Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
It explains. Hardcover files this book as non-fiction. A fact, not a factor: it plays no part in our call.
Not enough to go on
The only audio of this on sale is a dramatisation (a cast performing an adaptation), and an adaptation is not the book. With no complete reading to set against the page, we would rather shrug than compare the book with something else.
What you can do If it is the book you are after, the page is the only complete version on sale; the dramatisation is a different piece of work.
Last searched Audible UK ·
Length does not decide this
about 18 hours to readabout 14 hours to readabout 11 hours to readabout 8 hours to readabout 7 hours to read
The reading time is our estimate: 540 pages at 30 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. There is no runtime to set beside it, which also means no way to check how much of a book is on one of its pages.The reading time is our estimate: 540 pages at 40 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. There is no runtime to set beside it, which also means no way to check how much of a book is on one of its pages.The reading time is our estimate: 540 pages at 50 pages an hour, which is about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. There is no runtime to set beside it, which also means no way to check how much of a book is on one of its pages.The reading time is our estimate: 540 pages at 65 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. There is no runtime to set beside it, which also means no way to check how much of a book is on one of its pages.The reading time is our estimate: 540 pages at 80 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute. There is no runtime to set beside it, which also means no way to check how much of a book is on one of its pages.
- Something about this row did not look right when we built it, and it has not been reviewed yet.
Reading load against listening load
We hold no recording of this one, so “In your ears” and “Audio disadvantage” are what we would expect of a recording of it: read off how the book itself reads, and never measured against a reading that exists.
Where that puts this one among the books we hold: in the top 9% of our shelf of books for effort on the page and in the top 11% of our shelf of books for effort in your ears. The middle of the scale is not the middle of the shelf (most books sit below the average on both), so a book at 0.00 is already in the top 43% for effort on the page. Each of the three is measured against the whole shelf separately, so the bottom figure is not the top two subtracted. It is this book’s own distance from the middle.
What the audio disadvantage is made of. Two things and no others: how fast readers say this one moves, and how demanding the reviews we read found it. There is no third: the structural one has no data source, so it contributes nothing rather than being guessed at. Both directions are declared priors we have never fitted against a real verdict, which is the weakest-evidenced part of the whole model.
How the call was made
Where a bar carries ticks, the grey one is the middle of our shelf and a coloured one is a line we publish, cool where we start backing the page, warm where we start backing the recording. The evidence squares at the foot are a different thing: how far each of our four sources went, hatched where there was nothing to measure at all.
- What is at stake
- −1.60It sits in the bottom 5% of our shelf of books for how well the print crowds think of a book: not a book the crowds are precious about, so there is less to protect and we can be relaxed about it. Blended across 250,603 Goodreads ratings and 581 on Hardcover, each scored inside its own population first, and never added together.
- Evidence
- 0.30How much of the picture we actually have, out of 1.00: four questions, each answered as far as the source could answer it, less anything taken off for reading fewer reviews than we aim to.The readingnot measured: there is no recording of this one to attestThe second sourceHardcover knows this book, with 581 readers there: as good as it getsThe matchnot measured: with no recording, there was nothing to matchThe reviewsWe read 300 reviews to judge how demanding it is: as good as it getsWe are also missing something we treat as essential: no complete reading, only a dramatisation; too little of the record overall.
What each crowd complains about
We would need 40 reviews from each crowd before setting the two side by side, and only 27 of the reviews we read said they listened to it. So we are not drawing this one.
What the two crowds said
the book itselfGoodreads
the book itself, against Goodreads’ own crowd
250,603 ratings
The series
Phaedrus
Finished
2 books numbered on Goodreads’ list. The last one came out in 1991 and Goodreads lists nothing further. Five quiet years is where we start using that word.
From Goodreads’ own series index, checked on 11 September 2026.
Next in the run, and we hold it: Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals
1 other listing we set aside, listed with the reason for eacheach one is sold as this book and is not a complete reading of it
- James Purefoy, Full Cast1h 40m1h 20m1h 07m57 min50 min · 376 ratingsNot a straight reading of the book