Rating: 
Summary: Forget "The Celestine Prophesy"
Review: This is a book that is more likely to change your life. Although Amis lived another few decades, he never quite recreated the magic of Jim Dixon's luckily unlucky world. This is the book that should replace "Catcher in the Rye" as required reading for all adolescent and post-adolescent boys, and while it may not romanticize the irregularities of whatever the way Salinger's questionable classic does, "Lucky Jim" should find its way onto the book shelves of all growing girls, too. Of course this is not to say that this is a kid's book. Far from it: by reading "Lucky Jim," "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," and "The Crying of Lot 49," it is entirely possible to form a worldview to compete easily with the bilge spewed by all the New Age garbage around today. (And, I must admit, I've never gotten past page 60 in the Kundera.) In addition, "Lucky Jim" contains perhaps the finest paragraph, comic or otherwise, ever written, nay, ever printed, in the English language. You'll know it when you read (double entendre intended)
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the classic 20th Century British comic novel
Review: Kingsley Amis is one of my favorite writers, and Lucky Jim (1954) of course is probably his most famous novel. It's also his first novel, which makes him one of those writers who spent their entire career trying to live up to early success. Despite Lucky Jim's preeminent reputation, several later novels are at least as good: I'd mention as my personal favorites The Anti-Death League, The Green Man, Ending Up, The Alteration, and The Old Devils. I think this is my third reading of Lucky Jim. It remains a very enjoyable book. It's the story of Jim Dixon, a history lecturer at a provincial English university shortly after the second world war. Jim is involved in an unsatisfactory relationship with a drippy fellow lecturer called Margaret Peel, who uses emotional blackmail such as implicit suicide attempts (she took sleeping pills after breaking with her previous boyfriend) to keep him on the string. He hates his job, and he hates his boss (Professor Welch) if anything even more, while worrying that he won't be retained for the next school year. He hates phoniness in general, particularly that represented by Professor Welch, who is into recreations of old English music (recorders and all). The plot revolves mainly around Dixon's growing attraction to Christine Callaghan, a beautiful girl who is nominally Professor Welch's son Bertrand's girlfriend -- but Bertrand is also fooling around with a married woman, and he's a crummy artist to boot. Also, Dixon is working on a lecture about Merrie Olde Englande, which he hopes will impress Professor Welch enough that he can keep his job, but every sentence of which he hates. The resolution is predictable, if rather convenient for Dixon (involving a rich uncle of Christine's), but it satisfies. The book itself is really very funny: such set-pieces as Dixon's hangover-ridden lecture, and his disastrous drunken night at the Welch's, remain screams after multiple rereadings. I should say that some things bother me a bit. Some of Dixon's stunts (such as stealing a colleague's insurance policies and burning them) seem, well, felonious. And of course Margaret Peel really is someone he's better off breaking up with, but the way Christine is presented as naturally good because she is beautiful does seem rather sexist. Still, all this can be laid to accurate description of a certain character -- and if we root for Jim (as we more or less naturally do), it should be with some uneasiness. All this said, Lucky Jim is deservedly a classic of 20th Century fiction, and an enormously entertaining book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not That Great
Review: I was assigned to read this book for a college literature class and was highly disappointed with it. Though I love British fiction as a rule, Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim" was just plain bad. The tale revolves around Jim Dixon, a history teacher at a post-World War II English university. Jim doesn't like his job or the field of teaching itself, yet he doesn't feel compelled to anything about his situation. He dates a woman he dislikes because he doesn't feel that he can do any better. He is thoroughly fed up with the situation yet lacks any real personal initiative to change it. Though there are some hilarious moments in the book, I found it all too predictable and anti-climatic. Jim's mistakes are more childish than funny, and his take-charge-attitude comes more out of desperation than free will. Overall, this book was painstakingly slow, not funny, and very dull. Unless you're into that type of thing, or have to read it for a class, pass.
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Summary: The Ultimate Die Laughing, Feel-Good Book.
Review: Obviously it's unanimous here...this is one of the most hilarious, moving, irreverent and wise books ever. Jim Dixon is a joy. I named my son after him in hopes that he would embody some of his kindly, mischievous, unpretentious & good-humored qualities. Amis' writing is so fine, so perfectly crafted. It's an effortless read, but has so many layers of wisdom to it. I became a big fan after reading "Lucky Jim" and have since read and enjoyed many of his other books, but this remains far and away the all-time favorite. Sadly, his first book is also the last one to have an upbeat, humane, let-the-good-guy-win mindset. Funniest description of a hangover I've ever read at the beginning of Chapter 6... An unending pleasure of a book.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious satire of academic life in England
Review: When it was first published in 1954, it turned the author, Kingsley Amis (the father of Martin, also a fine author), into a celebrated writer and a spokesman for his generation, a position that he didn't seem to want or care about. The novel was "Lucky Jim," and it tells the story of a young academic, Jim Dixon, at work in one of England's provincial universities. The book is hilarious, from the first page (where Jim describes the physical sensation of hangover) to the last, when he leaves the shady groves of academia for a job with better pay in London. Along the way, Jim learns a lot about academic life--he hates recorder concerts, musical evenings, and academic pretentions--and he learns a lot of girls; his main preoccupation.
I keep thinking this book is ripe for a movie version, with someone like Daniel Day-Lewis as the title character; it was made into a film in the 1950s, but I've never seen it and the reviews are not great. The book remains a delight to read, however, and, like all good satires, has some serious points to make, about things that Amis detected, like pretentiousness. "Lucky Jim" is also noteworthy because it launched Amis's career, and he wrote novels, short stories, poems, and journalism for the rest of his life, which ended just last year. He's a very different writer from his son Martin (rumor has it he didn't like Martin's work all that much), but they both share a real gift for comic writing. It is a work that achieves that rare combination of being interesting in a literary sense, but also humorous and a real pleasure to read. I recommend it heartily.
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Summary: Excellent book for anyone who ever went to college...
Review: What a treat to pick up this book whilst I was taking a break from cramming for finals. It totally put my academic career into perspective. The book is witty, charming and chucklesome on almost every page. I could read it again.
Rating:
Summary: Not That Great
Review: I was assigned to read this book for a college literature class and was highly disappointed with it. Though I love British fiction as a rule, Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim" was just plain bad. The tale revolves around Jim Dixon, a history teacher at a post-World War II English university. Jim doesn't like his job or the field of teaching itself, yet he doesn't feel compelled to anything about his situation. He dates a woman he dislikes because he doesn't feel that he can do any better. He is thoroughly fed up with the situation yet lacks any real personal initiative to change it. Though there are some hilarious moments in the book, I found it all too predictable and anti-climatic. Jim's mistakes are more childish than funny, and his take-charge-attitude comes more out of desperation than free will. Overall, this book was painstakingly slow, not funny, and very dull. Unless you're into that type of thing, or have to read it for a class, pass.
Rating:
Summary: Lucky me!
Review: I'm so glad I picked this book up. It is delightfully funny in a rather understated way. The characters become real enough to care about during the course of the story. The more improbable the situations, the more believable they are. This is a book you'll want to read again!
Rating:
Summary: Delightful Wit and Excellent Writing
Review: Kingsley Amis struck gold on this one. I was quickly enthralled in the characters and the wit he displays is amazing. I laughed my head off throughout the book. Buy this book ASAP, you'll read it several times and love every minute of it.
Rating:
Summary: Sidesplitting
Review: Kingsley Amis has a brutally acidic wit and he has never employed it to greater effect than when he penned "Lucky Jim". For anyone in academia who has ever suffered through the nauseating condescension of a "venerable" colleague or for any reluctant guest who has ever peered in bewilderment at "the smallest drink they had ever seriously been offered", this book is an absolute joy.
It's worth reading this book beside a mirror: Amis' wonderfully, ludicrously specific descriptions of Dixon's facial contortions during moments of irritation will have you twisting your countenance in the most extraordinary way.
For me, though, it's the minor characters that really compound this book's status as an all-time classic. Atkinson, Dixon's partner-in-crime when it comes to winding up Johns, the oboe-playing sycophant, is a marvellous figure, whilst Michie's respectful yet slightly sneering insistence on learning more about Dixon's special subject is beautifully done.
The scene in the final chapter in which Dixon, splashing at the ears in drink, tries and fails to cobble together a speech about "Merrie England" is a wonderful set piece, matched only in 20th century comic fiction (what I've read of it), for my money, by Augustus Fink-Nottle's address to the scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School in P.G.Wodehouse's "Right Ho, Jeeves"
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