Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not as good as...
Review: The follow-up, Lila, is better. Somehow the whole aspect of undefined quality in the first book makes it hard to be sure you're understanding.
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Summary: Event of the Millennium? Think again.
Review: The other night I was watching a discussion about outstanding people and events of the Second Millennium. The panel seemed to agree that the Apollo 11 Moon Landing was, beyond a doubt, the outstanding event of the Second Millennium. At that point in the discussion, I recalled a book that I had read over 20 years ago - none other than ZAAMM!I re-read the book and, sure enough, on page 170-171 of the hardcover, is his discussion of the significance of the Columbus Voyage. The Columbus discovery of a new world had "...just shook people up." "The whole Renaissance is supposed to have resulted from the topsy-turvy feeling caused by Columbus' discovery of a new world." The discovery had presented a new paradigm so powerful that "The only way that they could assimilate it was to abandon the entire medieval outlook and enter into a new expansion of reason." The Apollo 11 landing did'nt involve a paradign switch for us in that the "Moon exploration doesn't involve real root expansion of thought...It's really just a branch of what Columbus did. A really new exploration, one that would look to us today the way the world looked to Columbus, would have to be in an entirely new direction." Thanks, Robert, for giving a little order to these topsy-turvy times. Christopher and the guys sure have my vote! I am often reminded of your voyage when I see red-winged black birds swooping across highway 11 in North Dakota.
Rating: 
Summary: It helps if you ride a motorcycle, but not required.
Review: I first read this book before I got into motorcycling and didn't fully appreciate the biker situations. Later on in the book it gets silly/confusing with the ghost Phaedrus. Perhaps Pirsig got carried away on the philosophical angle. He should have kept it simpler and more meaningful like Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha".
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Summary: Think you understand the world around you? Think again.
Review: I'm sure that in any one persons life time an event occurs that in some way makes them view the world differently. For me this book was one of those events. It is easy to get excited when reviewing a book that you particularly liked so colouring your review of it with overemphasised "rhetoric" which other people generally take with-a-pinch-of-salt anyway. The facts are that this was very good book. I didn't open the book looking for what other people had told me was there. I wasn't looking to agree or disagree with Persig I just 'listened'. His words were not so much a guide (as some people say) but more a key which unlocked a way of thinking clouded by modern society. Everybody has questions. I think the problem that alot of people have with this book is that they expect to be handed the answers by Persig. All I can say is read with an open mind and let this book be the catalyst to your own journey.
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Summary: WOW!
Review: If you open up to this book, it will change your life and make it much more fulfilling. I first read it in my mid-teens, a time when many people are questioning and searching for what their existence means. Since then, I've read it over four times and as I change, I receive new insights into my life along with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Its a very unique book in that the physical storyline parallels the metaphysical plot and creates neural caonnections within your brain that allows one to do the same with their lives. This book is so great, I believe ALL PEOPLE SHOULD READ IT.
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Summary: 21 Students Say: "insightful" but also "boring"
Review: [This review is a composite of 21 student reviews after we completed reading the book in a freshman composition class] The book starts out with a motorcycle journey--undertaken by the narrator and his son Chris--as its focus, but it quickly turns into more of a mental journey, guiding readers through the narrator's inner questions about and quest for "quality." While the plot is not physically exciting, it is mentally complex and insightful. It makes you think about simple things you may take for granted and asks questions that everyone supposedly knows the answer to but can not express in words. In addition to the narrator's personal, philosophical "inquiry into values," the book explores the relationships between the narrator and his son, between artistic and scientific aspects of everyday situations, between sanity and insanity, and between the motorcycle (as a machine) and us (as people). Such concrete examples can help readers, yet the book is often redundant, confusing, and vague. Patient readers may find Pirsig's views on quality, discovery, truth, and life intriguing, but it is also easy to get lost in the many details and tangents in the text and miss the main idea. Some readers may also resent Pirsig's sometimes overwhelming and overdetermined theories. However, for those inclined to lengthy analysis and inquiry into our common ways of seeing the world, this may be just the right book.
Rating:
Summary: A mixed response.
Review: This book seemed to ask a lot of questions yet give no real answers to them. Pirsig spends his time confused over a definition of 'quality' and yet he gives three within the main body of the book. The narratives between the philosophy, whilst relating, work more as light relief from the heavy-duty philosophy we are dealing with. Pirsig has some excellent ideas on University and education, however, if your looking for enlightenment. Don't expect much. Otherwise excellent.
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Summary: Quality eh?
Review: First off, when I finished the book (in a twelve hour reading marathon) I was breathless. But... If its quality he preaches, I'm not sure how Pirsig stacks up against his own rigorous standards. Surely he is deeply involved in his work. Surely he has become one with this book. But... It's that profound involvement that I think sometimes alienates the reader from what is a remarkably difficult piece. But... As I flipped through pages about mathemeticians and scientests I never cared about, banging the book on the wall waiting for it all to make sense, I could NOT put it down. In the end he does not dissapoint, but if I hadn't read some passages six times over, I may have been in the dark. It was all worth it, as I mull over in my mind some of the last lines the chills down my spine freeze my fingers. Read it with all your heart or you won't do it or yourself justice.
Rating: 
Summary: A Disgruntled Philosophy Student
Review: As required reading for our philosophy class our teacher assigned us Zen... However, he failed to tell us how boring and unelightening the book actually was. Pirsig is not really a philosopher, but more of a rambler who just goes on and on about quality...whatever he means by that. The chautaquas were dry and the narratives only slightly better. I don't recommend this book at all.
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Summary: Extraordinary... It's changed my life
Review: There's really nothing more I can say. Trying to describe the effect this book's had on me is useless... it's far too great, far too powerful, far too unbelievable to put into words. Perhaps I've read more into this book that was warranted... So be it. I fully realize that there are those out there who claim Pirsig is an unintelligible hack who got lucky, and others who aren't so vicious but who agree that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence is not what the "hype" said it was... but it doesn't matter. This book represents so many things to me. I _care_ about it. And I've learned to care about other things. Some would scoff at the use of the word "care" in this way, because they fall back on the easy to use and ultimately ridiculous view that such "new age, baby boomer/twenty something spirituality" is empty and fake. But I _care_ now, I understand Quality in all its infinite forms. This book has done so much for me.... See? I even began this review by saying "there's not much I can say," but Pirsig's book has drawn me in yet again. Read this book. Cherish this book. The two go hand in hand, so just do the former first, and the latter will inevitable happen of its own accord.
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