Rating: 
Summary: A little slow, but memorable and funny.
Review: I read Lake Wobegon Days for a school project. It's a good summer read, as I finished it in 5 days. However, for the best effect, write down all the different cheracters somewhere so you don't mix up the families!
Rating: 
Summary: Must have great publicists!
Review: I read several reviews that bragged Lake Wobegon Days up highly. As a native Midwesterner myself I thought I would find this an entertaining book. This is the first book in the last 100+ I've read that I couldn't finish. The plot jumped irratically, the characters were uninteresting.
Rating: 
Summary: Didn't meet my expectations
Review: I've heard so much about this book, I was really looking forward to reading it. While there were some amusing tidbits, it wasn't nearly as funny as I had been led to expect. I also grew up in a small rural community and so I could identify with the location and the people, and much of the book rang true. However, given its reputation as a funny book, it left me feeling disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Years later, I still can't put it down
Review: I've read this book so many times I've worn the covers off. Keillor has a gift for making the characters familiar and the scenes memorable. It's not only incredibly humorous, but also a poignant look at a slice of life quite similar to our own.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not quite good enough
Review: If you did not know that this was a work of fiction, you could easily be fooled into thinking it was about real people in a real town.This is to the credit of Keillor, who creates incredibly real characters - he avoids cliches and sterotype, which is a refreshing change. However, if someone were to write about the characters and events of a real town, most of it would be quite dull. Like reading someone's diary - there is a lot of tedium and routine between the events of note. And that for me is where this book fails. It is very well written and has a gentle humour to it. But Lake Wobegon would earn only a small paragraph in any travelogue. A chapter is generous. A whole book that meanders without aim is too much. Maybe it is because this book is the antithesis of the modern novel that it has gained such a following, but it isnt for me.
Rating:
Summary: Soulful
Review: If you've ever gone for a late afternoon walk in a small town anywhere in America and have looked up and had your breath taken away by the wonder of a full moon hanging there in the quiet light like a ghostly, faded postage stamp, if you've ever shopped in a store that has a hand painted sign above its door, where they make their own bread and slice their own meat, or if you've ever felt that the quiet, shady moment you're inhabiting could almost explode with possibilities, then you might want to check out Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon Days. This is a truly brilliant book that celebrates the quirks and idiosyncrasies of small town American. Part town history, part family remembrance, Lake Wobegon is imbued with a warm, sly humor that picks at the silliness and the earnestness that are woven so tightly together in small town American life. Although I found this book immensely entertaining, and times quite moving, I should mention it took me about three months to read. Keillor's immensely appealing voice, story-telling ability and sense of humor kept me at all times very interested, but there isn't really a plot to speak of. I had to keep other books going on the side to give me my plot fix. This was the only aspect of the book that I thought might put off readers otherwise disposed to read the book and enjoy it. But don't let this deter you. Believe me, the book is definitely worth whatever time you take to read it.
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Summary: The town from which St. Cloud is a big city
Review: In 1985, Keillor had been doing _Prairie Home Companion_ for nearly a decade and this volume was a semi-novelization of the stories he was telling about his mythical home town on the show's "News From Lake Wobegon" segment, frequently the best part of the show -- not because it was funny but because it was (and is) funny-sad, funny-sentimental, funny-bizarre, and funny-ludicrous. Another twenty years have now passed and we've come to know the characters of Lake Wobegon intimately: the locally wealthy Krebsbach family, Pastor Ingqvist and Father Emil, Herman Hochstetter and the annual Living Flag, the Sons of Knute, and the rules for visiting on front porches. But this book is where you'll found the multiethnic history of the town, how tiny Mist County was formed, and why neither of them appear on any map. Did you know the local paper, the _Herald-Star,_ got its name because it was bought by Harold Starr? Or why a Lutheran upbringing is likely to cause emigrants from Minnesota to compose their own Theses and look for a door to nail them to? (You'll find a hilarious and largely true list of ninety-five of them here.) Keillor has the gift of taking the small and ordinary, approaching them in a profoundly sympathetic yet skeptical way, and making them universal in their strength.
Rating:
Summary: One Great Book
Review: It's rare that you find a book you read more than once. I'm up to three times now on Lake Wobegon Days. What I like best is the humorous descriptions of life in a small town. It rings true. I see people I grew up with in those descriptions. Small-town life IS like that in many respects. Keillor's got a knack for writing profound truths and hysterical passages that leave the reader wanting more. And in my case, it left this reader rereading just to capture the magic again.
Rating:
Summary: Thanks
Review: LWD helped me through some rough times while waiting to get back to our own little Lake Wobegon. I've worn out 2 copies. Leaving Home is a close second. It's so easy to think of the characters as your own neighbors. In a time where violence reigns, it's good to have a little true life where people are normal (?). Way to go.
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Summary: Master of making excitement out of ultimate boredom!
Review: Mr. Keillor is the master of telling warm and exciting stories out of daily lives of people in Lake Wobegon, which seems to be the most boring town in North America. Lake Wobegon sounds even sleepier than Laos but Mr. Keillor's story never bores you. He has a rare talent that can make people excited by telling something boring in details.... I know Minnesotans are basically good at that but his is outstanding.
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