Customer Reviews

Zero to Sixty: The Motorcycle Journey of a Lifetime

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a reprint of Pilgrimage On a Steel Ride written in 1997. Do not be fooled by the new name, cover and ISBN number as I was. Don't get me wrong, I admire Mr Paulsen's work and have purchased in the past (and will continue to do so in the future) every book he has written for my public library partons. B-U-T I feel the publisher is remiss in not stating up front that this book is a renamed reprint of an earlier book. True, on the back cover near the bottom in very tiny writing you will find the information but only after you have purchased the book over the internet will you see this disclaimer. Perhaps the publisher was thinking more of traditional book store sales where you can actually see the back of the book and read a few lines, but if so they were very shortsighted.

Zero to Sixty is a great story about a motorcycle trip around North America. It tells of the whole trip and throughout the book splits off to tell of what led up to it. How he started on a bike with playing cards tied to the fork to make it sound like a dirt bike and how he progressed to a Harley. I liked this book because it was realistic and interesting. There were problems to solve, memories to recolect and some parts were just left to the imagination. Gary Paulsen once again uses his great skill as an author to captivate the reader's attenion throughout the book.

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.

Have always been a believer that there is truth on the road, and Paulsen's chrome and leather epiphany - not too late, fortunately - is better than all the other books he wrote for money - this one's for soul. As an ex-BMW rider, I was convinced that the Harley spirit is what saved him.

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.

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.

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!!

Not impressed.

Paulsen's not a bad writer. He does a passable Hemingway imitation, but then again, there's lots of Hemingway out there, and he did it better, so why bother?

I think I have two main objection to this book, and both deal with motorcycling. And I say this as someone with several tens of thousands of miles on motorcycles myself.

-- For a book ostensibly about "the motorcycle journey of a lifetime," he spends amazingly little time on the motorcycle journey. The book should have been called "A Harley Runs Through It." Which leads to my second objection.
-- If you are a motorcyclist who has never bought into the Harley mythology, you're going to find many of the motorcycling bits of this book incredibly tedious, like a Christian trying to convey what Jesus means to them. If you're a Harley person, you're probably smiling and nodding at his descriptions, and if you think the Harley sound is the equivalent of mechanical flatulence, you're just wishing that he'd written a different/better book.

For anyone who loves a personal adventure store stoey this is it. Its amazing what someone can accomplish. This story of Gary Paulsens personal adventure is like no other. Its exciting, fast and full of life. This is the third book I have read by the author and eveyone has been an adventure for me.

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."