Rating: 
Summary: Quick and Interesting
Review: I really liked this novel, not just because of the content but because the size of the column of text on each page is so narrow that it can be read in just a few hours. Kept me interested and made me think.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting book....
Review: I bought this book because it was on Oprah's book list. I found it quite an interesting story, and I really felt connected with the characters. It was a bit difficult to get past the wordiness of this novel, and found myself skimming some parts. Deep be the best way to describe this story, and a word of advice...while it is a good book, it's not a good choice when looking for a light-hearted book.
Rating: 
Summary: Predictable and boring ....
Review: After all the hype about this book I expected much, much more. Usually I avoid all "Oprah's Book Club" books but I was so interested in a book that would cover the "digesting" of the Nazi past in Germany that I picked it up nevertheless. But it lived up to all my negative expectations of an "Oprah" book....First I thought it was the translation ... However it is the content that is not developed well or written well. Michael's realtionship with the woman is not believlable which is the center of the story. The reaction to the Nazi years and the Holocaus is superficial, simplistic, "unimaginative" and predictable, i.e. he is not writing it any differently than 100s before him. The word "transition" has not made it into his vocabulary. Character develelopment is limited. Very quick, boring read.
Rating: 
Summary: A full-scale novel in three hours
Review: In spare and simple language, The Reader shows us how complex the interweavings of love and hate, good and evil, can be. The two main characters are interesting in themselves and fascinating in their relationship.Henry James wrote that the value of a novel was a matter of "the amount of felt life concerned in producing it." By that standard, The Reader stands high despite--and because of--its brevity.
Rating:
Summary: The Reader
Review: I listened to the audio version of this book. It was one of the most intense, compelling, and moving books I have ever read or listened to. Powerful!
Rating:
Summary: Call me old fashioned...
Review: I just finished The Reader and really enjoyed it. BUT could he really have spent his whole life agonizing over a woman twice his age that he lost his virginity to at age 15? He worries that he loved someone who could commit a horrible crime but never realizes that she couldn't have been a very moral person to seduce him in the first place. He never loved her - it was simply schoolboy lust. He didn't even know her and she never called him anything but kid. Obviously he knew the relationship was wrong because he never told anyone about it, yet he allowed it to completely dominate his life. That was sad, but add the Holocaust into the mix and Hannah becomes a complete B----! I found myself wanting to slap some sense into that "kid".
Rating:
Summary: To have a fixed idea is to never meditate about it.
Review: Love is supposed to be unconditional, then you find out that lover has been involved in tragic, dramatic crimes, which can hardly be explained. Then, is it wrong to love that person? Are the acts of a person the same thing as the person? If we can always be defined by our actions, and what we do is contradictory, then what are we? Can any one really judge anyone? And if we judge how do we really know that we are viewing the situation form a superior moral stand point? And if we can not judge, them how can we relate to life and others? How can we evolve as better persons without a before and after to compare? How do we know is better? Is someone who kill one thousand persons worst that a person who kill one? Why? Can really life be quantified? The questions which that came to our mind are certainly not limited to these few, but the intensity of the work and its basic humanness will certainly touch your heart. Is just beautiful.
Rating: 
Summary: A Bit Dark & Depressing
Review: As a fan of the Oprah Book Club selections, I was a bit disappointed by this particular book. The Reader is quite somber and dark. Given the topic (holocaust) this is entirely understandable. This aside, I found the novel to be a bit of a "downer" and not uplifting or motivating in any way. Perhaps that is not the intent? However, if you are craving a read that will fill your spirit with the "warm fuzzies," The Reader is not it.
Rating: 
Summary: sex and crimes
Review: the reader is about a young boys life who grows into a mature man.one day the boy is walking home from school and gets sick.a woman who sees him vomit goes to his aid and helps the kid.she cleans him and bathes him.he visits her another day to thank her and he soon falls in love with and they start meeting everyday for sex.the reader could be labeled a love story as well as a tragic story.its basically about a kid who falls in love with an older woman and a woman who hides a secret.a good read.
Rating:
Summary: sexual abuse is not romance
Review: for starters, I didn't finish this book, if you could call it a book. it read like an upscale version of something from penthouse letters. it was thinly disguised pornography, and trying to pretend to be literary. also, it struck me that the seduction of the boy by the woman (that boy did not seduce her, that much I know!, he was just a child), was not presented in a way that I felt would have made it genuinely good fiction, or non-fiction for that matter. what really irked me was that it was presented in a titillating fashion, all about her grabbing his @#$%, etc., which I felt was entirely unnecessary, and in fact, led the reader quite astray. I felt the author had some need of his own to present child sexual abuse in a light that made it look not disturbing, and while many adolescent boys have or have had fantasies of sexual interactions with full-grown women, by no means would or could or does ANYTHING positive come about in the long run from their fantasies being fulfilled by becoming reality. it just messes children and adolescents up... so as far as I'm concerned, any book that makes sexual abuse of a child (let's call it by its true name) titillating or racy or exciting for an audience gets only one star in my book. I wish I could give it "no stars"...
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