Customer Reviews

Out On A Limb

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I loved the book and the movie. Shirley has courage. I would also recommend the book An Encounter With A Prophet for another author with courage.

This is one of those books that is so good that, when you finish it, you feel sad. Because you know you will be hard pressed to find a better one to follow. However Shirley wrote several books to follow this one, that if even if not as fabulous, are still great...so no need to be too sad: Shirley's adventures continue on.

The book is riveting because it describes in such an entertaining a gripping writing style, full of humour and insight, Shirley's exciting adventure of spiritual awakening. It is an autobiographic book of a very small but intense time of Shirley's life, in which, as many who have had an awakening will be able to relate to, life becomes brilliantly alive, full of synchronicities and magic. Shirley is lead from book, to teacher, to channel, to places across the globe as she follows the promtings of spirit that lead her to glimpse and explore realities that break down her previous belief structure about the world. And as she travels and learns, a completely new way of viewing life emerges for her- and a completely new Shirley!

Spiritual insights aside, just the way in which this book is written is superb - Shirley has a real gift for bringing to life her experiences on the page and the book reads as an exilarating adventure novel. I loved it and re-read it occasionally when i want to recapture that feeling.

If you like metaphysics and new age writings, this book is quite a gem and well worth reading. You will cerish it, you will love it and probably read it again and again.

This might sound condescending, but this compelling account of the actress' spiritual journey is surprisingly well written. Shirley MacLaine is not just a Hollywood dancer turned New Age guru; she's a bestselling author who knows the craft of writing. What comes across immediately is the earnestness of her message. She's not out to fool her readers. She's also done her research. Each chapter has apt quotations from great thinkers about the nature of life as they saw it. There are a lot of sentences that begin with the word "Maybe," as in "Maybe the ancient thinkers had it right." Nevertheless she rightly states that what we call history is a leap of faith. Readers will have to make their own judgments about the credulity of the author, but MacLaine's testament shows us that everyone has to draw their own lines about personal beliefs based on experience, reading, and reasoning. But above all, experience. And she documents this process spendidly. She does not come off as an unreasonable "kook." On the contrary, she herself is skeptical at first and admits that the very ideas she later accepts seem "preposterous." It is this intelligence and skepticism which makes this book hard to dismiss as simply New Age pap. The chapter about Peter Sellers is genuinely moving.

I read this book the first time while backpacking Europe and finding a shortage of English-written books to read. It changed my life. I read it again nine years later and although many of the ideas she writes of I have internalized since my first reading, MacLaine's book again inspired me to look at some spiritual ideas on a new level. I am grateful for "Out On a Limb" as my initial kindergarten book that helped me get beyond suspicion and cynicism and into openmindedness and higher consciousness, welcoming eastern philosophies, the belief in reincarnation and UFOs and provided a reading list to help me find my way. I would recommend this book to anyone who feels like "there's got to be something more going on out there."

Shirley MacLaine should get a lot of credit for writing this book: although fictionalized in some areas it is an honest and important part of her ongoing autobiographical series. This book is also important as a cultural milepost; it is one of the most popular 'New Age' books and aroused storms of criticism and controversy when it appeared in 1983.

At the end of the '70's actress, Feminist, and one-time liberal activist MacLaine finds herself wealthy but unsatisfied. A series of synchronous events exposes her to spiritual ideas and she discovers that many of her friends and colleagues share her esoteric interests. Others, however, are critical, especially those from political circles. This includes 'Gerry', a fictionalized version of her lover, one-time Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. Impulsively MacLaine accepts the suggestion of a chance acquaintance and travels to Peru! 'Out on a limb' she bathes in mountain springs and listens to tales of UFOs, reincarnation, 'channeling' and mystic destiny.

There is a good deal of name-dropping in the book and a tacit celebration of the materialist lifestyles of the rich and famous. Nevertheless it is an honest account of a fairly common phenomenon; the awakening of spiritual aspirations in late 20th century America. Infinitely superior to, though tarred with the same brush as, the Lynn Andrews 'biographies'.

I'll get right to the point: this book is a must read for anyone contemplating the meaning of existence and spirituality. Entertaining and educational all at once, MacLaine is inspiring and thought-provoking. This book has literally changed the way I view the world.

I spent years in church listening to pastors make fun of Shirley MacLaine and call her a kook. I never thought much about it. I enjoyed watching her in movies and thought she was "amusing", but it never occurred to me that she actually had something valid to say that would influence and change my life. Needless to say, one day I picked up one of her books and started reading it out of curiousity. It changed my entire direction in life. She makes the comment in her book that "one book generally leads to another" which was certainly true. I started reading every book I could find on reincarnation and spirit guides, etc. I feel so much calmer and more balanced now, and I feel a great lack of fear concerning the future.

The one thing I would like to see Shirley address in future books is her relationship to other people as far as a "helping" capacity. In the two books I've read, we know that she's had plenty of love affairs, and she gives us the history between herself and her parents, etc. Generally, a knowledge of our relationship to God and to ourselves will result in compassion and a desire to reach out to mankind and help in any way we can. Shirley certainly accomplishes this in providing us with her life narratives. It would be interesting to know how she incorporates this into her personal life and relationships with others.

Shirley supplies her fans with the usual information one expects to find in a Hollywood tell-it-all book and so much more. Now you'll find out not only who's slept with whom but who they slept with in previous incarnations!

Yes is was Shirley MacLaine, well-known Hollywood actress, dancer and last surviving member of the infamous "Rat-Pack" who almost single-handedly brought "New Age Spirituality" into the American mainstream with her '83 autobiographical best-seller `Out on a Limb'. This easy to read and highly entertaining 377 page book is a veritable everything you ever wanted to know about the New Age compendium that brought the concept of channeling and reincarnation into mainstream consciousness in unprecedented fashion.

Shirley's revolutionary book came along when the time was ripe for an alternative approach to the divine. A large portion of the population had given up on the Sunday go to church ritual to hear about how the experience of God had touched the lives of people in the remote past. They hungered for something more recent, more accessible and most of all more experiential. Ms. MacLaine provided just that, a contemporary spiritual quest encompassing a myriad of belief systems and personal encounters with living, illumined teachers dispensing wisdom. All this blended with numerous, always eerie and invigorating synchronistic occurrences (meaningful coincidence) that so enthrall us made `Out on a Limb' a sure hit with the public-at-large.

Unthinkable as it may seem, her simplistic, naïve understanding of spirituality has now become the norm for many, especially within the Hollywood elite and has caused a paradigm shift in modern day society that is still evolving. I'm not sure whether the positive brought about by this new mindset outweighs the negative backwash of spurious information and shallow thinking brought about by this book, but it is change nonetheless.

Whether you agree with Shirley or not is not the point. She stands alone as an agent of change, new age guru, spiritual guide, cultural phenomenon and a sociological event that cannot be denied no matter how many people sit back and laugh at her beliefs. Many years from now long after you and I are gone this book will still be read and recognized as an important milestone in the history of the `New Age' movement. Ah..., the power of Hollywood stardom.

I got this book in my hands "by the way", but it changed my way of thinking very much. The biggest change was the way to think about myself - as a playfull, spiritual beeing, who I really am. Now I wonder if I really got this book in my hands "by the way" or was it ment to be?

Shirley Maclaine's books have all been bestsellers and rightly so. She bares her soul in her writing, besides displaying exemplary courage and honesty in her confrontations with the esoteric side of life.

So much has been said about Shirley Maclaine's books that anything more seems superfluous. However, this book could be of renewed interest to those new readers who have, or have had an interest in Sweden during the late seventies and early eighties. This is because the identity of the politician she had a love affair with, is revealed in her later book, 'The Camino'. That information makes this book and its sequel, 'It's All in the Playing' more significant and evocative of the times.