Rating: 
Summary: Interesting.
Review: This book is certainly imforative on the "history of philsophy". I learned a lot about philosophy and European history from reading this weird novel. I have to admit, because of the translation some of the philosphy is really complicated and hard to understand until you've read the paragraph or two a few times over. The story is also so far-fetched that once it developed, I was simply befuddled. I asked myself things such as "where the heck did that come from?", among other things. The premise is creative once you discover it, but the last 100 pages or so are very... arbitrary and far-fetched. Once the philsophy hits dialogue form instead of letter form (you'll understand it when you read the book), it becomes harder to follow, but it's still interesting all the same. Recommended for sure.
Rating:
Summary: The Perfect Voice
Review: There is no better human voice to tell this story than that of Dr. Needleman's. The audio version of this amazing story is a nice supplement to a hard copy reading of the book. The story itself is deceivingly simple. A highly profound read with great meaning layered throughout the text. Recommended to all wisdom seekers of any age.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty Good
Review: Several people have said that the main fault in Sophie's world was its lack of/weakness of its plot line, but this is rather done on purpose. If certain readers had truly understood the point of the fictional parts of the book, which are to illustrate the philosophies presented and not necessarily to entertain the reader to any degree. Those who call the plot line redundant or unecessary couldn't have been more wrong. The purpose of the book is for 13 year olds like me to read in school and not for advanced philosophical minds who would rather read the confusing translations of the real works of the philosophers. This is still essentially a philosophy book and not so much a fiction, but if you want to read about philosophies in a broad overview and still get some sort of fiction to help you understand and ease the boredom, then i would definately recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: A small REVIEW... ( Wonderful book)
Review: I would recomend this book to people who like Philosophy... This is a great book about a girl who knows nothing about philosophy and one day gets an evelope in the mail.... She soon finds out its a big connection with her dad and a girl named Hilde. I loved this book it does take a while to read but once you read this book u'll have a different point of veiw on philosophy. It teaches you everything you need to know , and truly not a boring book... I reccomend this book and i give it Five Stars...
thanks..... sacha
Rating:
Summary: Sophie and the Major Will Make You Wise
Review: Alice gained wisdom down a rabbit hole and Sophie gained wisdom through a situation with a rabbit running through it. Every human being on the planet who can read and wants to understand humanity can do it in a very enjoyable way by reading "Sophie's World." I promise you it will capture you and you will have it on your mind the whole time you are reading it. And, you will be thinking about when you can get back to it and sometimes you will just push everything else aside and keep on reading because this book feeds so many curiosities you had and even those you didn't know you had. As you read you will feel smarter and smarter and curiouser and curiouser and you may even start creating possible story lines ahead and see if you are right. And, you will spend the first 150 pages making up all sorts of possible story lines about Hildy and the Major and who Albert really is and what his real connections are. Imagine learning real important stuff about real philosophers within the context of a mildly mysterious novel! Actually, just buy the book and keep it or pass it on to someone you really, really love and want to be happy. Oh, did I mention that reading and learning what this book can teach can help you have a happier life, be happier and have better relationships?
Rating: 
Summary: Good for teenagers
Review: A cute, fairly clever novel that threads a story line and introductory philosophy lectures into a fat notebook. I gave it 3 stars because as an introduction to philosophy it succeeds relatively well. It covers most of the key figures in Western Philosophy, and gives the gist of their ideas. It must be noted though, that the book misses some key figures, it virtually ignores Modern Philosophy and Eastern Philosophy, and it is superficial on many occasions. It is not a particularly thorough intro. The style of presentation is just okay. Not dull but not engrossing. The summaries are presented in the form of long dialogues between Alberto and Sophie. I did not find those dialogues to be particularly stimulating - Alberto lectures and Sophie merely interjects pithily between lengthy paragraphs. As a novel I would give it no more than 2 stars. The plot is weak, the writing pretty flat, linear, with little emotional impact and no character development or a central problem. We don't really care about the characters. What keeps it somewhat interesting as a novel, are the many clues Gaarder sprinkled throughout. They might get you curious to know how it all ends, although, frankly, that too could have been better. Had Gaarder been cleverer, he would have tied the ideas and clues all together, but he has not. The finale is not really the culmination of all the preceding ideas or clues, and that's very unsatisfying. All in all, it's a good book to give to an intelligent teenager or young adult, as it might stimulate him or her to study philosophy. As an adult though, if you're new to the topic, you might want to read it for its novelty and for the ease of presentation. Then, you might want to turn to the real deal: Bertrand Russell's "A History of Western Philosophy", which is, undoubtedly, one of the finest introductions to the topic.
Rating:
Summary: Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
Review: One of the best books I have ever read. Not a fiction, however if you want a book can be fun and enrich your life-get one immediately. This book is listed for teen-readers which can be a mislead. It can be a book for a talent teen 14 years or older to old guy older than me. I am a science major middle age person with a graduate degree. Like most people, I learned all the great names as general terms however never understand who they really are-like Plato, Aristotle, even common term like Materialism, Communism, etc. I tried to read philosophy books before and gave them up (most of them are boring and so hard to understand.) I had one philosophy class in college and could not even understand what the instructor wanted to say. This book brings you into a sea of philosophy knowledge with enough fiction to keep your interest. With all these, who cares that it may have a couple of faults on philosophy terms or it may skip a couple of important philosophers or the story parts is not perfect as some reviewers suggested. Please read this book even just for the purpose of showing off at lunch (I did it and they thought I was so knowledgeable:)) It can be one of the most important books you read in your life. A great book for a regular person without much philosophy.
Rating: 
Summary: Flaccid
Review: Sophie's World, it would have best been not named a novel. Yes there is that aspect of novel to it, but it is so dilute and weak that it makes the fiction in this book unnecessary and redundant. Nonsensical, imprudent, and diaphanous fictional story line do nothing more than deface its value. The characters lack dimensionality and their personality and history are left in obscurity. The fictional story line is fragmented and disconnected. The ending is not only asinine but also obscene. The causes for the actions of the characters and why namely Sophie was chosen to learn the history of the philosopher is mysterious. Overall the fictional aspect is weak and lacking: unnecesarry.
Expanding on philosphy is , however, the strong attribute of this "novel". Although the information about the philosphers beliefs was vague and needed more depth, the implementation of the examples to facilitate the understanding of those beliefs was wonderful.
The reason for writing this book is puzzling. Perhaps it is a perfect guide to the philosophical thought for someone is in a hurry to be acquainted with it. Otherwise there are much more relevant works printed to provide much better information on the topic, to say nothing of the original works by the philosphers themselves. So, if expedient acquaintance with philosophy is what you want, this book I would somewhat recommend. And to Gaardener, my recommendation is to have written this book sans the fictional parallel.
Rating:
Summary: Philosophy is great, but this presentation is not
Review: SOPHIE'S WORLD is Josten Gaardner's bold attempt to get the paperback-reading public to become acquainted with the history of philosophy and to ask the big questions of all time. However, the novel is not a very successful book. As the novel opens it acquaints us with Sophie Admunsen, a Norwegian teenager who will soon celebrate her 15th birthday. She begins to receive letters from a mysterious man named Alberto Knox, who leads her through the history of philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to the modern day. Just over halfway through the novel Gaardner tries to shake things up with some drastic plot twists. But all of this has been done before. A large amount of the latter half of the book seems derivative of Michael Ende's children's classic THE NEVERENDING STORY. Towards the end of the book Gaardner then seems to realise that having spent time on so much plot he will have to greatly speed up the discussion of philosophy. Hundreds of pages consist of a monologue by Alberto, with Sophie throwing in single-line interjections: "I understand," "Right," "I would suppose so!" Even as a philosophical tutorial, SOPHIE'S WORLD isn't especially helpful. His coverage of Spinoza is superficial. Most disappointing is the coverage of 20th century philosophy, in which important figures like Focault and Heidegger are missing. I was also disappointed by the translation. Paulette Moller apparently has little knowledge of history because she makes several little mistakes ("Judea" for "Judah" for example). This caused me to doubt the reliability of the English rendering. While perhaps a successful hybrid of a textbook and a novel could be written, SOPHIE'S WORLD is not it. If you are interested in philosophy, I'd recommend getting a simple textbook for beginners.
Rating:
Summary: Good concept, bad writing
Review: There were several things I found wrong with this book. First, there were too many lectures that were not important to the plot. The first few lectures, the ones about Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato I enjoyed, but as there were more and more lectures, I got bored and wanted to skip ahead. Second, the dialogue between Alberto and Sophie during the philosophy lectures sounded very cliched and awkward. That may lie with the translation, but still. It made me very anxious for the lectures to be over and the plot to go on. Third, the resolution was a little lame. I won't add much here, or it would spoil the ending, but I must say, it was disappointing. There were alot of good things about this book. The concept was genius, and I loved Hilde and there were lots of very clever parts. I would recommend it.
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