I'm a year behind all of the controversy about Richard Bach's OUT OF MY MIND. If I had read the reviews before getting the book, I probably wouldn't have purchased it. I'm glad, however, that I did. I can certainly understand why so many people were upset about Bach's new novel. Well, it actually isn't a novel. It's more like a twenty-five page short story, expanded to look longer than it really is. Also, the story is open-ended. There is no actual ending to it, but rather what appears to be the preparation of future things to come. Last, there is no Leslie Parrish in this book. Not even a mention of her. I wasn't aware that Richard and Leslie had divorced until I read the previous reviews. Like most fans of Richard Bach, I,too, was surprised by this and began to wonder if it is possible for anyone to have a happy, successful, long-term marriage. I mean, if soul mates can't do it, what chance does the rest of us have? Anyway, as to the story itself, I can see where a lot of people would find nothing useful in it. Mr. Bach has talked about "parallel universes" in some of his other books on a much more interesting level. There wasn't really anything new here that would capture the imagination of most readers...that is, unless the reader had also had similar experiences. For the last several years, I have visited a college town in my dream state that has beautiful oak trees lining both sides of the street, as well as a multitude of wonderful bookstores. I meet people on the street that I seem to know, and shop in the bookstores, finding new novels by some of my favorite authors. I as walk through the town, I feel like I'm finally home. The only catch here is that I have never been to this town in my awakened state, nor do I actually know any of the people I meet in the dream. Even worse, my favorite authors in the dream state don't exist outside of that realm. I have no idea where this town has come from, or why I dream about it so often ( probably around two dozen times so far). No one has been able to give me a satisfying answer to this question. I know that I experience an extreme sense of peace while visiting this place in my sleep, and that it carries over into my awakened state for at least half of the following day. OUT OF MY MIND has given me some food for thought about this unusual experience. I know that some of the leading scientists of the past century have expressed the possibility of parallel universes existing. Whether the scientists (Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawkings, & Kip Thorne) are correct is a question that may be answered in the future. Whether we can access a parallel universe, if one does exist, is another question in itself. And finally, what is real and what is simply one's imagination? I don't know the answer to that. What I do know is that I immensely enjoyed Bach's book for this particular story line. It touched something deep inside of me, and now I'm more determined than ever before to find out something about this reoccuring dream of mine. I don't know if Mr. Bach wrote OUT OF MY MIND for the money, or if he really had something important that he wanted to say. I would like to think the positive, and I would like to read more books concerning his visits to the Saunders-Vixen airplane facility. If one looks at the universe through the eyes of a child, anything is possible...maybe even the visiting of a parallel universe while one is sleeping. One last note, Mr. Bach has since closed down his web site. I wonder if it was because of too many angry E-mails about OUT OF MY MIND?
