I rather enjoyed this: a canter through the history of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratics to Sartre, as told in a series of mysterious communications from an enigmatic teacher to instruct 14-year-old Sophie. I loved the moment when she learns about Aristotle and immediately goes home and tidies her room – would this tactic work for real teenagers, I wonder?
Then the narrative form abruptly lurches sideways about two-thirds of the way through, and we realise that this is not quite the book we thought we were reading – and in fairness it is a move that has been well enough signalled. This leaves Gaarder with minor difficulties in resolving the plot, but that doesn’t matter all that much.
On the substance: I have (whisper it softly) never been terribly excited about philosophy, but Gaarder does unpack the relationship between Hegel and Kant better than I have seen elsewhere, and also guided me through the relationship between philosophy and literature (at least of the last three centuries or so). So I learned something, which was partly the point.
Thank you for citing me!
I hope that it goes without saying that the only thing the GoodReads and LibraryThing stats indicate is the views of GoodReads and LibraryThing users!
Having said that, I think they are a very very rough indication of the relative depths of penetration of each book into wider bookbuying culture.
I might run the numbers again on last year’s Hugo nominees in April, a year after the announcement was made. I bet you will have made the biggest proportionate gain of any of them (with I suppose the possible exception of A Dance With Dragons).