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Dec 16, 2009

Michele rated it:

What's This Book About?
From The Tender Bar by J. R. Moehringer:

"I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap operas. . . . Every book worth a damn is about emotions and love and death and pain. It's about words. It's about a man dealing with life. Okay?"

Okay! Pulling this excerpt from page 335 of this 416 page book, I feel, allow More...

0 comments like (17 people liked it)

Jul 13, 2008

Debbie rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Nov 02, 2007

Jonathan rated it:

Moehringer is telling a story that I think is worth telling, but he WAY oversells it. If there's any honesty in his biography, it's hard to see for the saccharine oversentimentality and indulgent poetic largesse.

I made it past the prologue and the first ten chapters - about 60 pages all told - and in that time had reinforced to me that:

- 6 times: His mother would break down and cry often.
- 6 times: His grandfather was an ass.
- 8 times: He was a neurotic kid.
More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2012

Steve rated it:

Oh, the damage an absent father can do. No-show, no-care dads practice a different brand of abuse than fathers who use their fists, but the distinction is lost on the little boy waiting curbside for a dad who isn’t coming. Given a choice, the boy might even opt for corporal punishment over icy indifference.

J.R. Moehringer captures the lives of many such boys in his poignant memoir, “The Tender Bar.” Moehringer’s radio personality dad was MIA so often, he came to think of his dad a More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Mar 22, 2010

Diana rated it:

Just read for book club. Its an easy read. I guess I was interested in his life and the history on Long Island makes it easy to identify with. I just feel like I have been down this road before with a memoir. Dysfunctional family, overcoming it all and going to Yale, etc..etc...and does he whine about it. He never stops!

He continues to show the people in his life addicted to alcohol, drugs, and gambling in a postive light - even when sometimes the outcome of such a life is horrible- More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 04, 2010

Elizabeth rated it:

I really loved The Tender Bar! Any book that can sweep you into a story and its beautifully rendered characters (all the more beautiful, poignant, and powerful because they are real) is worthy of recognition, and I found this memoir to be fascinating and enormously moving. It was also interesting from its snapshot of a slice of American and local history: Manhasset, Long Island, in the 70s and 80s and into the early 21st century. The author, being raised by his mother in her father's dysfunction More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 21, 2007

Becky rated it:

i found this to be a memoir with a lot of heart but little literary value. what moehringer does very well is create a vivid atmosphere, using dialogue in particular to paint a picture that you can easily imagine as if you were in the room with him. i read in a separate review that the most interesting thing about the author is the people he knows - and it's true, the characters in this book are very colorful and tend to overshadow moehringer's self-absorbed drama. another reason to enjoy the boo More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 28, 2008

angela rated it:

I really enjoyed this book. I found myself laughing out loud while reading it. The book is basically about his coming of age and most of it takes place at a local pub on Long Island where his uncle was a bartender. I really like his style and how the chapters are like short stories, yet they follow a timeline. I really got to like the author; he reminds me of a straight version of Sedaris or Borroughs.

The missing star is mainly a pet peeve I have about the epilogue, which I rec More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Oct 02, 2007

Therese rated it:

Jeesh. I picked this up for my husband's birthday and decided to read it myself. I was so excited. I got it from a local book store where one of the book clerks wrote an amazing review. I thought it was going to be about bar culture and the magical and redemptive qualities that can be found in your local bar/pub. I was wrong. It's mostly a memoir of Moehinger's boyhood and college days at Yale. The lack of male role models is a constant and boring theme that runs throughout the book. The love of More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 31, 2012

Richard rated it:

Here's the thing. I'm a writer. I'm not a proofreader or an editor. When I read, I read for the pleasure of a good story with memorable, honest (not cardboard) characters. I'm not hard on other writer's work, unless they really disappoint me. An occasional repeat of an expression, a dropped comma, a misused semicolon -- none of these bother me unless they stop the read cold, and only then, if I can't pick it up again. It happens. I'm not a complete masochist, but I have noticed that most of the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 15, 2009

Sewella rated it:

Putting aside my personal envy of people who went into journalism back when you could get your foot in the door as a copy boy at the New York Times with a few clips from your college paper, this was an enjoyable read. A little self-pitying, yes, but it is, after all, a memoir by a reporter, and everyone knows we love to complain. The characters are archetypes of the long-suffering mother, the scoundrel father, the hard-drinking, gambling uncle with a heart of gold, the beautiful and unfaithful g More...

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Dec 16, 2009

Abby rated it:

While reading, I wrote this:
Working on it. Mom's book club. Came in a box with Valentine's Day goodies, including:
- A heart-shaped potholder
- Cups with hearts on them
- Candy hearts
- A heart-shaped PEZ dispenser
- Pink footie socks
- 3 or maybe 4 V-Day cards, they keep turning up in odd places, like wedged into The Tender Bar.
- Pink rubber duckies with hearts on them
- My camera battery charger

A good story. A bicentennial sofa. A lit More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2009

Alice rated it:

A very enjoyable memoir about masculinity, camaraderie and drinking. As an ex-drinker, I did feel like Moehringer romanticized his past exploits, but it's an enjoyable change from all the woe-is-me drinking memoirs. Very readable.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Michael added it

If you have ever sought out comfort by saddling up a barstool. Given the prerequisite wave or nonchalant head nod in the direction of a bartender and welcomed the familiar voices from the shadowy faces of the people on either side of you who have come to the same refuge, for reasons all there own. If you have ever found true happiness, or pain in the bottom of a bottle. Anyone that has gained wisdom or experience (good or bad) from the people you meet with a bottle. Then this is a book for More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2009

Kate rated it:

Two friends of mine claimed this was their favorite book, which is probably the only reason why I made myself finish this long, whining memoir. JR Moehringer starts off with a nice premise: He wants to write about the Long Island bar he grew up in, and the wild cast of characters at the bar who filled in for his absent, dead-beat dad. Moehringer's got some funny stories, and he's pretty good at capturing the moods of the bar and describing the people in his life. But at the end of the book, all More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 14, 2011

Henry rated it:

J.R. Moehringer's The Tender Bar describes Moehringer's experience as a boy growing up in decrepit, old house with his cynical grandfather, his grandmother, and his mother, in the town of Manhasset, New York. It is a well-crafted memoir tracking the development of a fatherless boy with aspirations to make something of his life. Searching for a mentor, Moehringer manages to find a group of men from a local bar to serve as a collective fatherly figure. They teach him the ins and outs of sports, be More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 25, 2011

Roberta rated it:

Ognuno di noi ha un luogo sacro, un rifugio, dove il suo cuore è più puro, la sua mente più lucida, dove si sente più vicino a Dio o all’amore o alla verità o a qualunque cosa gli capiti di venerare. Nel bene e nel male, il mio luogo sacro era il bar di Steve. E poiché l’avevo scoperto durante l’infanzia, era ancora più sacro, avvolto dalla particolare reverenza che hanno i bambini per i posti in cui si sentono al sicuro. Per altri poteva essere un’aula o un parco giochi, un teatro o una chiesa, More...

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Sep 20, 2011

Thomas rated it:

One must have a “place” in order to be. Without a place to stand, one cannot perceive the idea of belonging. For many, if not most, of us spend a great deal of our “growing up” years sorting out just where that “place” is. This mythical location that is more real than the keys of this computer, is made up of: physical location, culture, belief, what is ingested, speech, language and a multitude of other factors that are as imperceptible as the “daily recommended allowance” of needed vitamins More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 25, 2011

Agnes rated it:

Another book I want to jump in down and scream READ THIS BOOK about. And not just because I'm a drunk! I've read a lot of novels that involved drunks/bars. They are either over the top dramatic, OMG! BOOZE WILL KILL ME! Or, "Yeah, I drink 2 pints of Whisky a night and get fired all the time. What?" I felt this book was really honest about the whole boozing all the time issue. The guy does eventually stop drinking but he doesn't have all these awful things happen to him. Shit just cha More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 07, 2011

Zahwil rated it:

I found this book by reading Andre Aggasi's memoir, "Open", in which he describes how taken he was by "The Tender Bar" and how this led to his collaboration with J.R. Moehringer. I was equally engrossed in the book and could hardly put it down over the course of a week or so during which I read the entire thing (which, for me, is 2x-3x my normal turnover rate for a book of comparable length).

The book is a wonderful memoir of a tough childhood (J.R. Moehringer grew More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 19, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

Ohmigod, for some reason this book took me FOREVER to read. I was reading it the weekend I took my writing class, which did not making finishing this pretty boring book go any faster. It was a memoir, but I don’t really see the importance in the subject matter at all. So a dude with no father finds solstice in a bar his uncle and his friends run and hang out in? Story of half of America! This book just droned on and on forever. He went to Yale in the 80’s and worked at the NYT after, but it seem More...

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Nov 16, 2010

Tia rated it:

This memoir is written with quiet, heartbreaking candor and was a quick read. J.R. Moehringer is a journalist who was raised half by a single mom and half by his hometown bar. When he describes his family life, it's beautifully written. But when he writes about the hold the bar, called Publicans, had on him, it kind of drags. The bar is a mirage that only obliquely touches the human drama going on in his "real life, and it's not as interesting to watch someone escaping from real life as it More...

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Jul 16, 2010

Keith rated it:

I'm a little uncertain about the rating. The star rating isn't my favorite thing anyway, much less when it give me only 5 to work with.

This is an engaging memoir and the author has much to say about the process of growing up and the nature of manhood. But he also changes his mind over the course of growing up and that change doesn't quite come across to me. Maybe it's just the glow of youthful exhuberant memories shining through over the more nuanced picture that the older and wis More...

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Jul 17, 2009

RNOCEAN rated it:

In a place that inspired Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, young J. R. Moehringer lives with his single mother and mercurial grandfather in a cramped home with a rather-too-colorful cast of strident aunts, down-on-their-luck uncles, and their various offspring. It is 1970s Manhasset, Long Island, and J.R. is lonely and adrift. Desperate to escape, J.R.'s mother takes him on long drives, where his dreams are fueled by the sight of the deep, plush lawns and dazzling, gated mansions that served as F More...

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Jun 15, 2009

E. rated it:

I probably would have given this book 3.5 stars if I had the option. I really enjoyed it and found it a fast paced, interesting read. I didn't feel like JR was whining the whole time, as some others did, but that he was just kind of a soft, annoying kid.

Inadvertently the last two books I read were about alcoholism and they couldn't have addressed the topic differently. First was Malcolm Lowery and his epic, hugely literate Under the Volcano and now Moehringer's attempt at the cl More...

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Apr 04, 2009

Jean rated it:

And on the other hand, here is a love song to a particular Long Island bar (and way of life) where teenage boys and older men drink way, way too much and somehow come through wise, funny, and without down-the-toilet alcoholic lives.

It reminded me in some ways of the Glass Castle, where the girl child makes it through an incredibly weird and unconventional “raising” and come through with a love of her parents and of stories. In The Tender Bar, the characters that matter are entirely More...

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Feb 14, 2011

stacy rated it:

Update-I just finished this book. I enjoyed it very much and recommend it to anyone from LI. :) I also want to meet him and hang out with him and talk to him, it's probably a good thing that he lives in Colorado.

I am loving this book so far. I'm almost done and a little sad that the tale will be ending soon. I also grew up on LI but in a very different environment but I am very entertained by the different perspective. There are some, what I am assuming, lofty/idealistic parts in the b More...

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Jan 05, 2010

Skostal rated it:

I initially fell in love with this memoir, and for 150 pages could not put it down. This is when Moehringer describes his childhood in a dysfunctional broken-down home in Long Island and his search on the radio air waves for his missing father's voice. He writes hauntingly and convincingly of his childhood anxieties, much of which center on protecting his mother, and his drive to take care of her. He describes his early discovery of the neighborhood bar, where his Uncle Charlie worked, and foun More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 06, 2011

Gertrude rated it:

Really enjoyed. I was hesitant at first, when I discovered this was a book about a bar, having grown up in the shadow of one where I often had to retrieve my father who was too drunk to make it home on his own. But the further I read, the more I enjoyed. This is a story of a young man earning for a father's influence, but finds something better. A boy so afraid of failure that he won't take a chance. The favorite line of the book for me is "Are we hiding from life or courting death? A More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 16, 2010

Stewart rated it:

J.R. Moehrnger's memoir is, as its title suggests, a fond "biography" of a neighborhood bar called Publicans in Manhasset, Long Island, and the bar's multitude of quotable drinkers. Publicans served for Moehringer as a place where he grew up, discussed ideas, got advice, celebrated triumphs, and sought refuge when his life was in turmoil. Moehringer is a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, and his book also talks about newspapers, especially the New York Times where he wo More...

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