Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | 
so-soZen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance is a book I‘d recommend to privileged white men who take themselves too seriously. For me? It was fine, but not one I‘ll be re-reading. Full review: https://keepingupwiththepenguins.com/zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-r...
bailedLife is too short to read books you can‘t get in to. I tried with this book, like 150 pages of trying, but dang..I bailed and I never bail on books! Not for me.
I don't consider Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to be fiction. But it could've been and it wouldn't have mattered. It just rocked my world. The whole Quality thing. The concept of actually thinking in a different way. Even Pirsig's narrative of how that concept was rediscovered by a post shock-therapy motorcycle rider on a cross-country trip with his estranged son.
so-soI read an interesting story of Pirsig‘s cross country motorcycle trip, accompanied by his son and 2 friends. I‘m certain that there are much deeper themes here than I extracted. I guess I‘m just not that deep a thinker.
This book belongs to my partner and was recommended to him by his boss. It's been on our shelf for awhile so I'm gonna give it a try! Sounds like a good read for this point in my life. Any thoughts on this one? 🏍
Listened to this while on a road trip of my own ... and wow. So many interesting ideas! It was definitely not easy to get through since I don‘t know much about philosophy in the first place, but it provided me with some new lenses through which to view my own life and work.
And yes, I had another book buying spree at my favorite op shop a little while ago.... this is half of it.
But when will I find the time???
Hoping work will die down a little to give me a breather and some reading time. I need some down time!
panSo I really tried to like this book. But after some reflection, I think I really just detest all books written by white men before the 2000‘s, traveling, and writing about all their big ideas and existential crises. He tried to write about Greek philosophy, Buddhism and zen, plus narrating his complicated relationships on a cross country motorcycle trip. I‘m sure he meant to write about all these things in a way that subtly tied them all together
Reading this book helped me do the work for my History program even though I was in a wholly unpragmatic mindset. It seems to be a good example of straight thinking, concentrated, that just sticks with the mentality required to understand its own assumptions. The notion of 'Quality' is a bit misguided perhaps, but so are the best philosophies of all time and he really seems to believe what he says, seeing a logic in it somehow. Force your actions.
pickNot at all what I expected and highly pleased with that. This book gets very deep and some points I had a hard time following. But love the overall meaning and learned a lot about me in this book.
#7books7days Day 4. Books that changed me or left an impression.
I always feel like somebody's watching me.... ❤️🐶😂🤓
#covercrush #7days7covers Day 4
The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.
Anxiety [...] is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than "laziness" is the real reason you find it hard to get started.
When one isn't dominated by feelings of separateness from what he's working on, then one can be said to "care" about what he's doing. That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one's doing. When one has this feeling then he also see the inverse side of caring, Quality itself.
The past cannot remember the past. The future can't generate the future. The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is.
I think it's important to tie care to Quality by pointing out that care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who's bound to have some characteristics of Quality.
sophistry - n. - a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning, false argument
casuistry - n. - specious, deceptive, or oversubtle reasoning, especially in questions of morality; fallacious or dishonest application of general principles; sophistry
Little children were trained not to do "just what they liked" but... but what?... Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities. When you are trained to despise "just what you like" then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others - a good slave. When you learn not to do "just what you like" then the System loves you.
When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do, it's a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out.
You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.
One does it and the other talks about how it's done and the talk about how it's done never seems to match how one does it.
"How do you know all that?" he said.
"It's obvious."
"Well then, why didn't I see it?"
"You have to have some familiarity."
"Then it's not obvious, is it?"
What is the truth and how do you know it when you have it?... How do we really know anything? Is there an "I", a "soul", which knows, or is this soul merely cells coordinating senses?... Is reality basically changing, or is it fixed and permanent?... When it's said that something means something, what is meant by that?
They had made the mistake of thinking of a personality as some sort of possession, like a suit of clothes, which a person wears. But apart from a personality what is there? Some bones and flesh. A collection of legal statistics, perhaps, but surely no person. The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around.
bailedThe title sucked me in. The juxtaposition of Zen and motorcycle maintenance was intriguing. There ended my enjoyment of this book. The author‘s psychosis and descent toward insanity was miserable. His pompous theory of everything was painful. I quit reading books that I disdain much sooner and more easily than I once did (Ayn Rand). Apparently some people (and folks) enjoyed this. May God, or the higher power of their choosing, bless them.
You guys, I have a problem. I went to go donate books after cleaning off my shelves, and I bought almost as many as I donated. Oops...
Side note: If you're bored, you can play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego on Google Earth. 😂
I'm jumping in halfway through the month. I think I've eventually got rid of my cold. Only took seven weeks. 😵
#fixyou
#anglophilapril
@Cinfhen @Reviewsbylola @emilyhaldi @Mdargusch
Listening to the audiobook and reading it at the same time. The narrator is getting on my nerves. The sound of the guys‘ voice....GRRRR
In front of it are high barbed-wire fences, locked gates, signs saying No TRESPASSING, and beyond, through sooty air, you see ugly #strange shapes of metal and brick whose purpose is unknown, and whose masters you will never see. What it‘s for you don‘t know, and why it‘s there, there‘s no one to tell, and so all you can feel is alienated, estranged, as though you didn‘t belong there. #QuotsyJan19
1. Tagged
2. Roger Zelazny (Lord of Light is one of the best books ever!!)
3. Zardoz (cult classic with Sean Connery, so bad, it's a laugh riot)
4. Zero..I can only think of zucchini, and I despise zucchini.
#manicmonday #letterZ @joscho
📚Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
✍️Emil Zola
🎥Zack and Miri make a Porno
Zwieback toast
#manicmonday #letterZ
@JoScho thank you for hosting this , it‘s been fun!
That‘s a wrap! I finished the tagged book this morning, completing #litsyclassics. I started the year with Jane Eyre, and that remains my favorite of the bunch. Heart of Darkness ranks lowest.
Some other classics read this year that didn‘t make the list: Frankenstein, A Clockwork Orange, The Picture of Dorian Gray, A Wrinkle in Time, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Great Gatsby.
I‘m not sure how calming this book is for me, but I keep trucking!
May the rest of your day include kindness, tea and calming words.
I‘ve read so many classics this year - beyond the A to Z of #litsyclassics. Thanks, @Sarah83 for a great challenge!
I‘m halfway thru this chunkster, ending things with Z. It‘s not an easy read, but I hope the journey winds up being worth it!
"The reason why, if he were not more than two thousand years dead, he would have gladly rubbed him out is that he saw him as a prototype for the many millions of self-satisfied and truly ignorant teachers throughout history who have smugly and callously killed the creative spirit of their students with this dumb ritual of analysis, this blind, rote, eternal naming of things." Fascinating to a teacher who has taught for 19 years.
A friend handed this to me and demanded that I read it. Mixed feelings about it so far.
so-soLove the story, not so keen on philosophy side
‘Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn‘t a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It‘s all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in.…Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.‘
After a long week of nursing one of my cats back to health, I slept 11 hours last night and am now spending my Saturday reading and relaxing. #catsoflitsy #nowreading
#LitsyAtoZ challenge completed!! I only had to actively select books for two letters (X and Z). Hooray!
@BookishMarginalia
