Rating: 
Summary: ploddingly deep but worth the delve
Review: I put this book down the first time I attempted to read it, just after I finished college coursework many moons ago. Since then, I've tried it again and again, and read it to completion four times and find that I love it. The tales unfolds as a mystery wrapped around, as it says, an inquiry into values. The narrative itself is clever, and I won't reveal any more of that, but as it pushes, excruciatingly slow at times, it makes a case - in fact, numerous cases - for the importance of quality (as opposed to consumption of quantity) in our lives, and deliciously weaves those inquiries into the narrative. Unfortunately, I found those discussions at times to be so deep, deep, deep, as to frustrate me to the point of putting the book down. But as I am drawn back time and time again, I realize the value the "inquiry into values" has had on my life, or at least in my inquiry into it. I encourage you not to beceome so frustrated you don't go back to it again. And again.
Rating: 
Summary: A good book but where is the zen???
Review: I have read the book. I put the five not so much becuase of the book itself but rather because of what I thought it would contain. I am only eighteen but I have mixed feelings about the book. First of all I plan on majoring in religious studies and the original reason I read the book was to read about zen. I found little of that there if any really and I was very dissapointed. The objection I have to this book isn't the actaul story because that does make you think which is something few books seem to do for me but rather the fact that you can find it under zen buddhism in a library. I would rather have it under philosophy. It changed me to the extant that a well written book changes anyone but it lacked faith. That I think is why americans like it so much. . . maybe. then again I am an american too so who knows? it is ineresting. go for it if you can't decide.
Rating: 
Summary: A Truly Engaging Work
Review: Zen and the art of Motercycle Maintenance was a rare treat. Mr. Pirsig did a great job with it. Philosophically sound-- yet light and easy to read. His story needed to be told.
Rating:
Summary: Still interesting after all these years
Review: I read Pirsig's book for the first time in 1979 while on my way to Japan and was greatly moved by it. I later used it in teaching writing and reread it at least four or five times. Recently, frustrated over how computers and the Internet are changing people's lives (including mine as a teacher), I reread it and found Pirsig's ideas about technology just as applicable as they were before the current computer revolution began, whenever that was. It was like a visit with a wise old friend who's just as sharp as he or she used to be!
Rating:
Summary: A 5, but only cause I can't choose 1 or 10!
Review: I have a real love/hate relationship with this book. We read it for a class, and I have to say, it was an interesting class! But there's something about Pirsig... This book unquestionably changed my life, but there are times when you would gladly rip it to shreds! It really makes you think, but somehow it doesn't make life any clearer- it only succeeded i confirming the fact that I have NO clue about life whatsoever! But, it is a nice bit of brain food, so I guess it's all a matter of whether you wanna think and be baffled or just avoid it and stay happy in your own little world!!!
Rating:
Summary: explodes your insides, snaps you out of yourself and everyth
Review: i'd got hold of this book sometime during my undergrad days, when i was not making sense of the values around me. i remember reading this book with my friend and discussing it with him for days on. both of us were shaken to the core with that experience. and we went mad. it felt like something snapped inside us. we questioned everything in ourselves. we questioned our education, relationships, our world views. thats the power of this book. this book put in perspective all the things simmering in head for a long time. i could learn to see the world a bit more detached. i could define my own values, accept others'. in short pirsig led me gently into a world of enquiry.
Rating:
Summary: Z.M.M. is a deep and impressive work
Review: Z.M.M. is a deep and impressive work which has sold millions of copies and stayed in print in many languages for over twenty years. I recently read it for the first time. It was good to wait until I was ready for it. I am not sure I can recommend the book, but I am glad I experienced it.
Mr. Pirsig presents the story of his search for the roots of deep philosophical views and his exploration of the branches of those views, from which branches hang all of the results Western civilization, not the least of which are universities, motorcycles, and mental hospitals. The philosophic system he proposes is to my knowledge unique and original, as well as marvelously free of endorsements or adherents.
I am very interested in exploring how the models or paradigms in which all of us live lead to action. I did not explore Z.M.M. with a purpose of determining whether his system is true or even useful. I just like to know what the world looks like inside other people's heads. The world from inside his head looks wondrously intricate and interconnected, a world in which a man's motorcycle maintenance methods are determined by the intellectual in-fighting of ancient Greek philosophers. He is generous in the detail with which he shares pieces of his fertile and facile mind.
I very much appreciate the effect reading the book has had on my experience of household repairs. I installed a dishwasher the day I finished the book. I found myself happily immersed in the project, even through a greater than usual number of "gumption traps." ZMM helped me see many obstacles and "wrong turns" more powerfully. I could be with the problem and still be in action. I enjoyed it more, regretted the time spent less, and feel more satisfied with my life. This shift has endured several weeks, through garage cleaning, shelf mending, and hard disk installation. My life has been greatly enhanced by just this one aspect of Pirsig's philosophy.
And yet...
The narrator's life described in ZMM strikes me as sad and lonely, filled with failure and lacking in purpose. Measuring it against the three tenets of MayoGenuine (be genuine, be learning, be transitive) is illuminating. His great strength is his genuineness. He is also an intense learner in the traditional sense of accumulating knowledge and building systems, yet this information never seems to support him in taking the actions that would give him a satisfying life. His behavior does not alter, so learning in the sense in which I use the word does not occur. Most tragically, he seems highly isolated from human relationships, preferring the role of sage observer to participant or leader. He seems entirely ignorant of the meaning and fulfillment available form implementing Transitive Structures. Without these structures, his increasing insight not only fails to support his expression, it ultimately undermines his very survival.
Luckily, his insight is available for others who may read this book and re-direct their own lives.
Rating:
Summary: I was blown away by the depth of this novel
Review: I'am 18 and was required to read this for a high school english course. The teacher forced us to read the entire book in one week. All I got from it was confusion we were slammed into the book and then right at the point where I might have had a glimmer of understanding we were ripped away just as fast so this summer when I can take my time I will reread it because I think that if read over at a slower pace this would be a most fabuless piece of literature.
Rating: 
Summary: It _Is_ Good! (If You Think So)
Review: (with apologies to Pirandello) Isn't it lucky that Zen patriarchs tend to be an enlightened lot, with an active sense of humour? If they weren't, I have no doubt they would sue Pirsig for libel. What this book contains is all the froth and gibber that you have to dispose of before you can discover Zen. People have a habit of saying that books they like 'changed their life', and this book gets a lot of that. Personally, I find that any book worth reading will change my life. This one didn't. Zen and the Art of Lacklustre Hippiedom has all the philosophical insight of Sophie's World, and all the entertainment value of the Boston Telephone Directory. So yes, I suppose it has some redeeming virtues. In short, a best seller.
Rating:
Summary: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Review: The duality of peoples' reaction to this book relates to the difficulty of finding and confronting issues in one own life. The first three times I attempted to read this I had to give up, but once I made it past (ch. 6?) it was an astoundingly important work, and the entire book, including chapters 1-5, became vital. Each time you read this thing it seems like a different book!
| 
