Rating: 
Summary: One of the three books that guide my daily life.
Review: The impact of this book on the reader is incredible. Pirsig
is like a weaver who combines philsophy and keen insight into
a wonderful tapestry depicting modern American culture and a
new way to go. A must have on any bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: Your education is not complete until you have read it.
Review: Autobiographical narrative of the author's inquiry into the nature of reality, distinctions, and sanity. Starts like a travelogue, but takes a sharp turn into the philosophical in Chapter 6.
--Richard Brodie, author, Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Mem
Rating:
Summary: Most thought-provoking book I have read to date.
Review: Pirsig is a master at controlling vocabulary and making his reader visualize each situation in the book. He has taught me more about what underlies words and concepts than any professor I have ever had. Wonderful work
Rating:
Summary: Extremely High on Real Quality
Review: A story about a man, his son, and his past. It will
Keep you in stitches while making you cry and teaching you
something about yourself and the world around you. A MUST
READ for anyone who speaks or ever even thought about speaking English
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful journey of philsophy, family and meaning of life.
Review: If you want to have a greater understanding of the world, the people in it, and why you spend time reading books, read this one
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed by Foolishness
Review: This otherwise excellent book is flawed by several errors in basic logic. For example, early in the book, the main character claims that before Newton created a law of gravity, gravity did not exist. For the record, the human conception of the way the universe works and the actual mechanics of the universe are two very different things. Anyone who believes that physics is a human construction is welcome to walk out my bedroom window. This error is typical of the book. Expect a lot of windy philosophizing along with some actual insights.
Rating: 
Summary: ADD and the art of motorcycle maintenance
Review: Ugh. This book can't decide what it wants to be. Every time you get interested in a topic (and this book does contain some interesting topics from the travel narrative to some of the ideas expressed) it switches over to another topic before resolving anything. This is incredibly frustrating from the point of view of entertainment. Does this book want to be a novel and flow like one, or a middle-brow discussion of contemporary worldviews, or a amateur philosophy thesis? It suceeds only in being a very long and slow 400+ pages of several seperate books thrown together with minimal integration.
Rating:
Summary: Profound, thought-provoking and questioning
Review: This book is about what the title says - an inquiry into values. But, that is an understatement. The author, through the main character, questions and challenges you to validate how you do and accomplish things. I have tried not to give away the contents in this review for it is best left to be read.
The main character is on a yearly vacation and chooses to take a ride down south from his place in Montana. His son accompanies him. As they ride, Phædrus, recollects his past and the path that led him to his current self. He goes over how he viewed doing or accomplishing tasks and how those around him differed. In the process he depends a great deal on his experience with both eastern and western religion and philosophies. His knowledge of the Hindu scriptures, religion and simple but profound truths is particulary gratifying to me (Twat Tham Asi - I urge you to explore this).
A major part of the book, he spends laying a foundation in defining what he thinks is Quality. By referring to Quality, he in a way, is referring to the Absolute in what one days. A few examples he delineates that come in one's way of looking at or achieving quality - Stuckedness, classic and romantic way of approaching solving a problem, value rigidity.
Through his journey, both on the motorcycle and his life (past and present), he walks you into constantly thinking and re-evaluating how you can approach your way of doing.
At times, I felt a great deal of self-righteousness in his approach. After all, not everyone is as gifted as a few people on this earth. His choosing his young son as somebody to display his disapproval constantly is particularly bothering and worrisome if you are a loving parent. Ultimately is it a big relief that he realizes the hypocracy and the truth why he needs to get back to his looked-upon self. Life is more about loving and caring than about how you view things, however right you are.
The afterward is something you wouldn't expect. I had read this book twenty or so years ago as a young man and all I could remember today was that it was one the very best books I had ever read. Reading it again, just confirms the thought; only now, it certainly had a more profound impact.
Rating:
Summary: Chautauq - wha?
Review: For me this work seems to fall into the category of books that are more disappointing than they otherwise might have been if they did not have the reputation as a `classic.' If I had read it without any prior preconceptions I think that I would have just found it occasionally annoying, occasionally interesting - but largely unexceptional.
Unfortunately though since it is a self-described "modern epic" I was expecting more that self-involved navel-gazing. Sometimes they really are just directions on how to assemble a rotisserie and not a deep symbol of our modern value system... I mean, common - insert A into slot B... *sigh* (if you haven't read the book before just know that yes this is really part of it, I didn't make it up)
To give the book its due though the author's unique perspective does give rise to some interesting points and ideas but these worthwhile nuggets are too few and far apart. Maybe if I was interested in the value of philosophy in and of itself this book would have been of more interest but rather it seems to represent more of a problem that pure philosophy can represent. When ones goes on these journeys of the mind and allow themselves to become so disconnected from reality there ideas loose all practical value - while a rational proof of something may be occasionally interesting, a more important question might be how one brings these abstractions back to the real world.
Finally, any book of this type which seeks to expound `the truth' (or even a truth) always walks a fine line between being interesting and coming off sounding aragonite. This book walks that fine line - and crosses it frequently.
While I did have to roll my eyes every few pages I am still glad I read this work because of its reputation - sometimes finding out a book isn't that great is just as valuable as finding out that a book is good.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: This is one of the great pieces of modern literature. Any critic of note agrees, as did the book reading world when it was published. It's success was a bit of a surprise, as it is a deep philosophical ramble for the most part, not your typical best seller. I am both a motorcycle rider and a student of Eastern religions, so this was made in heaven for me. No interest in either of those subjects is at all necessary to love this book, needless to say! More Western than Eastern philosophy here, both are presented brilliantly, and the final stop is pure enlightenment. The extraordinary mental journey that takes place in this book, the agony and seriousness of the author's search for truth, the philosophical heights, the madness, and the epiphanies along the way are all examples of the author's unique genius. The ending has an impact one would not expect of this book. It explodes. This is not one of your typical "Zen and the art of this or that" deals. This is one of the best books ever written, period. Not an easy read, but more than worth the effort.
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