Book Reviews

I just finished The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie Mysteries) and it gave me the momentum I needed to write my first book review. I hope for it to be my first of many and that I can start a web site of book reviews.

Book Reviews by Rachel Bumgardner

The last thing I want you to think is that these reviews come from a lofty place. They’re simply my views on things due to my own quirkiness and set of experiences. I expect you to disagree with me frequently and all I hope to do is give you things to enjoyably ponder. If I ever seem to be morphing into the writer that my Writing for Humanities teacher wanted me to be (“Write so that it is almost impossible to be understood! Write so that your reader needs a dictionary!”), I ask you to please put me in an intervention where I am made to read that kind of garbage. I’ll come around in no time.


The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie Mysteries) by Alexandar McCall Smith

This is only the second book I’ve completed since I’ve entered my fiction crisis. I am slightly embarrassed to say that the other was The Broker by John Grisham. I’m currently on strike from reading flowery literature and I’m happy to say that The Sunday Philosophy Club was devoid of it altogether. It also flowed and never once made me think it was contrived.

I enjoyed being transported to Edinburgh and experiencing the town through the eyes of a mature, albeit nosy, middle-aged woman. Her reflections on philosophy were more charming than I expected them to be, considering that I think philosophy is completely misguided and a waste of time (note—this statement is made by a philosophy major). I also liked her dynamic relationships with twenty-something year-olds.

The mystery is not enthralling but it is compelling enough to make you want to reach the last page (my husband apparently only reads the first and last pages of books; if he’s feeling like a scholar he’ll read a page in the middle too). Like my friend pointed out, the mystery is secondary. However, I will say that it came together nicely and I felt satisfied when I closed the book.

The thing that intrigued me the most about this experience, besides the fact that is was written by a professor of medical law and bassoonist in the Really Terrible Orchestra (RTO), was that it was written by a man. A man captured a neurotic middle-aged woman perfectly and never insulted her intelligence or poise. I think Mr. McCall Smith and Mr. Golden of Memoirs of a Geisha should get together and congratulate each other on jobs well done.

I would recommend this book most of all to someone interested in philosophy because it is riddled with allusions to philosophers that only those with a sadistic interest in it would be aware of, i.e. Wittgenstein, Ayer, Ardent, Hume. It would also help to have an interest in ethics, as the protagonist frequently checks herself on the moral implications of often seemingly banal actions. While I first groaned at this I soon found myself being intrigued by her insights.

Length of time to read cover to cover: 22 hours
General consensus: Cute