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Dec 16, 2009

Elaine rated it:

Wolfe could not seem to decide whether he wanted Charlotte Simmons to be a satire or a legitimate zeitgeist piece. Thus, the characters come off as caricatures to ill effect. Wolfe should take a page from Sinclair Lewis, who somehow managed to write biting satire with still-believable protagonists at the helm. Wolfe could have also gone all out and just made this an absurd piece of literature, but he clearly intended to use this book as a revelation on modern college life.

In Wolfe More...

4 comments like (18 people liked it)

May 19, 2008

Chad rated it:

"I am Tom Wolfe... " and therefore I can write whatever I want. And people will still buy my over-long, thinly-developed, poorly-constructed tirade against 'kids these days.'

It's called a stereotype, Tom. You should probably avoid making all your characters painfully simple cardboard cutouts of actual people. And I'm pretty sure I've seen all of these before, in EVERY movie and book about "college" ever produced.

To inventory:
- The main protag More...

0 comments like (20 people liked it)

Aug 31, 2008

La Petite Américaine rated it:

Sigh.

771 pages. Talking about college. How college is shocking for sheltered girls. How college (shocker) isn't really about academia, but sports, beer, sex, and pretty much everything that the university brochures lie about in order to protect their reputations and continue charging $30,000 a year for an "education." This could be written by ANYONE, and in less than HALF the pages.

When a book is bad, and too long, there is a certain point in reading the same sh More...

5 comments like (23 people liked it)

Feb 10, 2008

Evil_Dead_Junkie rated it:

Sigh...

It's no fun writing a hatchet job, much less a hatchet job on one of your heroes. I read Charlotte Simmons about a year ago and hated it, but decided that the generousity of the Christmas Spirit might make it the perfect time for me to read it. Jesus it was even worse.

I love Tom Wolfe, his early journalism is alive as very few works I know. His critism is sharp and cutting and can make a whole school of thought look ridiculous in a clever turn of phrase. His novel More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

May 28, 2008

Andrea rated it:

Yawn or cringe? Eye roll? So imagine your grandpa takes you out to the Dog 'n Suds for a root beer float. He goes on to tell you about what life was like at college - not for him but for you. He sprinkles in terms like "phat" and "shorty" and "rad" and "rutting" throughout his tale. Grandpa has been dipping into the Dictionary of American Youth Slang written by the Youth Minister at his church, who has covered the volume in a plain black cover lest it fall More...

4 comments like (18 people liked it)

Jul 08, 2011

Nick rated it:

I picked this up at the big garage sale that my work puts on. It caught my eye and I remember being interested in it after reading a review of it when it came out. It's a pretty thick book, over 750 pages, and I didn't plan on reading it for a while. I read the first few chapters when I got home and got very caught up in it. It is one of those books where once you've start reading it, everything else in your life takes a back seat and you can't do anything else but read the book until you're More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Pencopal rated it:

A friend once told me that the band Yes amounted to nothing more than musical masturbation.

I punched him in the face and choked his neck until he relented and said "Prog rock rules."

After reading I Am Charlotte Simmons, I feel bad about treating him that way. Because I see what he meant. I Am Charlotte Simmons amounted to nothing more than literary masturbation.

Tom Wolfe seems to have absorbed everything he could about a number of subjects: college More...

0 comments like (13 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Brett rated it:

Any girl who has ever gone through the journey of the small liberal arts big name college will know parts of Charlotte in ways that take them back to times and insecurities that are far better left forgotten. Charlotte, the brain trust of her small town, enters the world of the privledged "it's mine because I'm entitled to it" college student. It should be a coming of age tale, and it is but in the twisted way. Charlotte loses herself and every belief she held to fit in from the first More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jul 11, 2008

Jake rated it:

I Am Charlotte Simmons is the latest work by Tom Wolfe (Bonfire of the Vanities). Having seen/heard a few favorable reviews (though I don’t remember where), and needing something to listen too during my commute to work, I decided to give this a shot. After all, it was 50 percent off, and over thirty-one hours long! Entertainment for weeks!

Or not.

I Am Charlotte Simmons is the story of a collection of stereotypes. Whoops, excuse me. I mean, it’s the story of Charlotte Simmons More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 02, 2007

patricia rated it:

I can't figure out why Tom Wolfe is so revered...maybe because of Bonfire of the Vanities. But this book is a study in poorly developed sensationalism with hyperbole. All the characters are one-dimensional stereotypes, the plot is predictable, and the writing banal. I think people like this book for the same reason they like Joan Collins or US Weekly - we know it is trash and we like trash. Sadly, this is not even good trash. (Bad trash! Bad trash!)

According to this book, stude More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jun 16, 2007

Sotoleon rated it:

I like this book, though it's really looooong.

Some paragraphs go on for a page or two. But once you get into it, the sentences flow and take you to unexpected nuggets of satiric humor and ironic wit. Of course, the dialogue and characterizations are hilarious too.

I would not say that one "loves" or "likes" either Charlotte Simmons or the rest of the characters---which are not prerequisites for the overall quality of a novel---but they ring true. As th More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Holly rated it:

I came to I Am Charlotte Simmons with trepidation. I had read the reviews that likened Wolfe to a voyeur and questioned his motivation in spending years "observing" typical college students fifty years his junior. It seemed creepy. But when I saw it in the bargain bin, I couldn't resist, and as it turned out, I couldn't put the thing down. Wolfe is a great writer and storyteller, and although there are some weird things about the book, like his linguistic obsessions over current uses o More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Apr 15, 2011

Monika rated it:

(SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!! BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!)
FINALLY finished I Am Charlotte Simmons. I would've enjoyed it a lot more if I hadn't dragged out my reading for so long.
I found myself totally offended at the end of the book because Charlotte did not maintain one girl friend in the entire story and all of the girls in the novel were either stereotypical sorority types, shallow, gossips or over the top radical. And her life during her first year of college completely revolved around her relatio More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 01, 2008

Amy rated it:

This book kept me turning the pages but ultimately was pretty lame. Also, Tom Wolfe is a perv
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2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 01, 2008

Kristin rated it:

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0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 09, 2008

Caren rated it:

This was a great read. Tom Wolfe does an excellent job reporting on college life; you'd almost swear it was written by a contemporary. This book tells the story of a sheltered, back-country girl as she adjusts to college life and confronts the world of wealth and entitlement in her prep-school bred fellow students, the frat scene, the jock scene, academic achievements and struggles, and pains of growing up.

Wolfe's writing style is very powerful. I really felt for Charlotte during More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Aug 14, 2007

Anna rated it:

Hmmm...I don't know how to sum this book up, because the ending left me with a very weird taste in my mouth - it seemed too abrupt (even after 700+pages)!

The story and characters kept me totally engrossed, mainly because they took me right back to my first few days at UC Davis and what it felt like to be thrown into such a bizarre mix of people and behaviors. Charlotte was a lot more sheltered than I was before heading off to college, but her feelings of loneliness and an intense ne More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 17, 2007

Matt rated it:

I have to admit, I was slated against this book before I even started reading it. "Electric Kool-aid Acid Test" and "The Kandy-Kolored, Tangerine-Flake, Streamline Baby", some of Wolfe's early non-fiction, are amongst my all-time favorite books. The depth of his insight is incredible - and even when he is writing about a subject he is disapproving of (it becomes very clear, for example, that Wolfe has serious issues with the Merry Pranksters) - he delves so deeply into the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 06, 2009

Leftbanker rated it:

Bonfire of the Vanities is one of my favorite novels in any language. A Man in Full, Wolfe's follow-up novel was a disappointment. I am Charlotte Simmons is horrible. You get the feeling that Wolfe never got laid in college and that he never got over that fact. Get over it, dude. There's plenty of time in life to make up for lost time. One of the most ridiculous points in the book is the complete devastation of the heroine because she gets porked by a frat guy after a formal dance. Once again, g More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 18, 2009

Diana rated it:

I got so much enjoyment out of this book. If you attempt to read it as an actual piece of literature (or, God forbid, actually purchase it) you will be incredibly insulted and possibly enraged. I wouldn't even deign to call these characters stereotypes because I think that would be giving them more credit than they rightly deserve. And if you read it as the desperate attempt of an aging writer to remain relevant, it might just make you sad (unless you are already enraged/insulted in which case f More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Sep 23, 2007

Matt rated it:

On the topic of hoops fiction (w/ Boice), I decided to bust this dust gathering doorstop out of the bookshelf graveyard.
Having read excerpts of this upon publication, I decided to skip two of the three plot lines - those of Charlotte (small-town every girl meets big time state school) and Hoyt (the Reede Seligmann model) for the story of Jojo (white hoops player trying to make good on a squad of aggressive, do-me, Adonis black dudes).
I guess not surprisingly Wolfe succeeds greatly in More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 23, 2011

Molly rated it:

I read this book years ago and saw it on my friend's bookshelf today. I had to add it to my bookshelf because I LOVED it. It's about a girl who grew up fairly poor in a small town and she goes off to college. It put right back in college. It was amazing! One of my favorite books ever. All of you have to read it!!!

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 23, 2009

Barky rated it:

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0 comments like

Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Wolfe is, as always, a master of language. He shows off "dazzling" prose theatrics (Washington Post) throughout Charlotte Simmons, faithfully replicating the sounds of basketball players mid-action and drunken students mid-coitus. Several set pieces are also extremely powerful. But Wolfe's words won over only a few critics (in fact, some were nauseated by his countless exclamation points). The problem is that the college experience is nothing new. Unlike his books about high-stakes bon

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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 29, 2008

Susan rated it:

This is the story of Charlotte Simmons, a "good girl" from North Carolina who comes to college and gets an unexpected education in the big bad world at the jock- booze-and sex-obsessed Dupont University.
It's often said that there's a grain of truth in every cliché. Well, there's a lot of clichés in this book, and a few of them may include a grain of truth but overall this book has a very surreal feel, as if you're watching an old documentary on the American college student.
More...

1 comment like

Dec 01, 2008

Nate rated it:

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0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2012

Natalya rated it:

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0 comments like

Oct 27, 2011

Roberta rated it:

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Oct 11, 2011

Gpickle rated it:

Oh Tom... But first, let me take a moment to complement the book itself, that is the construction of it. Top notch! Quite easy to manipulate, laid nice and flat on lap or chest and the pages did not even need to be held open. Which was nice whenever I happened to fall asleep while reading, I never had to search for my place after waking. Spoiler alert(!) this book is a snoozer. It failed in so many ways for me, now that I am through it I don't want to dwell. But I will for a bit. The sto More...

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Oct 08, 2011

Lana rated it:

Desde que leí "La hoguera de las vanidades" me quedé literalmente embelesada con la capacidad de este escritor de estampar personalidad a sus personajes como si fuesen personas de carne y hueso, de impactar no con descripciones, sino con algo tan sencillo como es poner al descubierto algunos de sus pensamientos más íntimos. Su habilidad para retratar la naturaleza del ser humano se disfruta porque es directa, sencilla y con justas dosis de sarcasmo que hacen sonreír una y otra vez dura More...

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