Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder

I think I’ll chuck this book out. It has won all these literary awards but I must be a philistine, because I struggled for weeks and weeks to get through it. It was ostensibly written for teenagers and is an introduction to all the different schools of philosophy through history. From my point of view it was almost like a textbook – an old bloke giving summaries of each of the different schools of thought to a kid who listens and asks obvious questions like ’ Can you give me an example’ or makes comments like ‘I’m beginning to see what you mean.’ Well I didn’t. It’s all strung together with a sort of mystery about the lead characters, Sophie and Alberto, and the solution is a strange philosophical trick involving existentialism (I think). It was lost on me, but I did persevere and hats off to those who did enjoy it and appreciate its content.