Rating: 
Summary: A damn good read
Review: I loved this book. It had everything. I loved the way the characters fed into each other. Each one respected and was a part of the nieghborhood. I think this book will be good for schools and colleges because it's one of those rare books that students like myself, don't get bored reading. I hope there is a second book. I'll lok forward to Ernesto's next book.
Rating:
Summary: Best of the best
Review: This book Rocks! It's the return of Miguel Pinero's bunch of
outlaws who were waiting to pick it up where Pinero left
off. Ernesto don't know you bro, but this book is sound.
The sun shines for you my cool brother.
Rating:
Summary: This is a wonderful beginning to a writing career
Review: Someone I usually recommend books to thought I had recommended this to him, so when I saw it in the bookstore, I decided to give it a try, and boy was it worth it!"Chino" Julio Mercado is a smart young man, trying to get ahead by getting an education and planning a future with his wife and soon-to-be-born child: buy a house, have a decent life. But his life will never be the same once he hears the name "Willie Bodega". Bodega has dreams for a future, a decent life, but he has other kinds of plans: using drug money instead of "conventional" methods in order to build his empire. Bodega has dreams, of happiness with the woman he loves, even if she belongs to someone else. He dreams that he is powerful, that he is adored, that he will somehow live forever. Chino doesn't want to cross the line; he believes in honesty and integrity, but these are eroded slowly, so slowly that he doesn't realize it's happening until it's too late. In the end, he realizes that once you touch fire, you can't help but be burned. And some burns never really heal. This is a wonderful book, and I'm looking forward to Mr. Quiñonez' next endeavor.
Rating: 
Summary: OK....
Review: Nothing bad to say about this book... I thought it was kind of stupid at first, like it was going to be one of those ghetto - superstar glamorizations that the media enjoys exploiting. However, halfway through the book, the story became decent and the storyline picked up, and the character Chino's realizations of his wrongdoings refreshed the dulling, cliche plot. It was at this point, when he starts trying to make a difference, that you realize this book isn't like all the rest of them. Cool, eh? Read it. :)
Rating: 
Summary: This book sucks big time, mad stupid, another slum novel.
Review: I hate this novel, superficial, misleading and full of despair. Noir in the worst taste. The hero never realizes that once you dishonor yourself you have hurt yourself and your community. The reparations are not to set up detox clinics while still selling drugs. The hero "takes down" the lawer and the cunning Vera but he does it because they killed Willie Bodega, a "nice" organized crime hancho, from whom the hero had gotten favors. The hero, a college student speaks spanglish ghetto ebonics, hmmm. All the time. There is that marvelous twist toward the end but the reader has no hint at it, it just comes out of the blue.
Rating: 
Summary: It's a really good book!
Review: I enjoyed the book, "Bodega Dreams". It was a really good book. I didn't get to read the whole book, but I enjoyed it. So far, about the book, I know that the setting takes place in East Harlem. Some of the characters are Blanca, Sapo, Willie Bodega, and the main character, Chino. Willie Bodega is one of the biggest druglord of East Harlem. Sapo is Bodega's "right hand man". Sapo is also Chino's best friend. Chino is the main character. He is a very smart man. His wife, Blanca, is pregnant. Meanwhile Chino is trying to complete his time in college. At one point, he does a favor for Willie Bodega, only he thinks the favor was for Sapo. After the favor was done, Chino, not knowing Bodega, was visited by Sapo, Sapo saying that Bodega wanted to speak to him. Chino finally met Bodega. That's when Bodega started trying to make offers with Chino to make Chino one of his "panas", friends.
Rating: 
Summary: The book is OK
Review: Really I think the book was all right. I didnt really get to read it all but I got some were. This book was really Thuged Out and it relly had some serious stuff.I loved the first few pages of this book, and then the guy changed gears and took another road that I didn't enjoy. The book became made for TV writing, with all the stuff, funny dialoge and serious plot. Mr. Quinonez has talent, but he's giving it to Hollywood. If you like pop film, you may love this book. The scenes that made this for T.V was the parts with the drug deals and the parts of stealing and robbing. My favorite character was Sapo, I like him because hese relly thuged-out. Chino really looks up to Sapo like a real friend would do.
Rating:
Summary: This Book Is Very Interesting.
Review: This book is about Spanish Harlem but its themes are universal, love, betrayal and freindship. Mr. Quinonez does great tricks with the language. His influnces are very subtle, like nameing chapters, "The Fire Next Time", "A Diamond As Big as The Palladium", "My Growing up and All That Piri Thomas Kinda Crap". A very good read, I think Bodega Dreams will be around for a while. I will look for Mr. Quinonez' next book. To say something about the characters, there is Sapo, Willie Bodega, Blanca, and the main character Chino. Sapo is Chino's best friend, a kid that alwas liked trouble, he was also Bodega's right hand man. Willie Bodega is the like a wannabe Martin Luther King Jr. He is also the big drug lord. Blanca is the wife of Chino, is barely mentioned but she cared for Chino alot. Chino is the main character of this story, he a smart guy. At the end he realizes that all he needs is himself and his caring wife.
Rating:
Summary: Great! Great! Great!
Review: This was the best book I read all year. I had read Tuff by Paul Beatty and I did like it someone told me to pick up Bodega Dreams because it was also about Spanish Harlem. Now, this book was the real thing, not well told second hand stories like TUFF. Bodega Dreams was the real deal. Quinonez knows Spanish Harlem. Like James Baldwin you could feel the love for his people and the church scenes were so well done. I look forward to reading more of Quinonez' books.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting and entertaining
Review: I enjoyed reading Bodega Dreams because Quiñonez does such a fine job of keeping the plot moving. The story itself is stylized, but I do not find that to be a drawback in a novel; on the contrary, most of the most enjoyable novels I have read have required a willing suspension of disbelief. Quiñonez does an admirable job of creating characters that the reader comes to know and care about, and the first-person narrative from the main character's viewpoint are dead on. However, some of the peripheral characters are not as well drawn. I would, for example, have appreciated some more development of Blanca's mother. Bodega Dreams was interesting to me primarily for two reasons. Like Mr. Quiñonez, I am a bilingual teacher and have spent my carreer working in Hispanic communities. I was interested in the similarities and differences between the inner-city Puerto Rican community Quiñonez describes and the Mexican-American communities where I have worked in Denver and California. And Quiñonez is at his best as a writer when describing Spanish Harlem. Although I have never been to New York City, the similarities between the neighborhoods he describes and those where I have lived and worked became quite clear through Quiñonez' excellent description. That Quiñonez is writing about what he knows is obvious when we consider this descriptive accuracy. I did have to consider how much his own opinions enter into his social commentary, however; I have a little trouble with the main character's bland acceptance of a drug dealer as saviour of a neighborhood. While the character Willie Bodega's rationalization of his plan sounds realistic enough coming from him, I was left feeling a little disappointed that Quiñonez' narrator didn't question his morality more deeply. I also questioned his reminiscence into his own school experiences wherein he described the "Anglo" teachers as almost exclusively malevolent, and the Hispanic teachers as universally sympathetic to "La Raza". While this may have been the narrator's experience - or, at least, his perception of it - I was left questioning what the author himself really thinks. A scene in which an Hispanic teacher tells a violent student to lie to avoid expulsion after a vicious attack on an Anglo teacher made me particularly uncomfortable. Despite its flaws, I found this to be a thoroughly well-written novel, and I recommend it. I enjoyed reading the other reviews on this site and would love to discuss the book with my friends - whether they agree with my own assessment or not.
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