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Summary: The Love of Wisdom
Review: Sophie's Welt is a novel approach to what has long been a decidedly academic realm of thought: philosophy. It is, as the titles states, a novel about the history of philosophical investigation. This is the first novel by Norwegian professor Jostein Gaarder, who has since quit his profession as a teacher and today reaches a larger, global audience through his novels. 15-year old Sofie Amundson receives a letter in the mail from an unknown man and embarks on a journey through centuries of philosophical inquiry in the form of what is almost a correspondence course. To tell more about the plot would be to ruin the entire book for new readers, so I will leave it at that. Be careful when reading other reviews that may not be so considerate! I recommend it especially to young people who are first beginning to question the human condition and the universe, but readers of all ages can enjoy the unexpected plot twists and manipulations.
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Summary: Inspirational and hard to put down.
Review: This was possibly one of the greatest novels i have ever read. From start to finish i was enthralled by the details and references to philosophers. I found Socrate's section most interesting. Upon completing this book I found myself inspired to learn more about philosophy and have since studied greatly other various methods of thought. I strongly recommend this book to even those who have no interest in philosophy whatsoever, because at the start of this book I did not.
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Summary: Wonderful....
Review: To anyone who reads this book- Prepared to be confused, changed, and dumbfounded.
This book is both strange- you don't read too many books where the main character ends up reading the book- and will make you do strange things- I actually cleaned up my room because of this book.
The abrut changes (I will say no more about them now, so as not to spoil the book) halfway through the books serve to emphasize the nature of the book, and make the reader doubt their own existance- are we but shadows on a cave wall?
Ah yes, a reponse to an earlier reviewer's remark- that the characters are flat? Remember, a great deal of the book reads like an (interesting) textbook. Sophie needs to be a bit flat, so she can ask the questions to help the reader understand what is being said.
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Summary: high school level...
Review: and that is where Sophie was when she read this stuff - a freshman no less. This book had the pretention of covering 3000 years of human thought in 400 pages. I found the plot rather dull and full of unabashedly two-dimensional characters (mere props to the supposesd discourse that was going on) and the coverage of philosophy so standard and without character that it felt like I was reading "cliff notes." Coverage of anything that I knew well was a disappointment. The one chapter on the Middle ages covers 1000 years and barely even mentions the achievements of scholasticism, which arguably became a pillar as important to modern science as Kepler's discoveries. OK, you can't cover everything, but that points to the deepest flaw in this book: it is far too ambitious. As such, this is a book for yuppies who want to feel like they are learning something and being significant by reading about an entire epoch in a half an hour. Not recommended.
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Summary: A little light...
Review: I found a friend reading this book one day at a coffee house. It looked interesting and a easy way to overview a huge subject, namely philosophy, in a relatively short period of time. I ended up putting it on my wish list of books. A year or two later, I actually found it at a used book store and picked it up. As I read it, I found that many people I saw at restarants and coffee shops had read or heard of this book or were reading it currently. This book has a strong word of mouth hype attached to it and perhaps that's how you came across it. Nevertheless, I found that the nonfictional material is covered very well, difficult topics are broken down into much easier understood principles. The fictional part, consisting of a young girl, the nearly 15 year old Sophie, and her aged mystical philosophy teacher Albert, at times was very sophomoric. Eventually i realized the best way to summarize this book is to call it a philosophy textbook for middle school children. And in fact, in the end, that is what the author comes near to describing it as himself. In the end, i'm not unhappy with it. It was entertaining, and I learned a few things about philosophy on the way. It's light and easy, and easily recommended. It is an appetizer in the feast of philosophy. Maybe it will satisfy the lightest appetite on philosophy, more than likely it will make you want to jump into something a little meatier.
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Summary: Wonderful Review of the History of Philosophy
Review: Gaardner, a Norwegian high school teacher, has created a wonderful and readable history of philosophy. The book is weakly constructed as a philosophy course taught to 14-year old Sophie by a mysterious stranger. But it is this "novel" side of the book that is the thinnest, for Sophie and the other characters in the novel are mere cardboard cutouts tacked on to the margins of the chapters to provide context for the the real book: the philosophy course. The course chronologically covers thirty major periods, schools of thought, and philosophers from the pre-Socratics through Aristotle, Aquinas, and Hegel to the Big Bang. Each is presented in an accessible chapter of a dozen pages, with the philosophy teacher simplifying and clarifying points for Sophie. With the philosophers presented in chronological order, readers can track the trends of thought as each builds on those who came before. "Sophie's World" is not a great novel, but it is an excellent review of philosophy, and a quick 500 pages.
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Summary: Informative but not really fiction
Review: I think that Jostein Gaarder has achieved one of his goals: to write an introduction to philosophy. He has constructed the book as part fiction, part non-fiction. Sophie, the main character, gets disturbing mail she has not asked for: a correspondence course in philosophy! To her great surprise, she finds the letters very interesting. This is the part where I think Gaarder has succeded. The correspondence course is well written, especially about the older philosophers and philosophies. If you are looking for an introduction to philosophy, this is a very good start. It can also be useful if you "simply" wish to brush up your common knowledge. Gaarder is a teacher, and it shows (in a good way in this part). However, the story surrounding the correspondence course is not that well written, in my opinion. This is not a work of an author who wishes to tell a story, to relate to mankind etc. The story is in a sense skilfully developed, but that is not enough to create a really, really good read. I think that Gaarder fails to create trustworthy characters. The reader does not identify with them (at least I did not, and I had the same problem with Das Kartengesheimnis). There is also in some places a strange lack of empathy between the characters. That Gaarder does not write that good fiction, in my opinion, does not mean that this is not a very good book, and I still recommend it.
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Summary: To mrs. shea frm. cherry pie
Review: ok...i'm only writn dis review becaus mai english teacher told me to keep writin reviews..why else would i spend mai summer writin a summary on a novel about the history of philosophy?? ok...first of all..Sophie Amundsen ish a 15 year old girl who starts to get mysterious letters about philosphy in her mail. soon these letters turn into a full-out philosophy course conducted by the "famous" philosopher Alberto Knox. Soon enuf...the two realize that there world is ruled by an outside presence...(they basically find out they r characters in a book). the book they r in ish called "sophie's world" and the author is Albert knag. He is writin this book for his daughter, hilde, who also is playz a big part in this book. Sophie and alberto try to find a way out of the book, and eventually they do. But u cant help but to feel sorry for sophie and alberto, for they kno they will never b real.
ok..dats da summary...kno i am goin to analyze da book in mai own way.. kk..sophie and alberto hav found a way out... and i get the impression that ppl feel sorry for them, and sorta h8 hilde and albert, for they r real. First, i dont envy NE of dem cuz sophie and alberto r not real...but i dont envy hilde and her father either..cuz dey aren't real either!! all of dem r just characters in a book written by jostein Garrder.
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Summary: Sophies World is also my world!!
Review: I was always interested in philosophy, but I was not so sure about its history n evolution.
This book not alone tells us just that but it it also has its sub-plots. It not only makes us aware of the whys n wherefores but also makes sure that we start thinking about it in our day to day lives.
It is a must read for every person, not just teens for whom it was written. Enjoy Sophies world and lets make it our world!!
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Summary: Philosophy For Dummies With Metanarratives Aplenty
Review: If you extracted the philosophical summaries from this novel, you could easily have another in the series of "For Dummies" books. And I mean this as a compliment. I wish I would have read this novel before entering graduate school in philosophy. I now have a much stronger grasp of the history of philosophy--certainly stronger than anything I learned in graduate school. Gaarder distills the essence of each philosopher and movement without losing anything essential. This is a difficult task, and Gaarder should be commended for handling it admirably. The truly interesting thing about the novel is the complexity of the narrative structure. The stucture itself is philosophical--in other words, it provokes thought and leads to questions. What is a "world," narrative or otherwise? Who is the "author" of our lives? What does it mean to "exist"? Are you more "real" than characters in a novel? What does it mean to be conscious of one's own unreality? If life is indeed a work of art, then all of these questions are urgent for anyone concerned with how to live one's life and live it well.
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