Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Dec 15, 2011

karen rated it:

zut, alors! i don't even know where to begin. i had such a complicated reaction to this book. am i the only person who didn't find this depressing?? this book is life - it is tender and gentle and melancholy and real. not everything works out according to plan here, but what ever does? that's not necessarily depressing, it's just a reality that can either be moped over and dwelled upon, or accepted and moved on from. this is the emotional truth of life - we don't understand our urges, we m More...

52 comments like (73 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Paquita Maria rated it:

AKA: Goddamn you, George Willard

My apologies to you, goodreads bandwagon...you're going to have to make room for one more. This book is bittersweet like therapy, like sweating out a lifetime's worth of drugs and drink in a mentholly sauna-room, like looking through a photo album from a decade or so ago when you thought you knew who you were but you had no idea...and still probably don't. Well, neither do the folks in Winesburg, Ohio. I loved, sympathized with and related to each i More...

14 comments like (32 people liked it)

Jun 20, 2011

Aerin rated it:

When I was ten years old, my family moved from Washington state to Ohio. More than any other single event, this move fundamentally changed my life, in some ways for the better, in some ways rather value-neutrally, but in most ways for the worse. Everything was different after the move, and ever since I have felt cast adrift, homeless.

My sister and I blamed it on the utter soul-crushingness of the Midwest ambience, of Ohio itself. We used to, as kids, call it O-hell-o. We'd repea More...

10 comments like (37 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2012

Bird Brian rated it:

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

47 comments like (29 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2009

Ben rated it:

Fuck, I loved this book...

I loved its drab mood, and existential feel.

I loved the descriptive writing, and the small town, midwest setting, with the seasons and people changing, but life in general, staying the same.

I loved the wild brilliance to the endings.

More than anything, and what made this novel truly special to me, was its insight into the raw emotions and psychological underpinnings of people's inner worlds. Reading this felt like pee More...

34 comments like (44 people liked it)

Sep 08, 2010

Esteban rated it:

THE BEST LAID PLANS

A man and woman meet at a bar. They begin to talk and learn that each has trouble staying in long-term relationships because their sexual tastes are considered deviant. Excited, they decide to return to the woman’s apartment. After a bit of heavy petting, the woman excuses herself to her bedroom, promising to return wearing something more appropriate. Minutes pass and the woman emerges from her room in dominatrix attire to find the man nude, spent and smoking a cig More...

19 comments like (25 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

AJ rated it:

If you ever want to engage in a fun experiment I suggest you do the following, which I've arranged in a convenient, step-by-step format.

A) Fall in love with a girl
B) This might be hard to arrange by yourself, but the girl has to move away from you- but not because you split or anything
C) Stay away from her for a while
D) Save up your money devotedly (i.e. stop smoking for a week) so you can afford to go visit her.
E) Take a 7 hour bus ride to where she resides, More...

1 comment like (20 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2010

Eh?Eh! rated it:

I've just started this but I have in mind the American radio show This American Life and the snarly description they quoted from a (I've never watched it but I gather it was sort of trashy) tv show, "Is that that [radio:] show by those hipster know-it-alls who talk about how fascinating ordinary people are?"

Anyone can read this book and call it beautiful, moving, insightful, etc. But someone who reads this and then continues to snub the "common" man for no reason More...

68 comments like (33 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2010

Jacob rated it:

Hey, Winesburg, Ohio. You got a minute? There’s something I want to talk to you about.

Look, we’ve been reading each other for a few weeks now, and I think we’ve both had a good time. I’m glad we decided to move slowly. You’re a collection of short stories and, however linked those stories were, I wanted to take the time to appreciate each one. It seemed like the right thing to do. And it was. You're an amazing book, full of passion and life, an old-fashioned kind of gal. Real More...

5 comments like (11 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Pamela rated it:

This was my third time reading this book, and I think I owe it to myself to read this book at least every other year to remind myself why it is possibly the best writing America has ever produced.

The common problem in these stories is that the characters in Winesburg feel too much, and they don't know how to articulate their sudden flashes of vivid insight. So that fervor gets turned inward, and the energy of those feelings gnarls the person until he or she becomes grotesque: The Wi More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

May 07, 2009

Kim rated it:

Okay, fine, I didn't like it.

I believe I had a crisis of faith whilst reading Winesburg, Ohio. One of the bestest reasons for GR is that I've been exposed to writers that I'd never heard of and to reviews that made me sit up and say 'To the library, NOW' and I really wanted to believe that I'd benefit from reading this. I really did.

So, uh... what went wrong? Where is this crisis of faith? Okay, maybe not faith---maybe foundation is a better word More...

28 comments like (18 people liked it)

Oct 11, 2007

Greg rated it:

I read Winesburg, Ohio and then I read it again. It is unlike any other book that I know which is surprising since it was published in 1919. One would think that a highly regarded novel with such a unique style would have been emulated more often. Perhaps it has.

Winesburg, Ohio is a work of fiction, but has no real plot. That is not to say it is about nothing or is just an exercise in style or imagery. In a series of short chapters, the book paints portraits of several of the pe More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Rolls rated it:

Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Oh." is one of the most criminally undervalued books in the whole damned canon. Mention it to most people and of the few who have heard of it precious few of those have actually read it. I am in no way shape or form trying to sound highfaluting. I bought this book a full year before I actually sat down to read it and that was only 4 months ago. I was finally swayed to do so because a good buddy of mine and I were itching to read some books together and w More...

1 comment like (8 people liked it)

Apr 06, 2009

Michelle rated it:

I wanted to love this book more than I actually did. While I was reading it, I was thinking "Winesburg, Ohio is a town full of crazies, pervs, and potential rapists." I was also thinking "Sherwood Anderson must have hated women." I don't know anything about him, so I don't know what his views were, but I thought several stories had an underlying contempt for women in general. They cheat, they deceive, they lie, they tease. Then again, the men weren't written about too fa More...

19 comments like (12 people liked it)

May 27, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

This is a collection of 25 stories set in the 1890s in the fictional small town of Winesburg. Each story focuses on one Winesburg resident, with other characters drifting in and out of all the stories. It reads more like a series of shifting tableaux than an episodic novel, but in the end it felt surprisingly complete for a book without a definitive, linear plot.
The main "character" is the town of Winesburg itself, with all it represents in terms of thwarted dreams, isolation, More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 30, 2007

sara rated it:

You DO need to read this book, Tracy. I loved it. Really loved it. Gave it four stars because it's hard for me to read stuff that is in that style of story telling, but that's all me. That barren star is a representative of me... not the dear ole folks of Winesburg, Ohio. (I've a feeling I could change my mind about this next time I read it.) And it's short stories! Holy hell! We should read one a week... starting this week (I need to find another copy) and -no wait!!- we need to read th More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Murphy rated it:

this was the book that confirmed my wife's (then girlfriend) suspicions that i am a sucker for the american gothic. this book will bore you to tears if you are a fan of action, high drama, or even intrigue; but if you love ornately detailed storytelling and the process of placing characters in the bigger picture, you won't be able to put this one down until you're done.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Feb 02, 2010

Alan rated it:

totally enchanted. Not sure if I can add to what has already been said but I will say more tomorrow-ish (at work now and haven't got the book with me). For now a couple of thoughts - I kept thinking 'Chekhov, Chekhov' for that's how the stories tasted - but then in the intro I see he hadn't read Chekhov at the time. There's a lot of running off into the night, talking to trees, that kind of thing, which does make it seem a little odd, daft, but I suppose now there'd be less running off, more sin More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 19, 2008

Steven rated it:

Not quite a novel, but way more than a collection of interrelated short stories, this book is as well written as any of the 20th Century canon I have read. There is plenty of loneliness and alienation to go around, but also a quiet dignity of what life is like for folks in small-town America. As one reviewer noted, it hits on those places that you really can’t stay in, but those places that you can’t leave without feeling a whole bunch of nostalgia (love so many works that hit on this theme, t More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 13, 2008

Katherine rated it:

Oh, this is something special. And it's about an entire community. Winesburg, Ohio is a 1919 novel told in short stories - a then-experimental form - mostly of ordinary individuals running up against a culture that has no accepted outlet for their feelings of intensity and longing. The stories are compact and sophisticated yet clear and direct. The tenderness and depth of this little book are almost too much to stand.

Anderson also captures a point in northern Ohio's history when the More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jun 08, 2011

Alison rated it:

When she got into bed she buried her face in the pillow and wept brokenheartedly. "What is the matter with me? I will do something dreadful if I am not careful," she thought, and turning her face to the wall, began trying to force herself to face bravely the fact that many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg."

If you're like me, and you're thinking of reading "Winesburg, Ohio" because you've heard it's a "classic", or that it influenc More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 15, 2008

Xio rated it:

"That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful.
The old man had listed hundreds of truths in his book. I will not try to tell you all of them. There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, o More...

6 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 23, 2007

Unbridled rated it:

I finally understand his greatness; just reading one short story will not do it because his writing is so uneven and his brilliance is accumulative. When he gets it right, story to story, it's easy to see how and why Hemingway, Faulkner, Miller, Steinbeck, etc., learned so much from him. Cutting emotion turns on the subtlest stroke -- everything carefully constructed to a point of epiphany. To be sure some of the language is awkward, but its sum total is undeniable and powerful and brilliant. Ev More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 19, 2011

Crystal rated it:

I finished this book last night and as I closed the back cover I felt satisfied. I had particular interest in reading his work because during his latter years he settled in Marion, Virginia, which is nearby to my home. Anderson, in this book (which is slightly similar to Joyce's Dubliners) to create portraits of the human heart. He portrays men and women as the frail,faltering beings we are and yet creates these characters in such a way that we still like them despite their shortcomings, weak More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 28, 2007

Brandon rated it:

damn, it just so happened that i read this again over the summer, hoping for a pick-me-up after a year's worth of dashed dreams and unrequited loves, and man it did the trick right up. and everyone here in town must have known I read it, 'cause they were all shifty eyed with me, and would occasionally drop secrets hidden in their everyday, ordinary doublespeak. 'Do you have a Safeway card?' Peggy S. asked me one day, and I thought, OH NO. I'VE SEEN YOUR BOYFRIEND. AND YOU ARE TOO GOOD FOR HIM, B More...

0 comments like

Jul 20, 2007

Kyle rated it:

This collection of related short stories, all taking place in Winesburge, Ohio, are remarkably modern for 1919. The stories work together or separately, being presented out of chronological order and reintroducing characters as needed. Anderson's style is plain and simple, kind of a regionalist Hemingway, and his characters tragic and conflicted. He likes to focus on orphans or kids who have lost a parent, and all his characters suffer from some kind of longing or unrequited love. It's a great r More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 12, 2011

Brown.carolyn rated it:

Oh Sherwood Anderson. I so wanted to like you. I feel like maybe it's a personal failing that I didn't. You are a fellow Ohioan who wrote about Ohio. The Goodreads review says you inspired Raymond Carver, Faulkner and Updike. Other sources add Salinger, Hemingway and Steinbeck. These authors aren't just some of my favorites, they are undisputed kingpins of 20th century American literature. So I won't give you less than three stars. But your book kind of...bored me. If I were an expert on early 2 More...

0 comments like

Feb 02, 2012

Haley rated it:

Kurt Vonnegut once said (at least, I believe it was him...) that we ought to "live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy". And in the beginning portion of Winesburg, Ohio I feel like that philosophy really resonates:

The old writer, like all of the people in the world, had got, during his long fife, a great many notions in his head. He had once been quite handsome and a number of women had been in love with him. And then, of course, he had

More...

0 comments like

Dec 10, 2011

Laurie rated it:

At first, I was really excited to read this book! My professor made it sounds pretty much m&mazing.
When I actually read it, however, i was slightly disappointed. The book is composed of many short stories about the citizens of a small town named, you guessed it, Winesburg, Ohio.
The short stories are all very interesting and quite beautiful. My complaint is that I wanted to get to know the characters more. I wanted more, dammit!
I felt like there were too many loose ends, too many More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 08, 2011

Ryan rated it:

Winesburg, Ohio was a character driven story, which is probably why I was attracted to it. It jumps between the tales of different members of the town, all who are somewhat “grotesque” characters, or characters with physical or character flaws. There’s Wing Biddlebaum, who is known for his overly expressive hands, but also because it is suspected that he may have been a pedophile in the last town he lived in, in which he was a teacher who was scorned because of said accusations. Elizabeth Willar More...

0 comments like