Rating: 
Summary: Chabon is no Salinger...
Review: ... Arthur is no Holden, and Mysteries is no Catcher in the Rye. But what is? This book reminds me why even the best films can never compare great prose. Chabon will surely be regarded as one of the best authors of our generation.
Rating: 
Summary: It shines!
Review: You don't so much read this novel as plug your eyes into it. Chabon delivers a direct feed to the brain. I swear the book glows from within - even years after reading it the first time I have to prise open the pages once in a while just to make sure...
Rating: 
Summary: very disturbing
Review: My friend and I were in the middle of a converstation about some very strange relationships we had been in with men, when she suddenly shouted "You must read 'The Myteries of Pittsburgh' by Chabon!" So I picked it up. I found it to be a light read (pretty good for the airplane). Although I enjoyed the character of Phlox, I was pretty disapointed with the rest of the book. Poor Phlox is all I can say. I don't think this is a horrible book necessarily, but it certainly does not deserve 5 stars. Basically, the characters bored me and I found myself skimming over large sections. Worth the time only if you have nothing better to do, or if you a girl who has ever lived through having your boyfriend dump you for a man and want to re-live your pain.
Rating: 
Summary: Despite Hype, It's Really Awful
Review: Call me a troglodyte if you like; I hated this book. It's the literary equivalent of being stuck watching someone standing on a stage slapping themselves with raw meat while reading from "Anna Karenina": simultaneously boring and baffling.Slogging through this dull confessional style novel reminded me of every college summer I've ever lived in complete drunken baking boredom, where I sat on the cement by the Brady (a local coffeehouse), just waiting for it to end. The characters remind me of the pretentious idiots who hang out in that coffeehouse, making up stories about their lives to spread around and giving themselves bizarre names to make themselves seem more interesting. Its the kind of book where everyone you figure is going to have sex with one or more of the other characters does just that with exactly who you thought they would, and it turns out as bad as you feared. And like most on-campus summers, the end is suitably but predictably and numbingly tragic. Absolutlely nothing actually occurred in this book until the last twenty pages, but by that time I just didn't care what happened to the stale, flat, and predicatable Arthur, Phlox, and Cleveland, much less their peripheral parents. Frankly, the most rounded character in this drawn out "boy finds self" diary is the dog owned by Cleveland's sometime girlfriend Jane. My friend Brian says that I just didn't get it. He may be right. But really, despite the hype, I don't think there was much here to get. There's really no mystery to Pittsburgh here; the real mystery is why so many people find this book worth reading, much less again and again.
Rating:
Summary: You'll read it over and over!
Review: This is my favorite book of all time -- it was given to me on my 21st birthday and I have read it just as many times since then. Those who say it compares to 'Catcher in the Rye' are not far off in that it is very coming-of-age and has vivid characters that have are easy to understand and follow. It helps to know the Pittsburgh area (as I do), but if you use your imagination, you'll let this book into your heart!
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Summary: The Graduate X
Review: As Twain said,don cek the spellin! Growing up in the south you are shelltered in a way from the same broad panarama (God I sound like my Lit Prof! )...... sorry. I loved this book because it combined the time I grew up in the 60s and the new generations ideals that I feel havent changed as much as we think.I just turned 40 and am getting married 1 month from today,so I know that the search is the most important, as the loveexplored here in this book explaines. Gay or Straight love is love,even us ol Texas boys know that! you see Pittsburg were not all the same down here.we love a good book also,and by the way, if you ever come dowm to Texas, stop on by,relax,and come see Scott and Cheryll in Longview,Tx.
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Summary: Under all the hype: A tender love story...
Review: A book that is by turns poignant, funny, cynical and tender. You can't but feel for Arthur Lacomte (a meorable supporting character if there ever was one, on the same level as Minnie Castevet or Phoebe Caulfield) and you even share his feelings. Probably I am biased, for I have found and fallen hard for my own real-life Arthur. Truly. A book to read and treasure for a long time, as on every time you read it, it grows on you.
Rating:
Summary: Sowing the wild oats of youth!
Review: This book is one of those great summer reads...it's fast, funny, not too deep, and is as fresh as they come. No wonder, given the fact that Michael Chabon wrote The Mysteries of Pittsburgh at the age of 23. The novel takes us through one wild summer with Arthur, where literally anything goes. Get a girlfriend! Get a boyfriend! What's wrong with both? Nothing, according to Arthur. Having been a French major in college, I particularly like his one-page generalization on all girls who major in French. Fun read!
Rating:
Summary: Blown Away
Review: As a University of Pittsburgh student I took an extra interest in this book. I was enthralled by Chabon's narrative.He has the ability to take a bunch of characters and breathe life into all of them,revealing all of there eccentricites. Even though the character "Art" has life experiences that I can not relate to, I saw a little of him in myself. Read this book to escape life, but at the same time...read this book to experience life.
Rating:
Summary: Hometown pride, justified here.
Review: What a great, fun piece of modern fiction. This coming-of-age-at-23 story is fabulous for those disenfranchised by education, doomed to be witty, sharp-dressed cocktail party filler, but it is also fabulous for anyone who knows Pittsburgh. I am a bit hesitant to classify it as Gen X fiction (which is inevitably self-conscious and tedious), but it does conform to some of the hallmarks of said genre: struggle for identity (including but not limited to struggle with sexual preference issues), disillusionment with capitalist endeavours, the death of idealism, the uselessness of designer education for anything but droll coffeehouse chat, etc. etc. But this novel, much like the works of Douglas Coupland who coined the "Gen X"phrase and fiction genre, transcends the usual trappings of post-adolescent identity dramas, due largely to the 3-dimensional nature of his protagonist. I also like that this novel isn't afraid to show emotion. To much of this genre is trying so hard to be ironic that emotion is subverted into some temper tantrum. Here, though, Art (protagonist) goes through a realistic and normal array of emotion which allows the reader an "in" to the story. It makes the supporting characters more real by extension, even though they have many ephemeral qualities. Aside from the fine characterization, this book is rich with landscape, and that is also a great strength. The nooks and crannies of Pittsburgh are described richly and with loving affection, and this not only grounds the story, but makes the city serve in the plot and character of the novel. (Like Hardy's heath, so is Chabon's Oakland...sort of.) Now, admittedly, I am a Pittsburgh native, so I found restaurants, libraries, museums, and street corners both missed and familiar, but I think the power of Chabons's love for the great (and underappreciated!) city would play to a less biased reader. This is also a quick, nice read, maybe for an airplane or a long wait. I found that it was a very engrossing story, and time flew when I was reading it. Strongly recommended.
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