Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #251296 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Synopsis
The type of home we live in, the style of the furnishings and colours, all work together to remind us of our personality, our taste, our values and interests. This text is a practical guide, providing simple, easy-to-follow advice on how to make the most of your home.

Customer Reviews

A "Master's thesis" in feng-shui - nothing original
A huge disappointment.

I bought this on a whim because the cover looked nice and I thought it would be good to have a feng shui book that focuses on spiritual side of home-making. I was expecting inspiring pictures, detailed information on building of altars or other places for meditation and worship but these turned out to be high hopes.

The book is poorly laid out (justification only on the left side, right side is uneven) and there are no pictures at all. There's nothing original in the text, most of the interesting bits are copied from others, such as Denise Linn and Karen Kingston. The book scraps on Jungian psychology and folkloristic myths but tells mostly of things that basically anybody who's been into high school knows. Maybe the only insight I got from this was the special value of Hestia as an ancient home Goddess. There are only about 15 pages on making actual adjustments for creating more spiritual home, all the rest is just quick glance on principles on feng shui (in a rather confusing way) and common holistic stuff about crystals and aromatherapy etc.

The book is probably a good introduction for those who've never ever heard of feng shui or any of this holistic stuff but for those who are even a bit familiar with the basic concepts there's nothing new. It's basically just like a long essay on feng shui or a master's thesis in which the author shows that she knows something about the topic but doesn't really give any new knowledge (if not the "talk to your house part" - even that has been borrowed from someone else though). If there had been glorious, inspiring pictures with the book I would have coped with the text as it is but now that it's only poorly laid print and nothing more the book is quite useless. I'm sorry, I really expected something better of this. I was expecting to get a new, fancy-looking treasure in my small collection of feng shui books but this is one of the very few books in my entire life that I'm probably going to give away as soon as I can.

Beautiful & Inspiring!
I wish there were more books like this! It doesn't matter if you don't believe in spirits or lares or sunlight... just follow the simple tips and you and your house will notice the difference. Not really a Feng Shui book (although it follows Feng Shui principles) but a simple and very inspiring book about the kind of suggestions that'll make immediate sense to you and are rooted in our own tradition. I really loved it!

Can you sift the psychology from the mythology ?
Sorry to dissent from the unadulterated praise heaped on this book in other reviews, but I found myself mystified by it. In most books on Feng Shui etc. one can see the psychology behind concepts like colour choice, clearing clutter etc. but Jane goes well beyond such ideas to the extent that it seems that she really does believe in lares and other supernatural phaenomena. *Talk* to your house ? C'mon Jane ! And it talks back ?? Hmm. She also doses the book with plenty of name-dropping of her friends who it seems are all into space-clearing, aromatherapy and similarly abstruse occupations. If you like Le Corbusier, you will not enjoy this volume !