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Summary: One the most useful books I¿ve read
Review: "Sophie's World" is amazing, it's a philosophy course made a novel. Most people interested in the "big questions" have probably read through their lives several authors, maybe Plato's "Dialogs", Descartes, Kant; or modern ones like Nietzsche, Freud or Marx. However, by doing this (reading only some authors) its difficult to understand the evolution of the philosophical thought through the history of mankind, you are unable to compare all the different approaches to questions that have been asked repeatedly since thousands of years. This book gives you the vision, and the head start for a more profound reading of occidental philosophy. For example years ago I started Nietzsche's "Beyond good and evil", and not being able to understand why he criticized Kant I dropped the book. After reading in Gaarder's book Kant's basic ideas I finally understood the divergence of thoughts.But "Sophie's World" it's not just a mere philosophy course, it's a novel, a very enjoyable text that mixes the philosophic knowledge with the plot, in a totally entertaining way. The book is recommendable for everybody, but specially for people interested in the subject, of course. It's definitely not just for young people, but a philosophy professor would probably find it a little dull.
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Summary: Interesting "fictional" review of Western philosophy...
Review: SOPHIE'S WORLD is the story of a teenage girl who receives anonymous lessons about Philosophy. A neat idea, but perhaps too big... Trying to provide an overview of Western Philosophy while simultaneously creating a compelling fictional story proves to be a challenge, though, despite the author's best efforts. Something has to give. In this case it's the story which, despite some appealing yet enigmatic picture-in-a-picture-in-a-picture and whodunnit touches, tends to be less than fulfilling. The philosophy lessons are, however, well done and quite enjoyable. It's a wonderful overview with a cute story that just slightly misses the mark for true entertainment but hits the target dead-center in respect to presenting philosophy in an entertaining way.
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Summary: Learn about Philosophy
Review: I had to read so many things for my philosophy's exams, and this book was my key to success. Although it resembles a philosophy text book, I spent a great time reading it. Gaardner covers the normal text book in an adventure/fiction scenario. The idea of the book is original, but it is extremely hard to write an idea like that. However, Gaardner makes it look easy! It just worked! Highly recommended!
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Summary: Comprehensive Guide to Western Philosophy
Review: I find "Sophie's world" like a comprehensive guide to Western Philosophy.It sort of gave the whole picture. Presented in a more approachable and more 'easy to digest' format. It provided a general understanding of ethics and reality. Jostein Gaarder transformed elaborate philosophy into an intriguing puzzle game. Maybe Socrates and Plato would be proud of this too. Before this my knowledge are scattered and incomplete. It gave a briefing to Western Philosophy. Although there're several DRY parts. What I love about it is the way Sophie discover that she is actually a character in "Sophie's world". That's a groundbreaker to read the character finding out that she is fictional. That make me wonder who i am and just like the first note Sophie found in her mailbox...."who are you??".. I felt that Jostein Gaarder merely created Sophie as a bridge...linking one end(readers) to the other side(great world of complicated Philosophy). Sophie did help to ease the dryness at times. Using a 15 yrs old to ask questions and raise awareness of western philosophy, the character has a vast imagination and dare to ask anything on her mind and things presented in more interesting manners, that's benefiting readers since the subject is so serious. What's so enchanting is that sequencing of events and the linkage of the entire universe through unfolding events. There're so many things and people to relate. Practically everything under the sun were covered.From garden of eden to renaissance plus a touch of modern days.... With many educational examples and little stories of life being depicted...they all have morales and double meaning behind them like my fave--example of letting go---that one about the centipede great at dancing but with a few comments from an envious tortoise(asking how she did it with so many legs?),centipede began questioning itself and doubting, never being able to let it go and stop dancing altogether. Philosophy is such a huge topic involved almost everything in the universe. It can be break into many areas. This book help to raise awareness to it. In-depth reading can be obtain through intensive reading by individual era like either early Greeks or Plato , John Locke or the more contemporary Bertrand Russell. Plato's philosophy is a must for Philosophy reading. His thoughts and dialogues were authentic. All in all,Jostein Gaarder did a marvelous task to summarize history of Western Philosophy into a 500 over pages book.
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Summary: I Enjoyed It
Review: Sophie gets free philosophy lessons first through mail and then in face-to-face dialogs with her middle-aged volunteer philosophy teacher Alberto Knox. The lessons always immediately work into the story. The early lessons just cause her to ponder some questions and make some peculiar remarks. Toward the middle of the book, it gets more interesting. After hearing Alberto's lectures on the Idealists Spinoza and Berkeley, Sophie like any reasonable person dismisses them as madmen. Not so fast though, because Alberto points out their ideas are not easy to disprove. In fact it soon becomes totally obvious they were correct and this insane theme takes over the second half of the book. The final philosopher studied was Sigmund Freued, Oedipus complexes and all. His ideas were illustrated with a decadent, surrealistic "philosophy party" which of course I'm not going to give away here.
Rating:
Summary: Easily readable first half, awkward finale.
Review: Had I read this book at age 15, I would have found it more enchanting. While the style strives for the simple, the plot -instead of building up to what had implicitly been announced as something new and "philosophically" refreshing- decays to a not well-planned absurd interpretation of existence. The in-between philosophy lessons are oversimplified and at times completely misleading. The constant allusions to Creation, even in contexts which are supposedly non-religous, bothered me enough to conclude that the author's beliefs are imposed upon Alberto and speak up through his voice as a philosophy teacher. Please do not take the lessons too seriously. I caution naive readers and philosophy amateurs to read this book skeptically (ironically, that is exactly what the author advises us to do), or they may be taken over by what some have called "a book of cult". PS- If you are planning to give this book as a gift to an adolescent, do take responsibility in his/her further philosophical (and literary) education.
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Summary: WOW!
Review: What can I say, read it! I found myself asking questions I had never even thought about before. I recommend it to anyone with a curious mind, although it can get a little tedeous at times it's worth it in the end.
Rating: 
Summary: what a bore
Review: sophies world is a decent book an nothing more than that i find that Jostein Gaarder was trying to hard to crame the History of Philosophy in to 523 pages. the book seemed like a text book and the only way i could get thru reading it was wanting to know what would happen to sophie who in my opinion was one dimensional and had no depth i frankly didn't care much about her Philosophy lessons and skimmed most of them take my advice dont read this book even if you are fasinated with philosphy a text book will do u much better than ths rubbish.
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Summary: Deep Thought
Review: I cannot say enough about the incredible presentation of history and philosophy that Gaarder has given us through Sophie's World. The plot is weak and lacks depth, but that simply does not matter. It's enough to keep you reading page after page of enthraling insight into figures in history who changed their world and impacted ours. I reccomend this book to anyone with a love for history or philosophy. Sophie's World will shed light on the unknown and make you quesiton it. A must read for the curious.
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Summary: DON'T BELIEVE THE NAYSAYERS!
Review: Reviewers who complain the plot of this book is weak, that the ending is a "cop-out", that the story line gets "too weird" have, in my opinion, totally misunderstood the point of the novel, and have not paid proper attention to the philosophy lectures embedded in the novel. READ THE SUBTITLE - it's a novel about the history of philosophy! The clues to the plot are in the philosophy, and the plot, as well as the ending, make perfect sense provided you have understood the philosophy. I would like to thank the reviewer who warned me not to read the Kirkus review. WARNING AGAIN - DO NOT READ THE KIRKUS REVIEW UNTIL YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE BOOK! AMAZON, YOU SHOULD REMOVE THIS REVIEW - IT GIVES THE WHOLE GAME AWAY!
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