? I have no idea what to make of this. Maybe I just don't understand philosophy. OK as a read, not as hard as I thought it would be, but I'm not sure I'd have understood that this was about thought processes if the introduction hadn't told me so. I tried, at least. ( )

I did not find "genius" when I read this book. I was disappointed. Everyone at one time praised Voltaire as being some sort of god that he tried to replace with reasoning. Maybe they favored his philosophy and therefore favored what he wrote. An optimistic hayseed confronts reality and is shown how stupid his attitude is in the real world. ( )

I confess I didn't read all of the stories here, but the three earlier tales (Candide, Micromegas and Zadig) are all well worth while. Zadig in particular is the kind of thing I dislike- Arabian-Nights inspired strings of deeds aren't really my cup of tea- and yet it went down reasonably well. Micromegas is fine, but there's not much reason to read it instead of Gulliver's Travels. The main attraction, on the other hand, really is a doozy.

'Candide' actually shocked me, which is impressive, because I usually roll my eyes at 'shocking' books (I'm looking at you, Will 'let's have a main character fellate a dead dog' Self), but Voltaire's fairly simple descriptions of war and war-crimes are, for whatever reason, still very moving. You'll get plenty of intellectual stimulation too- a 'perfect' plot that gets shredded by actual events, human folly and evil, and one of the all time great closing lines. I imagine I'll find myself re-reading Candide many times. Not so much Zadig or Micromegas.
( )

To finish someday maybe. I read Candide and was underwhelmed, so it might be some time before I care to finish the volume.

I didn't know how funny Voltaire was. Candide had me laughing out loud a good deal of the time. The humor reminded me of South Park. Really. The same absolute disregard of any propriety. Reading this book, first published in 1759, gave me the conviction that we humans really can communicate across "the wrackful siege of battering days," as Shakespeare put it in Sonnet 60.

Along with reading this edition I listened along to the very fine, very witty narration by Jack Davenport in the AudioGO edition--he was fantastic, and I recommend his reading of Candide even for those of you who think you know this book well.

I need to laud the translator Roger Pearson, as well, who has somehow made Candide sound like it was written in English originally--really smooth and with a delightful rhythm and cadence to the sentences. ( )