Upworthy.com made a list of books that it's readers found "the most intriguing books, ones that changed the way you live" and among them? Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
one of the other books was Flowers For Algernon. Damn, that's for sure. Kleenex alert for that one.
Awhile back, probably in connection of an anniversary for the book, a mc mag columnist wrote "Finally it can be said; the book is awful" (or words to that effect. I think many of us motorcyclists felt that way. The book had an absolutely great title (always a good start), which also may have tempted a lot of non-motorcyclists to buy it. And once you learned to skip every other chapter, it almost became worth reading. Pirsig did fine describing motorcycles and motorcycling itself, but the chapters about his madness were tedious at best, but mostly annoying. Ten out of ten for the title, same for the cover illustration with the 'flower', but three out of ten for the contents.
Awhile back, probably in connection of an anniversary for the book, a mc mag columnist wrote "Finally it can be said; the book is awful" (or words to that effect. I think many of us motorcyclists felt that way. The book had an absolutely great title (always a good start), which also may have tempted a lot of non-motorcyclists to buy it. And once you learned to skip every other chapter, it almost became worth reading. Pirsig did fine describing motorcycles and motorcycling itself, but the chapters about his madness were tedious at best, but mostly annoying. Ten out of ten for the title, same for the cover illustration with the 'flower', but three out of ten for the contents.
ReplyDelete