Rating: 
Summary: Cranky Diatribe
Review: I like Sarah Vowell. I've enjoyed her pieces on 'This American Life', read her other books, and even saw her at a live reading when she came to town. I didn't like this book though, and here, I guess, is where book ratings can become pretty arbitrary. It wasn't some glaring deficiency of prose style or structure that tipped me over the edge. "It's just that, ultimately, she's whiny" (her own criticism of Alanis Morissette coming dangerously close to home). This is a book where nothing is safe. And if you're an individual that thinks that you have been deeply wronged by the world, most likely because it doesn't kowtow to your every quirky interest, leading you to cope by saying 'everything sucks' and elevating Nirvana and Hole to demigod status, then this book is for you!It wasn't long into the book before I realized I'd be enduring it, rather than enjoying it. So why did I continue? Perhaps the same reason that people slow down when passing the scene of an accident: macabre fascination. Anytime something was on the radio that didn't resemble guitars screeching the self-obsessed angst of middle-class white urbanites, she is ready and waiting to attack it. 'Morning Edition' or 'All Things Considered': snooty and self-aware, *boring*. Marian McPartland's 'Piano Jazz': boring, "plink, plink, chord; plink, plink, chord". Garrison Keillor of 'A Prarie Home Companion': "hate every breath he draws". And those are the relative safe-havens among the liberal, faux-intellectual crowd she inhabits. Imagine her temperate and reasonable reactions to conservative talk radio! Granted, she was 25 when she wrote this, and probably angry because she had been teased in high school. It's apparent that time (and subsequent wealth, no doubt) have mellowed her. Perhaps she has recognized that Cobain really didn't have any answers, and life is turning out better with some perspective gained, and she's no longer as transfixed or amused by the regular chaos in Courtney Love's mess of a life. Whatever it is, you're much better off reading 'The Partly Cloudy Patriot' than this.
Rating: 
Summary: I agree!
Review: I'm a person that is in love with the IDEA of radio, but I almost never listen to it because most of what I can get is garbage. Aside from the minimal NPR programming that my local PBS station carries and a couple shows on my local college radio station, there is nothing that I can bear to listen to in my area. The scratchy old crooner station I used to listen to was turned into a right wing talk show station, and all of the other stations here either have obnoxious and derogatory hosts, are filled with blaring advertisements, or else play the same damn songs over and over until you begin to hate every one of them. If I had to listen to this junk every day for a year, I'd complain too - at least Ms. Vowell is funny when she does it!
Rating: 
Summary: Dead-on cultural critic
Review: People seem to be put off that Sarah Vowell is willing to put herself out there and nail some of the sacred cows of radio, especially public radio. But her critical powers and observations are astute and powerful. Her narrative voice is unusually fresh. I could listen to her babble on about anything.
Rating:
Summary: TIRESOME
Review: radio is a medium that really needs to be skewered. promising premise. failed execution. if sarah was able to get over herself, this book might actually have been interesting. unfortunately, it comes off a fatuous, self-important masterbatory exercise in criticism.
Rating:
Summary: TIRESOME
Review: radio is a medium that really needs to be skewered. promising premise. failed execution. if sarah was able to get over herself, this book might actually have been interesting. unfortunately, it comes off a fatuous, self-important masterbatory exercise in criticism.
Rating: 
Summary: An obnoxious book written by an obnoxious author!
Review: The if you thought this NPR guest commentator's speaking voice is obnoxious, self-absorbed and petty, just wait until you read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: uneven but entertaining
Review: This author can really turn a phrase, but Sarah Vowell will probably be embarassed to read this book twenty years from now because of the lack of balance in her political and cultural commentary. She is such a knee jerk youthful liberal that she hypocritically decries Nina Totenberg's restraint of a liberal caller to a show when the caller "riffs on like a jazz musician who hasn't noticed that the rest of the group has returned to the original melody line," as I paraphrase her description just a few pages earlier of Rush Limbaugh's conservative tirades. I am no dittohead and can appreciate a youthful liberal outlook, but her disgust for the kind Oklahoma women who bring "mere" casseroles to Oklahoma City bombing victims is unnecessarily cruel. The book is a page turner though, and Vowell shines when she writes longer passages. Her critical reviews printed here show glimpses of Dorothy Parker-like wit. Another caveat: be prepared for lengthy paeans to Kurt Cobain, et al..Her quotes of grunge rocker lyrics unfortunately make the lyrics look crude and stupid in the face of her more clever writing. All in all, the book is good but her biases can be oppressive at times. Despite her someday embarassment predicted above, the reader will appreciate that, like Neil Young and unlike NPR's Bob Edwards, by embarassing herself she has created a work of art rather than a Grisham-like product.
Rating:
Summary: you try this at home and see what you find.
Review: this book is a diary of an entire year's worth of listening to the radio. most people only listen in their cars, but sarah didn't have a tv or something, so she kept a journal of what she heard on the radio. in some cities, this would be the most boring task and picking your belly button lint would be more fun. but she was lucky enough to live in a place where they take their radio seriously. this isn't anything like take the cannoli, but don't let that stop you. it's an incredible sociological experiment. plus it also helps that she's employed by npr. sort of.
Rating:
Summary: "Radio On" Puts Reader Off!
Review: Vowell has some insight into her subject, probably about as much as the average radio listener. To (over) compensate, she makes grasping, unsubstantiated comparisons to other media. The tone is self-absorbed, which is fine when the author has more personality than this one.
Rating:
Summary: rock and roll ethos
Review: What makes Sarah Vowell special is a belief in music. Not just alternative, or punk, or whatever label you want to slap on her, but an all out mad fantasy that you can hear something and it will make you different. A song that can "cut you in half," as she says. When I hear the title of radio on, I hear "Roadrunner," and jonathan richman shouting triumphantly "c'mon modern lovers..." and then they *all* get into the chant. It's all night stop'n'shops and hedonism and searching, and above all it's chaos and confusion. She knows that she'll never find the perfect station, but it's the thirst for meaning in static filled broadband melee that drives the book, and captures the reader. Her detractors should remember that in Rock And Roll, it's not whether you're right or wrong, but how you feel.
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