Scan barcode
l_nolastname's reviews
131 reviews
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values by Robert M. Pirsig
2.0
Where to start with this review?
I read this book as part of my bookclub, and honestly never had any intention to read it. With that being said, I was right to not want to read this book. I didn't like it, though it was lame af! However the story that my bookclub and I conceived as we were reading the book and trying to understand what was happening, was a million times better than what we were given.
So first off, wtf was up with all those passages devoted to cattails??? Cross my heart, I so close to losing my shit over all the mentions that cattails got. They're not that interesting and they're also everywhere, EVERYWHERE! Cattails ruined the book for me, and we were only on page 20...
Ok so boring man with his "mentally ill" son, (notice how I put that ish in quotes, cause it's clear dude never met anyone with mental illness if he thought upset stummys & stress induced diarrhea caused mental illness,) go on a road trip with his equally boring friends whom hate technology. Or perhaps they just hated the way he condescend to them about technology, the world will never know.
The book doesn't even start to get interesting until his repressed dissociative personality, named Phaedrus, makes an entrance.
Now this is where I'm going to tell you about the story we all thought we were going to get to read in bookclub...
So my bookclub meets weekly which is nice, because you only read a couple chapters at a time and then get to speculate on where the story is heading. Well let me tell you, when Phaedrus came into the picture we went full on tin foil, conspiracy theory with it!
Now there are a lot of loose threads throughout this book and the mom is one of them. She's mentioned a couple of times and the protagonist talks about how his son is composing a letter to his mother, however for whatever reason he doesn't send it for his son. So now we're all, ooh did he kidnap his son??? Guys loosing his shit, changing his mind about their journey and their destinations all the time, could he be having a psychotic break and in the midst of it just kidnapped his own son? We didn't know and so we read on...
It was very much starting to look like that. His son is literally shitting his pants all the time, and by all the time I mean once is too many! But yes, more than once. At some point you find out he has two children and yet he never speaks about them, nor does he ever call his wife or his other child for the entire book! WHAT KIND OF HUSBAND/FATHER DOESN'T CALL AND CHECK IN WITH HIS WIFE AND KID??? A kidnapper!
We were so stuck on that kidnapping angle that we half expected the son to grow up and write a tell all book about the whole pants shitting ordeal! Doesn't happen, cause one this isn't the story he wrote, and two because the son is murdered in a botched robbery the he was 23. Very sad.
So we continued to read this book, and as we're reading it we're learning new things about the protagonist, such as his desire to understand the meaning of and the concept of quality and how it drove him mad. And a bunch of other really interesting stuff.
And his viewpoint on quality is fascinating, it truly is, it's just not 464 pages fascinating.
By this point he is so off his game, that people in the towns he's driving through are having visceral reactions to his presence, and yet no one calls the cops or child services, nada.
At some point he has an epiphany as to how his inability to empathize with his son has hurt the boy and how he must come to reconcile his two halves for the sake of his children. So yeah, no kidnapping, just a shitty dad.
So the book just ends in this way where nothing is really resolved and you kind of have a better understanding of his past and all the circumstances surrounding his previously weird behavior, but ultimately it was a waste of my time.
If you're into philosophy, you might like this book. There are many themes and ideas discussed throughout the book, however they can be quite contrived and boring, but they're still fascinating.
I read this book as part of my bookclub, and honestly never had any intention to read it. With that being said, I was right to not want to read this book. I didn't like it, though it was lame af! However the story that my bookclub and I conceived as we were reading the book and trying to understand what was happening, was a million times better than what we were given.
So first off, wtf was up with all those passages devoted to cattails??? Cross my heart, I so close to losing my shit over all the mentions that cattails got. They're not that interesting and they're also everywhere, EVERYWHERE! Cattails ruined the book for me, and we were only on page 20...
Ok so boring man with his "mentally ill" son, (notice how I put that ish in quotes, cause it's clear dude never met anyone with mental illness if he thought upset stummys & stress induced diarrhea caused mental illness,) go on a road trip with his equally boring friends whom hate technology. Or perhaps they just hated the way he condescend to them about technology, the world will never know.
The book doesn't even start to get interesting until his repressed dissociative personality, named Phaedrus, makes an entrance.
Now this is where I'm going to tell you about the story we all thought we were going to get to read in bookclub...
So my bookclub meets weekly which is nice, because you only read a couple chapters at a time and then get to speculate on where the story is heading. Well let me tell you, when Phaedrus came into the picture we went full on tin foil, conspiracy theory with it!
Now there are a lot of loose threads throughout this book and the mom is one of them. She's mentioned a couple of times and the protagonist talks about how his son is composing a letter to his mother, however for whatever reason he doesn't send it for his son. So now we're all, ooh did he kidnap his son??? Guys loosing his shit, changing his mind about their journey and their destinations all the time, could he be having a psychotic break and in the midst of it just kidnapped his own son? We didn't know and so we read on...
It was very much starting to look like that. His son is literally shitting his pants all the time, and by all the time I mean once is too many! But yes, more than once. At some point you find out he has two children and yet he never speaks about them, nor does he ever call his wife or his other child for the entire book! WHAT KIND OF HUSBAND/FATHER DOESN'T CALL AND CHECK IN WITH HIS WIFE AND KID??? A kidnapper!
We were so stuck on that kidnapping angle that we half expected the son to grow up and write a tell all book about the whole pants shitting ordeal! Doesn't happen, cause one this isn't the story he wrote, and two because the son is murdered in a botched robbery the he was 23. Very sad.
So we continued to read this book, and as we're reading it we're learning new things about the protagonist, such as his desire to understand the meaning of and the concept of quality and how it drove him mad. And a bunch of other really interesting stuff.
And his viewpoint on quality is fascinating, it truly is, it's just not 464 pages fascinating.
By this point he is so off his game, that people in the towns he's driving through are having visceral reactions to his presence, and yet no one calls the cops or child services, nada.
At some point he has an epiphany as to how his inability to empathize with his son has hurt the boy and how he must come to reconcile his two halves for the sake of his children. So yeah, no kidnapping, just a shitty dad.
So the book just ends in this way where nothing is really resolved and you kind of have a better understanding of his past and all the circumstances surrounding his previously weird behavior, but ultimately it was a waste of my time.
If you're into philosophy, you might like this book. There are many themes and ideas discussed throughout the book, however they can be quite contrived and boring, but they're still fascinating.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
3.0
Since it's a holiday in the U.S. I decided to read a book in its' entirety today.
I read this book back in college and didn't much care for it then. I decided to reread it for two reasons; the first being that it's part of the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge, and the second because my English teacher had been such a huge bag of dicks when we discussed it in class.
While I didn't change my initial rating for it, because I still nothing this book, I did in fact enjoy it a lot more the second time around. I guess my initial disdain was due to my cantankerous professor.
It's a pleasant and easy read and while I wouldn't recommend it, I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading it either. I have one more Vonnegut book to read for the RGRC, hopefully that will help me decide whether or not I like this author.
I read this book back in college and didn't much care for it then. I decided to reread it for two reasons; the first being that it's part of the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge, and the second because my English teacher had been such a huge bag of dicks when we discussed it in class.
While I didn't change my initial rating for it, because I still nothing this book, I did in fact enjoy it a lot more the second time around. I guess my initial disdain was due to my cantankerous professor.
It's a pleasant and easy read and while I wouldn't recommend it, I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading it either. I have one more Vonnegut book to read for the RGRC, hopefully that will help me decide whether or not I like this author.