Rating: 
Summary: Juvenilia is worth the effort
Review: My dad was from Albany, Minnesota; my mom lives in Freeport and was raised on a farm outside St. Rosa. All of these small towns are mentioned in Keillor's Wobegon stories, usually in connection with the amateur baseball teams who play the Wobegon Whippets.
I've read all of the Wobegon books. I've even read WLT: A RADIO ROMANCE, THE BOOK OF GUYS and WE ARE STILL MARRIED. And I love Keillor's monologues on Prairie Home Companion.
I can also relate to this novel in another way. I grew up wanting to be a writer. I wrote stories for fun, showed them off to my friends, got some of them published in the high school newspaper. So I can understand why Gary, the protagonist, is so thrilled when he receives an Underwood typewriter from his uncle. Keillor peppers the book with samples of the stories and poems Gary writes on the Underwood. They're the most remarkable aspect of the book. Keillor manages to "overwrite" just as a fourteen-year-old would, showing glimpses of a remarkable talent.
Now for what bothers me. Gary peruses dirty books, albeit camouflaged by the National Geographic, right in front of his Sanctified Brethren father. Somehow I doubt a skittish little nerd would have this kind of guts. Gary is also obsessed with his kissing cousin Kate. He writes stories about ravishing her, which his sister, a holy roller who'd embarrass Billy Graham with her overzealousness, almost always reads. .. I haven't been quite this repulsed since I read Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King, another scatological endeavor.
Read the book for Keillor's masterful job portraying Gary's youthful writing, but hold your nose when you encounter Kate.
Rating: 
Summary: Good concept -- but ultimately disappointing
Review: Sorry! This should have been a great book. Started with an interesting concept and characters, but did not deliver the goods. Lack of plot. Just meandered around Lake Wobegon and didn't really succeed in holding my interest.
Rating:
Summary: AMUSING BUT RATHER BORING
Review: "Lake Wobegon:Summer 1956" did contain a share of laughs and amusing moments, but overall, the book failed to hold my interest. It cound best be described as "Woe, be gone!" The book is filled with sexual fantasies and dreams of exuberant youth, but the adolescent fantasies soon became tiring and mundane. The reader keeps hoping a plot of more substance will unfold but, alas, it does not. The scenario almost seems like an attempt to reproduce the theme of a terrific older book, "Summer of 42", but Keillor's book lacks the strong setting, characters, intrigue, and raw, sentimental emotion found in "Summer of 42"."Summer 1956" makes for a quick, light-hearted read, but it is probably not a book that will stand the test of time. Read it, if you will, but do not expect to find anything memorable among the pages.
Rating:
Summary: Cute book.
Review: Cute, somewhat heartwarming, somewhat funny. OK to read if you don't have anything better around.
Rating:
Summary: Not Keillor's Best
Review: As a fan of Garrison Keillor, I was mildly disappointed in his latest effort. As I read I kept wondering what happened to the Lake Wobegon I have come to know and love. This feels like a different place, and perhaps that is the point, as I suppose places are indeed different when examined from the perspective of a 14 year old boy. Did I laugh?... yes, but I grew tired of the bathroom humor and endless adolescent facination with all things sexual. I must agree with many of the other reviewers that this book is in need of a more thorough editing. I hope in his next effort Keillor returns us to the Lake Wobegon I was longing for.
Rating:
Summary: A witty reminder of childhood
Review: It is the summer of 1956. For fourteen year old Gary, it is the summer of baseball, rock-n-roll, and discovering women. Gary is growing up in a conservative Brethren family, where even a television is prohibited. But Gary managed to acquire a nudie magazine, which has taught him everything he knows about sex. His cousin Kate helped also. His under appreciated writing talent blossoms when he is asked to be the fill-in sports reporter for the local newspaper. This book traces the life of Gary during the summer of 1956. It is not a particularly exciting or thrilling book, more of a meandering journey as Gary develops and grows. To be sure, it is an interesting book, a quick read, and an enjoyable look back at childhood.
Rating:
Summary: Uneven -- not GK's best.
Review: This was a real disappointment. I've enjoyed Keillor's other books, as well as PHC, but this book was uneven and just not engaging. There didn't seem to be a discernable plot and it was a struggle to get through the book without losing interest entirely. I recommend you skip this book and read one of his other gems.
Rating: 
Summary: Quite Possibly the Funniest Book I've Ever Read
Review: Garrison Keillor is a study in contradictions. A famously private individual, he opens up his heart and mind to the reader in this hiliarious "memoir" of growing up in Minnesota in 1956. It's rare for me to break into LOUD guffaws while I'm reading something, but this book had me giggling and chortling and wheezing every other page. Just Keillor's description of fourteen-year-old Gary is worth the price of the book: a tree-frog boy with Herkimer hair and high-water pants..... What more can you say? Anything Garrison Keillor writes is genius, in my opinion. This may be his best work yet. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: what's going on with Keillor
Review: What happened to the great Keillor that I was hoping to get when I picked this up? The book is "about" a teenage boy, but the overt... in this book makes me wonder if he wrote it FOR teenage boys. I couldn't even finish it, made it halfway through it then dumped it. Yuck!Did his publisher tell him to "spice it up" next time? Seriously, before you invest in this read some excerpts. Next time he introduces a new book, I'm going to thumb through it first. In the past I always felt comfortable recommending Keillor to friends, family, the man on the street..... not anymore. I've been a longtime lover of Wobegon antics, and this is awful. FYI I'm only 33 and I found this book pointless as well as tasteless.
Rating:
Summary: Wickedly Funny!
Review: Admittedly, this is a new "take" on the Lake Wobegon a lot of us have come to know and love. It is bawdy, in a pubescent sort of way. It is also filled with hilarious moments, the kind that had me combusting into chuckles at almost every page. I have truly not laughed this hard from a book in a while! The story is predictably sentimental, but that is why I read Keillor. It is subtly filled, however, with plenty of commentary on religion and the human condition. To me, this is his best offering since "Lake Wobegon Days."
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