Goodreads Review: Sophie's World

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was beautiful, not only because of all the lessons on philosophy that were embedded into it but because of the awesome mystery of the characters that made you keep turning the pages. The writing style is very different from anything I've ever read before, with all that "romantic irony" plus the fact that it was a story inside a story inside a story sometimes. The ending was really well done as well. I wasn't expecting it to end that way. I love how they became immortal characters in the end.  There were also parts that were really funny, for example whenever Alberto Knox would be explaining a philosophy concept, the interjection of Sophie would always be something really comedic.

So even though this book is awesome, I didn't know whether to give it 5 stars or 4, but I decided on 5. The slight imperfections were that it didn't talk much about philosophy outside of Europe. It did mention Eastern philosophy a bit, but not enough. I won't hold this against the book much though because it was already quite long and I think if the author tried to talk about every type of philosophy it would reach a ridiculous length and cause the plot to move along way too slowly. The cover should say "a novel about the history of WESTERn philosophy" then. The author did spend a long time on certain parts, like Romanticism, and gave other areas a rushed treatment, like the Enlightenment thinkers I guess. The part about Hegel's theory of history and the "world spirit" really stood out to me. I guess it was all necessary for the plot. I like how the author included stuff about feminism, but it was sad that they didn't include much about other cultures. The Native Americans were called "primitive people" :( , and hardly any non-Europeans were mentioned. Once again though, this omission was probably necessary to move the plot along, and the setting of the Nordic countries and the general descriptions of the culture were awesome enough. One more flaw was that at times in got super unrealistic. I don't know how the mother could have been so chill with Sophie always going out to visit a random philosopher.  I don't know how she just allowed her only daughter to do a disappearing act at the garden party. [ I don't know how she just allowed her only daughter to do a disappearing act at the garden party. (hide spoiler)]

I would recommend this book to anyone for its incredibly unique writing style and as an awesome intro to philosophy.

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So Frypania, it seems that my Goodreads account has been linked to my blog and is automatically posting my book reviews for me. Wonderful!