Sophie's World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder and Paulette Møller

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print.

One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning―but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

Sophie's World is a really good book. If only there was no Sophie in it. I'll tell you why.
This is a crash course on Western philosophy for beginners. I had no idea about this. This was just a random book I picked up. And I don't regret it.
Sophie's world is a gateway to western philosophy. Each chapter in the book is about a particular school of thought, arranged chronologically moving swiftly from one to next. We get a crisp and clear yet not too extensive idea of how each branch of philosophy was formed and what it put forward.
All this is explained, as conversation between a 14 year old Norwegian girl, Sophie and a ‘philosopher' Alberto Knox. I'd recommend anybody who has the slightest interest in philosophy, or spends enough time inside their head to give this book a go.
I found the chapters up to Descartes thought-provoking; the few chapters after that went totally above my head, let alone provoke any thoughts.(Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Bjerkely, Enlightenment, Kant - was awesome, romanticism, Hegel, Kierkegaard) My brain started picking it back up at Marxism. Yes, this book reads almost like a textbook. But as someone who has to read even more boring topics, I could wade through the tough pages. The language is easy, but the concepts were too complicated for my understanding at times.

‘Remind yourself that you are only living a miniscule part of all nature's life. You are part of an enormous whole.'
‘I think I see what you mean...‘
‘Can you manage to feel it as well? Can you perceive all of nature at one time-the whole universe, in fact-at single glance?'
‘I doubt it. Maybe I need some lenses.'
‘I don't only mean the infinity of space. I mean the eternity of time as well. Once upon a time, thirty thousand years ago there lived a little boy in the Rhine valley. He was a tiny part of nature, a tiny ripple on an endless sea. You too, Sophie, you too are living a tiny part of nature's life. There is no difference between you and that boy.'

The rationalists had almost forgotten the importance of experience, and the empiricists had shut their eyes to the way our own mind influences the way we see the world

Dear Hilde, if the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we would still be so stupid that we couldn't understand it. Love, Dad.

I read this book like a homework for high school and the first time I read, I thought it was really boring. The parts that contained the history of philosophy were a extremeley boring!!! but the story of Sophie and her adventures were fine.

Fascinating read, but my head started hurting somewhere around Kant. Looking forward to reviewing the later sections and maybe watching the movie, too.

This is book about philosophy. I like philosophy. Therefore, I like this book.

The majority of the text could have been extracted into a proper ‘Introduction to the History of Philosophy' book. It is well written, it covers a large span of time in a short amount of space, and as such, it is bound to make generalizations and possible a few mischaracterizations in order to get a make a point.

I would like to empathize that I would never recommend a history book on a field of study as the first point of entry for anyone interested in that particular field. Also, because of the variety of topics covered, it is hard for everyone like every part of the book. There are some philosophers and even periods of history that I have no interest, still I had to endure a few pages dedicated to the topic.

That said, some people might, and have, made of this a successful first contact with philosophy.

By the way, the author favors a christian view in some parts of the history of philosophy, that might upset a few readers.

The fiction part of the book is passable. Intriguing at first but less so from the middle to the end.