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Jul 18, 2008

RatsRGods rated it:

I discovered Charles Bukowski while in Las Vegas, in December 2000.
My dad thought it was a good idea to take his 19 year old daughter to Vegas. Because I LOVE watching everyone else gamble and drink while I can't participate!
To be fair, we saw some really good shows (Blue Man Group and Mystere). And the buffets were exciting (Paris was wonderful).
And ! I did get screamed at by a lady on the bus that goes up and down the strip. She looked like Mimi from the Drew Carey show. More...

4 comments like (13 people liked it)

Jun 15, 2007

Ryan rated it:

Misogyny, misogyny, misogyny....that's all everyone sees. Few see the true character of Hank, only the brutal sexual descriptions, the words beginning with "C" and his practice of "mounting" whatever drunken soul may have wandered into his piss-stained bed. This is one of the most American novels I have ever read. It tells the story of the common man, overburdened by the memories of his abusive youth, beleagured by his own unsightly appearance and wallowing in the depths of a More...

2 comments like (14 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Dykewords rated it:

boooooorrrrrr-iinnnnnnnnnnnnngggg

I loved Bukowski as a young teenager and now that I go back and re-read I can only imagine that I enjoyed the truth and rawness at that age when I was getting lied to everywhere abt. the relations between men and women.

NOW the misogyny is effing boring. Like the crap I see every effing day. I find it interesting that some people find it so shocking because I know at least 10 men that feel this way abt. women. OVER IT. Don't wanna read abt

0 comments like (13 people liked it)

Aug 10, 2011

Lydia rated it:

The leading crazy lady's name is Lydia. I can relate. Charles Bukowski has a way of betraying you and making you laugh in spite of yourself; disgusting you and then melting your heart with one tender and insightful paragraph you do not expect, at a moment that doesn't seem appropriate in context to that which he is speaking. It is impossible to love Bukowski and impossible not to love him. This book is just a delight, if you can absorb it. He is mushy soft at his core.

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Feb 12, 2008

Eileen rated it:

In the words of a reviewer on Amazon, "First off, this book will offend people. It will probably offend you." This book hit a little too close to home (you could say I've met and loved this man in real life). At first, reading it was easy; the language is not complex and the material is the definition of "page-turner" - sex, love, drugs, alcohol - in raw, unapologetic realism. And then around page 200 it all became too much. Chinaski does another poetry reading, beds (an More...

2 comments like (8 people liked it)

May 26, 2008

Katherine M rated it:

I once told a friend I went back to reading Bukowski like an abusive boyfriend. His raw snapshot of life reminds me more of the worn couch sitting decaying in my neighbors yard than the fresh writing style of Kerouac's that I love. His misogyny is infuriating, to say the least. Yet, no one is perfect. Bukowski is vulgar but intelligent. His women are disposable but his portraits of life still retain such clarity I know he must care about these women a little bit. In some way. Right?

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Feb 28, 2008

Baiocco rated it:

I read the first 9 pages of Bukowski's Women and realized I wasn't going to learn anything new about women from this alcoholic egotist. I read the next 300 pages because he's funny as shit!

I've never read anything by Bukowski, save for the poem about the Blue Bird which I really liked and transcribed on napkins for some reason, from my friend's book collection when I was drunk because I didn't want to buy the collection. Then I realized you can find these things on the Interweb, More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 03, 2008

Linda rated it:

This book was about 85% done and then... I just put it down. It was beginning to seem like a waste of time and energy. So many women, so much booze, and one stinking degenerate to tell me about it all.

But then I came across an LA Times Book Review of "Pleasure of the Damn: Poems, 1951-1993" (which was going to released the following week). The reviewer said some really harsh things about Bukowski and his place in the literary pantheon in LA. After that, I was inspired More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 24, 2008

Colleen rated it:

<SPOILERS included, beware!>

If Pulp is Bukowski's intellectual candy, then Women is a main course. His prose is still wonderfully simple and quirky as seen in the last few lines of the novel:
"... I opened the door and walked out on the porch. There was a strange cat out there. He was a huge creature, a tom, with a shining black coat and luminous yellow eyes...
I opened him up a can of Star-Kist solid white tuna. Packed in spring water. Net wt. More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 20, 2008

Natalie rated it:

The best thing about this book is that it is nothing it is not supposed to be. It is a telling of a sad lonely old man who knows he is not what he is supposed to be. It captures the self pity and destruction of a fictional writer who is very obviously a reincarnate of Bukowski. The story is forced forward only by the coming and goings of the women he meets, as I imagine Bukowski's own life was propelled. He doesn't sugar-coat these meetings. The sex is raw and disgusting and there is no lov More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 22, 2007

Demetri rated it:

This book is CRAZY!!! I cannot believe I read the entire thing in 3 days. You can't put it down. In fact, it made it's rounds through at least 8 people I know of, and it's probably still making the rounds. Everyone had the same experience. You start it and Bukowski goes into the most sexist, vulgar, repulsive descriptions of the main character's relationship to women, nut something makes you keep reading. I stopped at several points wondering, "why the hell am I reading this?", yet I w More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Mark rated it:

You can't be squeamish to read Bukowski. The man had the inimitable ability to make entertaining the aggrivations of every day life. This novel talks of his exploits with various women, including the one he eventually married.

He is not a misogynist; he merely tells the truth. Actually, I think Buk loved women but he never, ever pretended to understand them. And that's probably the wisest thing any man ever did.

I read this while having woman troubles of my own. Hey, More...

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Sep 28, 2007

Bryan rated it:

This book degrades women to an extent so bad, that it is actually a page turner. You just want to see how much farther this drunk ass is going to go before you cant read anymore.

Some how I finished the book. I actually started feeling bad for the main character, Henry Chinaski (AKA CHARLES BUKOWSKI)

But really, it was just a book that I read out of curiosity. Keep it next to your toilet, that might be the most comfortable place to read it.

I dont really like Bu More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Juli rated it:

my very first Bukowski :)
everyone should give ol Hank Chinaski a try - I find that the world can pretty easily be divided into two kinds of women - those who find Buke misogynistic and those who want to go drinking with him. Obviously, I am of the latter. This is the book that got me into Black Sparrow Press, and made City Lights Bookstore a MUST SEE for me the first time i hit San Francisco.
oh and p.s. - Bukowski loved women, with all their many flaws. He failed to worship them, and More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jul 27, 2011

Ben added it

More than just a litany of recurring one night stands and the perils of relatonships, this is Bukowski at his cynical, cutting, and self-critiquing best. He uses the title's theme to explore issues beyond just sex, commitment and the ever-present drinking and horse racing that are ubiquitous to all Buk's writing.

Bukowski's critics (and perhaps himself, at times) might want us to believe that women are mere objects to him, ways to pass the time on par with the bottle, the race track, or the typew More...

0 comments like

Mar 06, 2011

Graeme rated it:

Again I have that terrible task of star-rating a book. Now, Bukowski is one of those guys that you really love to death if you're a young man of a certain type. I never did read him as a young man, but I can imagine that as a rather young man, I might have been incredibly taken with the hard-drinking, hard-shagging, 50-year-old protagonist's tale in this book.

Thankfully, I'm older now, and the drinking and sex are slightly less appealing, strangely.

There's something, th More...

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Feb 09, 2011

David rated it:

Published in 1978, Charles Bukowski's Women is the story of an alcoholic, middle aged poet on the verge of stardom, and the various women in his orbit. The major theme here is the misunderstandings and miscommunications that take place throughout the novel. To some, the novel may come off as so much macho posturing about the protagonist and his sexual conquests. As was Bukowski's style, his prose is direct, frank, vulgar, and perhaps crude. However, this is not a macho tome. The women in the sto More...

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Oct 25, 2010

Anna rated it:

I enjoyed this novel. Though it's thick, I found it an easy read, the type of book that I could dip into at any time. The structure of this novel is odd or unconventional in that at first it seems repetitive, this happens then that, with women entering and leaving his life. But somehow you grow used to it. It's almost like a compilation of episodes that often don't lead anywhere but allow you to understand the protagonist who's obviously Bukowski. I'll say it's pretty funny too. Bukowski's sense More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2010

Mikelkpoet rated it:

This book takes the reader on a horny ride, with Henry Chinaski, poet, doing the riding; from woman to woman, only getting ridden once himself. Chinaski hops from woman to woman like a famous man can, stopping only briefly to take about morals.

‎"People owed each other certain loyalties, even if they weren't married. In a way, the trust should run deeper because it wasn't sanctioned by the law," Chinaski says, shortly after being very unloyal to a gal that he was in an unmarri More...

1 comment like

Jan 13, 2010

Uri rated it:

This book scores highly for others. I'm not quite sure why.

Bukowski is some sort of cult classic I gather, but this must not be the place to start with him. Perhaps in 1978 this book was shocking, but by today's standards, his free-spirited protagonist is merely shockingly without depth in his embodiment of standard, run-of-the-mill misogyny. I'm no great humanist, let alone feminist, but his reasons for treating women like crap are neither intriguing philosophically nor enlightening More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 13, 2011

Marek rated it:

I walked to my car, got in and started it. I put it in first. It didn't move. I tried second. Nothing. Then I went back to first. I checked to be sure the brake was off. it wouldn't move. I tried reverse. The car moved backwards. I braked and tried first again. The car wouldn't move. I was still very angry with Lydia. I thought, well, I'll drive the fucking thing home backwards.
---
Human relationships were strange. I mean, you were with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them More...

0 comments like

Sep 18, 2010

Shutterbug_iconium rated it:

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

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Jun 06, 2010

Asaucier rated it:

Women by Charles Bukowski very well could be my favorite novel. I picked it up at Boxcar Books in Bloomington, Indiana, while I was with my mom doing a little book shopping. I had a list of authors/novels that I was apparently supposed to like, Bukowski being one of them. I was hesitant to buy Women at first because it was fourth or fifth back on Amazon's list of Bukowski novels. I was looking for Ham On Rye or Factotum I'm sure. But being an anarchist, co-op book store, Boxcar Books only had Wo More...

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Dec 13, 2007

Andrea rated it:

To me, 'Women' was like having a drink with an old friend, one you haven't seen in ages and that you didn't even know all that well but still you sit with them and you listen. You listen to all that's happened since you've seen them, all the tragedies and the triumphs and the lovers. Until you realize five hours have passed, the bottle of whiskey is empty and your head hurts from nodding in sympathy, in agreement and in understanding at almost everything he had to say.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 18, 2009

Laura rated it:

This was my first Bukowski. Consider me hooked.

"I thought about breakups, how difficult they were, but then usually it was only after you broke up with one woman that you met another. I had to taste women in order to really know them, to get inside of them. I could invent men in my mind because I was one, but women, for me, were almost impossible to fictionalize without first knowing them. So I explored them as best I could and I found human beings inside".....
" More...

1 comment like

Feb 12, 2012

Matt rated it:

Another great book about Henry Chinaski. Reading this book, you get a very real sense of the autobiographical nature of the novel. Factotum and Post Office I assume were inspired by his lifestyle rather than specific instances, but Women seems like it was one true story after another. After reading his wikipedia page, it appears that is very true about Women, but also that Post Office and Factotum are more autobiographical than I realized.

Women follows a handful of years when Bukowski/ More...

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Aug 09, 2011

M. Cornelis rated it:

Appearing, by both content and proximity, to be a third volume of the Henry Chinaski epic, we find our favorite insufferable lout living on this end of success with the accomplishment of Post Office under his belt. This is no doubt a sort of tonic for Bukowski to work out the more puzzling aspects of his own sudden thrust into money and acclaim after the publication of his first two novels. Much drinking and bed hopping ensues as the reticently popular author finds himself crammed into a strange More...

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Apr 28, 2011

Cbj rated it:

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

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Jul 25, 2010

Greg rated it:

I was pretty convinced I did not need to finish this after the halfway mark, but after I put it down for a few days I was able to come back and finish the job. Now that it's done I don't know if I really needed to finish it. As I was reading it I was pretty convinced that Bukowski was playing me. But, amidst all of the repetitive unrealistic screwing, he would throw in unexpected flashes of life wisdom that I identified with and keep me sated until the next nugget. It was rough going even with t More...

0 comments like

Feb 02, 2010

Avery added it

I learned that I am totally over Charles Bukowski. I'm not sure why everyone on goodreads is so enamored with this book. Maybe they see it as an "honest" or gritty portrayal of sex, women, and relationships. Even viewing it as a novel on misogyny it was quite boring - it never reached a point where I felt enlightened on any subject he discussed - and maybe that was the point.

I finished this book out of pure determination even though I would probably classify it at time More...

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