You’ll understand Taoism a hundred times better by doing that (or doing nothing at all) than by reading ‘The Tao Of Pooh’.