Go ahead and laugh if you want, but I just reread Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull from 1970. I'd read it in junior high school in the 1970s, but remembered almost none of it. I had gotten a bunch of used books for Christmas last year that had been purchased at Half-Price Books, and this was one of them.
If you've never read it, it's the story of an outcast seagull who wants to soar in the heavens like an eagle rather than flap his wings with the flocks at the beach stealing food. Two angelic-type birds visit him and take him to what I guess is seagull heaven. Jonathan learns to soar and then returns to Earth to teach other outcast seagulls about flight and about reaching what sounds like Nirvana. There are grainy black-and-white photos of gulls in flight accompanying the story.
The story seems to be a combination of Jesus' Transfiguration and of Buddha obtaining enlightenment. It's a very simply written story, only 127 pages with large type and lots of photos. Almost too simple, I think. Completely ignoring the religious aspect of the novel, the characters--I guess you would call them that--seem to be rather stereotyped and I found Jonathan annoying and arrogant and self-centered at times.
The most interesting parts of the book were the technical aspects, the information about how seagulls actually fly, and then Jonathan's attempts at soaring and speeding miles overhead.
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