Reviews and Comments

Alexia

agaudeul@wyrms.de

Joined 2 years, 7 months ago

French and English books, a few in German.

Many fields, including economics, philosophy and psychology, but lately more into Buddhism of the Zen persuasion.

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reviewed Dead souls by Nicolas Gogol (Penguin classics)

Nicolas Gogol: Dead souls (2004, Penguin)

Dead Souls is a socially critical black comedy. Set in Russia before the emancipation of …

Review of 'Dead souls' on 'Goodreads'

The first book is very amusing, but then it seems that Gogol does not know what direction to take. He seems to want to redeem his hero but probably got bored with writing about good people giving him the good example.

Robert M. Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (2006)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values is a book by …

Review of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' on 'Goodreads'

Very long winded, slow to get to the point. Only at the end does it get quite exciting, but did the author really need so long to finally reveal what he meant by "Quality"? I felt rather cheated when I found out what he meant (no spoiler! so I do not extend further...). But then, maybe I have exactly the kind of mindset he seems to have a problem with, so it is not so surprising I was frustrated by this book. It took me two years to finally get to the end of it...