[vogelke]

"Fatherland" by Robert Harris, 1992. Alternative history detective novel set in a universe in which Nazi Germany won World War II.

"Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. I re-read this every 4-5 years just to enjoy the discussions about quality and why it matters.

[eimrine]

I see recommendation of that motorcycle book too often for some book about something I am not interesting about, what is interesting in it for non-motorcycle person?

[jasonkester]

It can be about any sort of maintenance task that people tend to outsource. Fixing the sink instead of calling a plumber, changing your own oil, weeding the edges of the lawn, running Linux on your home computer. There's a personality type that can really get behind such things as an end to their own, and this book really appeals to them.

Most of us don't want a new hobby of "spend a few hours ever week or so to keep my computer capable of running software", but if you hang around places like this, you'll find that plenty of people do. They can't understand why you wouldn't care enough about your computer to do some basic research into its workings and occasionally recompile the kernel or make a few trivial tweaks to a driver to get it working to your satisfaction.

No amount of "already having a hobby" or "prioritizing for things you care about most" will convince people like the author/protagonist that there's not something fundamentally wrong (but, happily, fixable) with the way you approach life.

So yeah, it's not for you and me. It's for them. And they absolutely love it.

[defrost]

Perhaps that it is almost entirely not about motorcycles .. and that the activity of motorcycle maintenance transcends motorcycles and is applicable elsewhere.

You could always dive in, read the wikipedia article or lookup a literary review. It may or may not be to your taste but I for one enjoyed it.

[mdp2021]

> for some book about something I am not interesting about

It is not about motorcycles. You could read the title instead as about maintenance.

If a mountain leads an author to think about height, the book may not be about alpinism.

[firedev]

I’ve started Pirsig a couple of times it just doesn’t click. Could you elaborate a bit?

[bloak]

Other good books by Robert Harris: The Ghost; The Fear Index; The Second Sleep.

[red_admiral]

Act of Oblivion is good too. I personally also liked the Cicero trilogy.