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Summary: Hilarious and true
Review: A GREAT READ. If you have any memories of adolescence, this book will make you laugh out loud. Salzman is a master storyteller, even telling the smallest anecdote. What I really like about this author is that his books are strikingly different from one another -- from "Iron and Silk" (about living in China, a classic!) to "The Soloist" (about a former cello prodigy and a murder trial of a zen student, a totally unique story) He's one of the most interesting writers out there. This book is one of his most entertaining.
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Summary: Where was Ozzy?
Review: You know how people tell you a book was so funny it made them laugh a bunch. This one really is that funny. Teenagers will love it because they can relate to all the big questions being asked. Questions like, "What is the point of learning how to do anything if it doesn't really matter in the end." And they will keep reading in hopes that the answers will be discovered. Older folks will nod at the lack of a good, concise, initial answer. Then after all the experiences are accumulated, the devastating revelation comes in one single word. What I want to know is this: "Why was Ozzy Osbourne mentioned on the back cover when his name appears no where in the text?" There must be publishers somewhere nodding at the lack of a good answer. Perhaps..."Sales." Existential angst ensues. Somehow, is all this Ozzy's fault?
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Summary: Extrodrinary book for the extra ordinary
Review: Mark Sazlman's book is an excellent novel. It takes a mundain life and makes it an adventure. It makes me want to read his other books like Iron & Silk to see the next step in his life.
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Summary: Very entertaining anecdote of teenage life
Review: This is a great book for anyone young and adult. Teen readers will enjoy and relate to the relationship of Mark and his father. Their discussions on life and in general are hilarious and painful. I recommend it especially for teens preparing for college.
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Summary: How peculiar enthusiams can dictate a course of life
Review: I started reading Lost In Place one night when I couldn't sleep. I laughed so loud and long I awoke my husband sleeping upstairs who came down to check on why I was, he thought, wailing and weeping. Tears of amusement, certainly. There isn't a wrong note in this memoir. The gloomy father remarked upon in some customer reviews is hardly any gloomier than most fathers raising kids in the 70's and unlike a good many of them, he retained the deep love and respect of his son. I have given it to my own kids (16 and 19) to read, to kids graduating from high school this year. A friend of my sixteen-year-old read it in two days and it was the only nonrequired book she read all year. For those who grew up in the 70's it will strike one kind of chord; for any adolescent it is a shining example of how becoming caught up in an obsession, of training oneself (voluntarily), of learning everything you can about something can turn out to be the most important thing you ever do. Comic books, kung fu, BB guns, decorating teeshirts--these are paths to Yale as surely as being the scholar/athlete held out as exemplars by our high schcols.
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Summary: I've thought about this a lot.
Review: I finished reading his book, and I'm not sure, but I think I may be related to this man.Except for the part about the dope. I never had the money for that.
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Summary: like "Catcher in the Rye," but better
Review: This book describes a boy's life, as he grows and searches for what he really is, and who he really is. It is written in the same style as "Catcher in the Rye" is, but I believe that this is the better book.
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Summary: excellent for classroom
Review: I teach creative nonfiction writing to college freshman and find it difficult to find books with which they identify. They like the young point of view in this book and I like that it's well-written. We always have a good discussion about life, aspirations, and optimists vs. pessimists.
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Summary: A great view into a teenage boy's mind
Review: We read this for our book group and everyone in the group -- folks from about 50 into their early 70's -- thought it was great. Salzman captures the mind of the teenage boy and presents it in a wonderfully well written story. I had finished it and my wife then kept me awake for two nights with her chuckles as she read it. The mother in the story does not get much press but she is the real hero in Mark's life. She supports each of his youthful plunges into finding his way in life from the little kid in the box playing like a captain on a space mission to his leaving high school a year early after getting himself into Yale before graduating from high school. I am certain that we would have never seen this wonderful book had it not been for his mother and her fierce support for Mark as he worked through life "Absurd in Suburbia." I have read two of his other books and have just ordered the only one that I have not yet read.
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Summary: A new era of writing
Review: I read it, bought copies for my friends, pushed additional library copies in the hands of my co-workers. I've read a lot of books in my line of work, and I've spent years hoping that someone, somewhere would write a decent book about growing up in the 70's. Someone that could step out from under the Plath-like Bell Jar that adolescent novels have been stuck in for the last several decades. Though deceptively comical and light, this novel understands much more about life than any gloomy Sartre.
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