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Motorcycle Book Store > Motorcycle books beginning with Z
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Zero to Sixty: The Motorcycle Journey of a Lifetime |
Author: Gary Paulsen
Published: 1999-06-17 |
List price: $14.00
Our price: $11.90
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As of: August 08th, 2008 05:01:22 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Made for a great rainy day read
I so love this author ever since reading "Winter Dance".
He's absurdly funny like...say...a Canadian sense of humor.
This book was a good read. Quick. Hated to hit that last page.
 Fun Ride With a Good Writer
It surprises me that there aren't more reviews of this nice little book - I know Gary Paulsen is a writer for youth, but this is a book for adults (careful of some of the language if you're easily offended). As a rider myself, I found many things Paulsen wrote about to be spot on, how a person can become attached to his machine. His "side trips" (ruminations) about previous life experiences were well written and interesting. Maybe I was just in the mood for an easy read about one of my favorite hobbies (motorcycling), but I liked this book a lot and have loaned it to a couple of my friends who have enjoyed it as well.
I hope Paulsen reads this review so I can tell him how much I liked this book.
 Check out Mi Moto Fidel: Motorcycling Through Castro's Cuba
I had hoped for more from this book, which failed to hold my interest, despite being less than 200 pages. It's not a dud, however, but if you want an exciting read check out "Mi Moto Fidel: Motorcycling Through Castro's Cuba." I read this in one sitting, finishing about 4 a.m.! It's a fascinating and sometimes hilarious, sometimes hair-raising story of a 7,000-mile journey and justifiably won both the 2002 Lowell Thomas Award "Travel Book of the Year" and the North American Travel Journalist Association's Awards of Excellence "Grand Prize."
 A poor job by Gary Paulsen
I love many of Gary Paulsen's books. I've heard Gary discuss his books at a bookstore appearance; Gary appears to be a very genuine, intelligent, and caring man and author.
BUT, this book seems to have been cobbled together to meet a contractual obligation. Not only is the book just 179 pages, but the print line spacing is expanded to "fluff" the text. Typical books have 28 to 32 lines of text per page; this book has 24. The title, on second thought, tries to play the life of Gary Paulsen in terms of a motorcycle ride: "zero to sixty" refers to Gary's current age, and "the journey of a lifetime" refers to Gary's life, not the motorcycle journey.
There's some glorification of how a Harley, different from any other motorcycle, "brought me out of myself, out ahead of myself, into myself, into the core of what I was, what I needed to live," but no thought about WHY the Harley brand does this for Gary -- or why other motorcyclists feel that other brands fit THEIR soul. (See _The Perfect Vehicle: What It is about Motorcycles_ for Melissa Holbrook Pierson's take on her relationship with her Moto Guzzi.)
_Zero to Sixty_ contains some interesting insights into Gary Paulsen's life, and has some beautifully written passages: but that's what you might expect in a long magazine interview.
The profanity is inappropriate and very stilted. Further, the profanity suddenly and almost totally stops halfway through the book at the start of chapter five -- almost as if an editor said, "Gary, you've got to throw some profanity into the first half of the book. After all, it is a 'Harley book.'" Who knows -- maybe the same editor later said, "hey, let's put out the same book under a different title and not tell anyone."
Borrow this book if you must read it -- it's a very quick read.
As the Librarian in Michigan pointed out, you can probably find this book in the library under its original title _Pilgrimage on a Steel Ride: A Memoir About Men and Motorcycles_.
But DON'T give up on Gary Paulsen if this is your first book of his -- he's an excellent writer -- just not here -- and perhaps not in his other directly autobiographical books.
 Save your money
If you want to read 224 pages of someone telling you how tough they are and how bad they've had it in life, with very little about motorcycling, then this books for you!This book is written on about a 4th grade level with dirty words thrown in as if to show off that he's a "man". Save your hard earned money!!
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