Rating: 
Summary: Attention Grabber
Review: Once you start reading it, you won't be able to put it down! Jostein Gaarder keeps adding twist upon twist. And it's a prelude to Maya, another Jostein Gaarder book. A definite must read!
Rating: 
Summary: Boring
Review: Let me start off by saying I really enjoyed Sophie's World, but this book just seem to ramble on without any getting to any kind of point. I finally got bored with it and couldn't finish it.
Rating: 
Summary: A quest for undertanding
Review: In a story within a story, "The Solitaire Mystery" by Jostein Gaarder follows a sailor who gets shipwrecked on an island and finds another man there, also a cast away, who had been lost there 52 years before. The older man lives on the island with 53 strange little people, who on a certain celebratory day, prepare a sentence for a grand story. No one knows the sentences of the others (they can barely remember their own), and the "court jester" among them arranges them so the story is coherent, representative of the past and present and also so it prophesizes the future.All this is read by a 12-year-old boy, Hans Thomas, who is traveling from Norway with his father by car to Greece, where Hans Thomas's mother is living. She had left the family eight years before to become a model and neither Hans Thomas nor his father, an arm-chair philosopher, has heard from her since. Hans has a problem with his remaining parent, too. He drinks too much, and gets drunk regularly on the journey south. But when a funny little man gives Hans Thomas a strange magnifying glass, and a baker in Dorf gives him a correspondingly tiny book baked into a sticky bun, Hans is the connection between the two stories, living out his quest to go get his "Mommy" in Greece, and spending time reading the story of the mysterious island and the strange people who inhabit it. There are obvious connections between Hans Thomas's journey, his problems in life and who he is with the sticky-bun book's plot, which is very complex, with many seemingly disparate aspects and facets. As the story progresses, the themes of the essence of being, of God's role in the world, destiny and the joy of being alive/the beauty of the world resonate in both stories. Gaarder, a former philosophy teacher in Norway, concentrates on these aspects of philosophy, using both stories to illustrate his themes and intrigue his reader. While I read that this is a young adult book, I found it quite engaging, particularly once I was able to devote enough time to it at one sitting to be swept up in the plot. For some time it alternates chapters between Hans's journey and the journey in the sticky-bun book, at which point the relationships between them become apparent and compelling. I also read a lot of comparison's to Gaarder's well known novel "Sophie's World," which I've also read. I think the comparison, while natural, isn't necessarily that helpful. "Sophie's World" was translated from the Norwegian into English first, but was written after "Solitaire" and is different; While both deal with philosophical themes and young adults, "Sophie's World" is a kind of brief history of philosophy. "The Solitaire Mystery" concentrates on the above-mentioned themes in a way that is fulfilling to any age of reader; the themes make the philosophical issues a support for a riveting plot. I recommend this novel. It's fun and fantastic, but leaves you feeling pleasantly full of ideas and reactions, as well as appreciative of the life we get to live.
Rating:
Summary: Pretentious drivel
Review: I feel that I must be an ignorant philostine. The book did nothing for me at all. A young boy and his dad are searching for their mother/wife who herself has gone off to find herself. The boy stumbles across a tiny book that speaks of a deck of cards a la Alice in Wonderland, a lost island, and this annoying rainbow fizz. Travclling together Hans, the 12 year old boy, thinks about the secret book but cannot tell his father about it. 75% through the book you have figured out how it is going to end. The philosphical side of the book does not make you want to ooh and ahh, unless you are the type of person that likes to "titter" during movies that are not particularly funny - or you do it because you are trying to impress a girl/boy as to how intellectual you are. Now don't get me wrong, I am not the type of person that roars with laughter at the Three Stooges or Abbott & Costello. Its just that this book was laborious to read.
Rating:
Summary: You just can't put it down
Review: The Solitare Mystery is the story of a 12 year-old boy, Hans Thomas, who lives with his father in Norway. His mother left them 8 years ago to 'find herself'. Hans' father a heavy drinker and smoker decides to take a road trip with his son to Athens, Greece to find his wife, who has taken up modeling. When they stop in a small town called Dorf, a baker gives Hans a small book with miniture writing that must be read through the magnifying glass that he recieved earlier on in the trip.
In this small book comes the stories of the line of bakers in that town, back to the first... who traveled to a land of a living deck of cards. Interestingly the events in the small book correspond with the events of the road trip and his fathers philosophising.
This book will keep you on the edge of your seat, tuning out the world around you, keeping you up past bedtime to read on.
Rating:
Summary: Solitaire Mystery
Review: I read this book several years ago, and it was one of the most joyous trips into my subconscious I have taken. I remember that his mom went "off to find herself" and his sweet innocent insight into that was great - "the sticky bun book" "the magnifying glass" and the goldfish and everytaste drink - all fully wonderful imagery. It is a definate must read and now a must re-read again for me....
Rating:
Summary: wonderful
Review: You can't miss this book!
This story is about a boy named Hans Thomas who left with his father to Athens looking for his mother that eight years before had left home trying to find herself. In his way to Greece a midget gave him a magnifying glass and then the baker of a town named Dorf gave him a very tiny book inside a bun. This book has the story of his family curse and make him realized what's his destiny and solve the mystery of why his mother run away to Athens. With this story the author wants to show the readers how wonderful and amazing life is. Just the fact of being alive is powerful and impressive. The human beings had being able to create an incredible world full of technologies that make life more comfortable and easy, but they haven't being able to realize neither how complex and organized nature and life are, nor the answer for the most basic questions like who are we? Where do we come from? How did we just appear on earth? Is there more live outside this planet?
There are just a few that maybe don't have the answers for these questions, but these questions are in their minds all the time, they are awake, they open their eyes and astonished they admire even the most little and insignificant thing. And those few are the jokers of the packs, "the ones who see too much and too deep".
Rating:
Summary: read it
Review: The Solitaire mystery really captures what the world is like when people get used to seeing everthing every single day its hard to explain but it shows what the world would be like if no one ever asked questions about where we came from or who we are. It also anwers many questions that a person may have and it really helps to understand many things while being intruiged with the life of a young boy in search for his mother. i really recomend this book
Rating:
Summary: In need of a philosophical pick-me-up?
Review: Gaarder's _The Solitaire Mystery_ came to me by accident--I was perusing the bookstore and the green spine of the book caught my eye. I didn't know anything else about it, except for the fact that it was by the same author as _Sophie's World_.
Four years later, I recently had to purchase a second copy because my first is so worn out. I am a substitute teacher, and use it to read aloud to my elementary classrooms. Not only are the kids entranced, I find something new each time I read it. Gaarder has a way of wording very difficult philosophical concepts (in this book, specifically predetermination/destiny and coincidence) and making them into an "Alice in Wonderland" like story to reach even the youngest kids, but thought provoking enough to keep adult readers thinking for a very long time.
Each chapter is identified not only by a playing card (I will not talk about that--it is up to the reader to find out the secret of the cards) but also a "tagline", which operates not unlike a textbook summarization of the concept Gaarder wants us to take away. Two examples are "we are but tiny dolls bursting with life" and "life is a lottery in which only the winning tickets are showing". If those words intrigue you, and you want the chance to read 51 more of those lines, read this book. It may change your perspective on things.
Rating:
Summary: A comparison of life & a deck of cards.
Review: Not till I read this book, a deck of cards to me was simply a deck of cards --- something to play with either alone or with friends. After having read this book, I now hold a very much different opinion. The world, & life in general, are like the entire deck of cards. It is full of different people, belonging in different families. Year in & year out, these people dwell with their own lives. Nothing concerns them more than their immediate environment. Like the dwarves in the magical island, we tend to run from the truth. Yes, we search...but if we feel we will not like the truth we are unearthing, then we avoid finding it out entirely. Like these suits, we humans, are oblivious & indifferent to the wonders that surround us. Like the Ace of Hearts, we are in constant search of something that we do not know of, & more often than not, we tend to lose ourselves. Like the Kings, we judge the Joker negatively, not only for how he looks, but for what he sees & says are very much different from our own views. Needless to say, it is this odd man who is the wisest of us all. He, being an outsider, gets to observe properly & sees the mire we are all in. In general, this book is a very interesting & unique piece. It is a far cry from the usual commercial books we often see around. I highly recommend this book to every avid reader, despite the main character (Hans) being a child. The topics being discussed through the pages are interesting to note & very much worthy of our thoughts. It is something to read & ponder on. & oh yes, before I forget...nothing is permanent in this world. Only change & time.
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