The Dice Man

List Price : £7.99

Amazon Price : £4.39

Usually dispatched within 24 hours

Amazon Marketplace : £0.96

Usually ships in 1-2 business days.

Product Details

Author : Luke Rhinehart
Binding : Paperback
EAN : 9780006513902
Edition : New Ed
Number of Pages : 500
Product Group : Book
Publication Date : 1999-12-15
Publisher : HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

ASIN : 0006513905

Customers who bought this goods also bought.

Customer Reviews

RUBBISH!!!!! (2008-09-26)

Well this book provided me with a first - it is the first book (as an adult) I have started reading and not finished. Usually, no matter how dull a book gets, I plough on to the end in hope of a revival 3/4 of the way through, but of The Dice Man, 140 pages were all I could bear before it was thrown in a charity shop bag.On reading the back of the book I had high hopes - the concept sounded fantastic, really interesting and fun - I thought I'd found a real page-turner.But no - how wrong I was. I am astounded at what a let-down this turned out to be. I have got a degree in psychology and therefore I can't blame my dislike of The Dice Man on 'not getting it' (not that you need a degree in psychology to understand the concept of the book). Equally, I think I have a pretty good sense of humour and I would be reluctant to say 'I missed the humour of it'. In short, I just thought it was absolutely rubbish!Without going into too much detail (I've wasted enough time on this book already!!) I found the thoughts, actions and justifications of Luke Rhinehart utterly ridiculous - so much so I rolled my eyes and cringed on reading some of it. We weren't really introduced to the concept of the dice-led decisions in great detail and it seems like it was just a convenient way of justifying and writing sexual fantasies. Actually, the book constantly goes on and on about sex (don't be fooled - this did not make it interesting - it was not good, passionate sex!).I think the thing that put me off the most was the way it actually trivialised some extremely dispicable behaviours and almost made light of some extremely sensitive subjects. I found it just ...... rubbish. An utter waste of time.

The dice told me to give this book five stars, so i did! (2008-09-25)

This book is a hilariously inspiring story (although many were convinced that this book was fact!)detailing the antics of the doctor Luke Rhinehart. Fed up with his humdrum comfortable career as a relativley well known psychiatrist, Luke invents the ultimate game to break down all barriers and rules that confine humans into that realm of 'normality', and seeks tp explore the limits of the human personality and how it can be distorted, destroyed or manipulated to create any character or feeling. This obviously leads to some interesting escapdes, the decision to let several mental patients escape, and his extreme sexual exploits amongst other things transform him into the notorious leader of the religion of die. A must read, and very inspiring, it questions who controls us, and shows that we are ultimatley the masters of our own destiny and choices.

A reflection of the 1970's but not a classic (2008-09-03)

The Dice Man is one of those books you might read to understand the countercultural movements of the 1970's. That's not to say that this book is flawless, however it does appear to have a particular mentality rooted at that time, chiming in with the anti-psychiatry movement as well as the whole Eastern Zen-Buddhist thing.Anyway, back to the book itself: It certainly provokes thought about the imprisonment of individuals within their particular roles and responsibilities, and by society's expectation. The general premise to me appears to be that of achieving liberty by an enslavement to the whim of chance, or in this case, the die.What happens? well, Luke Rheinhart discovers dice as a way of making his decisions, and indeed making his life more interesting, is what happens.Whilst this is all good fun initially, and certainly grabbed the imagination, I think the idea somehow outstayed its welcome. What I mean to say (as my main criticism), is that there was only so far this could go, and Rheinhart quickly becomes distastefully self-conscious in his attempt to achieve a guru-like aura. Excerpts from "the book of the die", of course are tongue-in-cheek parodies of the Old Testament, but this wearies very soon and becomes simply boring. Whilst the good points (and there are many) certainly outweigh the bad, and I would recommend this to others, there would be absolutely no point in reading this book twice and I would question the attention and praise this book has received.

How depressing (2008-06-11)

The book is well written and deals with an interesting concept so it engaged me immediately. But the more I read, the more disturbed the main character gets and his actions become more and more bizarre and then quite disturbing and nonsensical. I stopped half way through but then for 'research' I browsed through the remaining chapters but his behaviour got progressively more depressing. ugh. horrible book. Its interesting that some people really like it! funny old world!

A fascinating exploration of the extremes of human behaviour (2008-05-22)

This book is a masterpiece of underground literature and a complete moral minefield for the reader. Much like Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, it takes your ideas of what is moral, good and right and turns them on their head.This book is written as if it were a factual explanation of a real person's desire to change their life by using different outcomes and actions predicated on the roll of a simple dice. The book follows those outcomes to some extremes of behaviour and charts the changes that ensue. I won't give too much away as half the delight (and the horror) is watching the action unfold with none of the usual bars to reality and/or literature that one usually comes across.

Look for similar items by category