Sophie's World is a book about the history of philosophy. It is through the eyes of a fourteen year old girl named Sophie Amundsen, who is the main character of the book. She has had a perfectly normal life until one day she gets a mysterious letter from a complete stranger. He becomes Sophie's philosophy teacher. His name is Alberto Knox. Throughout the book, Alberto writes letters to Sophie. Each day, Sophie has her philosophy course through the letters that he writes to her. Sophie sometimes dozes off into her own world where she only thinks about philosophy and where the world came from. Sophie's deep interest in philosophy and history makes her friendship with her friend, Joanna, fall apart, and also make her mom think that she is on drugs. In my opinion, Sophie is a wonderful, bright girl who has a brilliant mind and a logical way of thinking.
Part of this book is about the science of philosophy, and another part is the history of philosophy. While I read the science part of the book, it was a review for me, because I had already learned the material in biology. When I read the history of philosophy, it got me really interested. I especially liked when Alberto was talking about the myths that people believed in long ago. There was a myth that I really enjoyed reading. It was about a god named Thor and his hammer. Thor was a god of fertility, and he controlled the weather with his hammer. For instance, if he was swinging his hammer, that meant he was bringing rain on earth. It was interesting to see how people long ago believed how the world worked around them.
I didn't like how the book had big amounts of science information at once, because those parts were not so interesting to me. It felt like I was reading a science textbook instead of a novel. Other than that, the book is very interesting and exciting. If you don't know anything about philosophy, and you want to learn it in an enjoyable and exciting way, this is the book for you.

The book Sophie's World by Jostien Gaarder is an extremely great read. The book offers a brief course on the history of philosophy. Along with the course, is an exciting mystery story that pulls you in and makes you want more. I would definitely recommend this book for someone who wants to learn about philosophy, or even for someone who is even slightly interested by it. But if you're not interested in the topics covered in it at all, or if they turn you off for whatever reason and you probably will not enjoy this book, because those topics are brought up a lot. But if you are even slightly interested, or just think, "Hey, this sounds like it might be a cool book," you will really enjoy reading it.
The book starts out with a fourteen-year-old girl named Sophie walking home from school with her best friend Joanna. They are discussing robots. Joanna says that the human brain is a lot like a robot, but Sophie does not agree with her. She feels like a person has to be more than just a piece of hardware. When she gets home, she looks in the mailbox to discover a white envelope. She opens it only to find one small slip of paper inside of it. Written on the paper is, "Who Are You?" This gets Sophie thinking. She knew that she was Sophie Amundsen, but is she more than that? Is she less than that? After all, it's a really big world. Soon afterwards she gets an another envelope in the mail with a piece of paper reading, "Where does the world come from?" written on it. This starts a mad rush of thoughts to go through Sophie's head. She starts to constantly think about the notes from the philosopher and what they mean. Before long, she is on a correspondence course with the mysterious philosopher, learning more and more about the history of philosophy as the book goes on. The story will keep you pulled into the book, and will make sure you don't get bored while you're reading it.
One thing that I really enjoy about this book is that unlike most mystery stories, where you don't know anything until the very end, you find out the answers to the various questions in the story slowly as the book goes on. So if you're one of those people who likes to skip ahead to the very end of a mystery book to see what happens in the end, this book is not for you. This aspect of the book keeps you compelled and alert, making sure to watch out for possible hints in the philosopher's letters and lessons about what some of the answers might be. I find that this is a good aspect because it makes sure that you concentrate on what is going on.
Sophie's World is an extremely interesting book. I would definitely recommend it for anyone who is at all interesting in philosophy or for anyone who just wants to read a really great book. It teaches a very important history and pulls you in at the same time. If you get on a roll reading it, it gets hard to put down. I'll end by saying that I read this book for a school project, in which I was only required to read the first half of the book, but it's so interesting I'm going to finish it.

I found this to be a great overview of the history of philosophy. Although the storyline probably did help maintain my interest, this is not a great novel by any means. As a book on philosphy, it is probably not for someone who is already well versed in the subject. But for your average college level reader, and probably for an above average teen, this is a great introduction to philosphy.

This is a great introduction to philosophy, wrapped in a novel. The novel itself is weak, and in my opinion a little bit creepy. But it did help me keep reading. The great strength of this book, the thing that may make you want to share it with others, is the explanation of philosophy. It's understandable and very interesting, and more or less covers the entire history of the philosophy of Europe and North America. Reading this book, one can see how the big ideas emerged over time, in religion, science, art, government, culture, and so on. It makes history seem lively and real, and old ideas seem relevant and important today.

Not everything in this book agrees with every other thing I've read about Western philosophy, but I appreciated the readability and the way it ties things together. Some good companion readings might include Robinson's "Introducing Philosophy" and Paul Strathern's "90 Minutes" series (e.g., "Aristotle in 90 Minutes"). I do think I'll read this book again, and I've given several copies as gifts. If you want one book to read as an introduction to Western thought, this would be a good choice.

I think the breadth of philosophy covered here was very nicely strung together. Gaardner's explanations and examples are great--they clarify some esoterics.

I feel I benefited from this book, because my curiousity has been piqued. This may very well be why this book was written in the first place: To ignite readers' interest in philosophy. That being said, I'm going to be checking out books written by or about a few key people mentioned, most notebly: Hume, Kant, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Hegel.