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3.53 AVERAGE
3.53 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Dnf. This book is second line after Infinite Jest to fully embody John L. Brooke's research into "deliberation."
I really liked most of the book. I would steal away from work to get through few pages; stay up all night reading in bed despite an early day, but toward the end I felt it got bogged down with trying to prove the existence of God, or something like that... I don't remember exactly, but whatever it was, it turned me off, and, in fact, I never made it to the end, but am also unlikely to attempt it again after all these years... but who knows. At the time I felt I was "finished" with it.
The tag line to this book "an inquiry into values" is a bit deceptive. It is not really an exploration of values at all, but an in-depth look at philosophy. Robert Pirsig based this loosely on his own life - it is the story of a former English and philosophy professor who quest to understand varying ideas in philosophy. My favorite undergraduate psychology professor recommended it to me in 1995, so it took me 20 years to get to it. But I finished it and I am glad I read it. But I would not recommend it to others unless you are highly interested in philosophy. I think there are better alternatives out there.
reflective
slow-paced
I liked this book but found myself learning much about motorcycles during it.
I love and hate this book.
I think that it's an incredibly important thing to truly commit philosophically to what you love. I think we don't do that enough in real life, that we could learn from how truly and deeply and wholly he loves everything involving motorcycling. He turns a routine, boring, mundane job of changing the oil into something fascinating and beautiful. We could all use a little more of that.
I do not like how gravely he speaks about philosophy. I hate it. He talks about Phaedrus, like he's writing the book with Phaedrus holding a knife to his neck. That sounds dramatic but he actually says something like "I truly fear Phaedrus' knife..." which evokes imagery of a crappy slasher movie. He's using the knife as imagery to cut up and compartmentalize his life and how we decide our little experience of life is the world entire, but goddamn...don't be so serious about ideas and mental framing, it makes me want to laugh and cry in exasperation. He's trying so hard to be taken seriously that it falls laughably short, and his writing loses a lot of its power due to the graveness in tone. It's like you're being taught the Allegory of the Cave by Kristin Stewart.
I think that it's an incredibly important thing to truly commit philosophically to what you love. I think we don't do that enough in real life, that we could learn from how truly and deeply and wholly he loves everything involving motorcycling. He turns a routine, boring, mundane job of changing the oil into something fascinating and beautiful. We could all use a little more of that.
I do not like how gravely he speaks about philosophy. I hate it. He talks about Phaedrus, like he's writing the book with Phaedrus holding a knife to his neck. That sounds dramatic but he actually says something like "I truly fear Phaedrus' knife..." which evokes imagery of a crappy slasher movie. He's using the knife as imagery to cut up and compartmentalize his life and how we decide our little experience of life is the world entire, but goddamn...don't be so serious about ideas and mental framing, it makes me want to laugh and cry in exasperation. He's trying so hard to be taken seriously that it falls laughably short, and his writing loses a lot of its power due to the graveness in tone. It's like you're being taught the Allegory of the Cave by Kristin Stewart.
This is a book I’m looking forward to reading again. Probably several times.
It's been a while since I've added something to my "Dude, I don't even know" shelf but this one has made the list!
First off, the word quality has lost all meaning to me thanks to the last half of the book where the author dives into the topic with such abandon and zeal that I found myself looking around to see if I had missed something. This was interspersed with commentary on his and his son's cross country trek on a motorcycle. And then all this was interspersed with flashbacks from his college days as Phaedrus, a philosophy major/professor who had a breakdown (at least, I think that's what happened).
There was a tiny glimmer at about 80% where I thought the author was going to be able to tie all these strings together into something that would end up being really satisfying, but he detoured back into an examination of quality and that was that. Glad I read it, but not what I was expecting and not something I particularly enjoyed.
First off, the word quality has lost all meaning to me thanks to the last half of the book where the author dives into the topic with such abandon and zeal that I found myself looking around to see if I had missed something. This was interspersed with commentary on his and his son's cross country trek on a motorcycle. And then all this was interspersed with flashbacks from his college days as Phaedrus, a philosophy major/professor who had a breakdown (at least, I think that's what happened).
There was a tiny glimmer at about 80% where I thought the author was going to be able to tie all these strings together into something that would end up being really satisfying, but he detoured back into an examination of quality and that was that. Glad I read it, but not what I was expecting and not something I particularly enjoyed.
Right Now on goodreads this has exactly the same rating 3.78 as Walden, another of my 5 star books.
Gravity didn't exist before the big bang, because the universe was empty, no mass, no gravity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe
Sounds an awful lot like today's political landscape and religious fundamentalists of today and the past.
“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.”
Gravity didn't exist before the big bang, because the universe was empty, no mass, no gravity.
“is the notion that before the beginning of the earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before the primal generation of anything, the law of gravity existed.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
Sounds an awful lot like today's political landscape and religious fundamentalists of today and the past.