The Great Work Of Your Life Hardcover – 1 Nov. 2012

I’ve just read three of Stephen Cope’s books in succession and loved them all: The Great Work of Your Life, The Wisdom of Yoga and Deep Human Connection. They each offer a valuable distillation of more complex works enabling the lay reader, like me, to absorb truths that I otherwise may not have accessed. Stephen has a beautiful writing style and peppers his own thoughts and other quotes with stories that make his writing come alive. Each of the books I have is beginning to look rather battered as I have a tendency to keep referring back to them.

I rarely write reviews for books. This is probably the most sincerely written book that I had ever read (You can feel that not only the author believes what he writes, he lives in it)! It is so readable yet the message in it is nothing small. I am sure that Stephen Cope wrote this book with his entire heart (writing as his dharma) and I am so grateful that he did. I have previously read two books about the Gita but never feel connected to it, until this one. I will be return to a deeper study of the Gita and cannot wait to read his other book on yoga.

I was drawn by Stephen Cope's premise, I've read some of his other work and think he's an interesting and insightful thinker, but not necessarily good at communicating this ideas in text. As an introduction to the Gita this is a nice book, but too long. I don't care for his detailed descriptions of the lives of either the well-known individuals he uses as examples, and who seem to have been chosen at random, or his hybridised 'oridinary people' who were all of a type and suffering from some seriously tiresome first world problems, so I skipped large chunks of these long life-stories. I'm still not really clear what this individual 'dharma' to which we are all to aspire actually is, as his concept isn't properly concluded and seems to conflict with a lot of Buddhist and yogic teaching I've come across elsewhere. Made me want to go to the source and read the Gita myself.

I loved this book. Stephen's writing style is warm and engaging and I found his use of human stories to illustrate the main message of the Bhagavad Gita, to be both enlightening and inspiring. I have had so many 'Aha!' moments while reading this, that I now want to go back and read it over again armed with a highlighter! It's one of those books that for me is a keeper - one that will stay on my bookshelf for a long time.

I loved this book. Read in three sittings. If you love Steven Pressfields work, you'll love this. Cope manages to make the Bhagavad Gita accessible and apply able to our modern lives. I love the mixture of famous people from history who lived the Gita and ordinary people he knew too. This personal aspect of it made it a very warm and engaging book to read as well as made you feel the author was deeply connected to the philosophy he was writing about. I would whole heartedly recommend this book to anyone who feels, like Arjuna, stuck at the edge of the battlefield not knowing which way to go and who is looking for a set of deeper guiding principles to light the way.

Disappointing. Full of examples of famous people achieving Grand things, such as Jane Goodall. How can the normal person possibly live up to these extraordinary examples? I usually love this author. But in this book I feel like he has lost his way.

I was not familiar with the Gita before reading this book and it left me wondering why it has taken so long to find it. Or rather that I found it at the perfect time. Cope’s love of the teachings and joy of opening them up for readers is palpable. His research into dharma stories and how he connects the stories to each other and the teachings was masterful, and importantly very relatable. I’ve been recommending this book to everyone.

I've started reading this book and I am finding it fascinating; it's such interesting reading and I can't wait to finish it - hopefully by the end of it, I will have found my Dharma. It really does make you question what makes your life sing. Do what makes you happy etc. It has a unique cover and looks great on the coffee table too.