I’ve just finished listening to this audiobook in my car.
This is not an easy book to listen to. I will probably read the paperback version of these days.
To summarize, there are two parallel plot-lines going on. One is a schizophrenic father taking his son on a cross-country motorcycle trip while explaining the art of motorcycle maintenance. The other plot line concerns the other persona of the father which is named Phaedrus and his quest to introduce “quality” as the entity that ties together subjectivity and objectivity.
The book does get into heavy philosophical discussion. I studied philosophy in university but this is quite hard for me to grasp. I also don’t know Greek philosophy as well as I should, so the latter part of the book requires some further reading on my side.
Overall, I liked this book. It presents the idea of quality in a most original way. What I enjoyed the most was actually the non-essential subjects of the discussion which were the “classic” vs. ” romantic” views, the scientific method of fixing a problem, and gumption traps.
However, since the ideas inside book is presented in a non-linear fashion, it’d be nice for the author to tie it all together toward the end and summarize the main hyposisis and main arguments again.
I’ll need to go through this book again after catching up on Greek philosophy, dialectics and rhetorics. These are fascinating discussions, and hopefully I can understand them better if I can grasp the context around the whole thing.
On a scale of 1 to 10, this book deserves a 7/10.