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Summary: Full of honest imagery and painful confession.
Review: This is a book that any mother will be able to relate to. The author shares his life of poverty and emotional struggle for all the world to read about and provides a most heart warming memoir that is sure to make any reader more appreciative for all they have. This is a life like many others who struggle and maybe make some poor choices in life. It is also another testament to how important men are in the lives of children, especially boys. Inside these pages you will find loneliness, confusion, and hope.
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Summary: Absolutely wonderful
Review: I finally got around to listening to All Over But The Shoutin' by Rick Bragg on audio book and was glad that I did. This book has made it to the top of my best of 2001 reading list. This is a wonderful autobiography that focuses on Pulitzer prize winning journalist, Rick Bragg's family. In particular, he talks about his momma who he deeply loves and admires. Without glossing over the poverty and sadness in his life he tells the story of how his momma held their family together. Rick has a warm intimate style of writing that makes you feel like his family lives next door.
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Summary: Superb
Review: A truely excellent memoir. Bragg is incredibly earnest in his approach, and masterful with words. At several points I was almost brought to tears. I am a New Yorker, born and raised, and I found his description of the rural South fascinating and infused with a deep love. I was almost equally impressed with his descriptions of his stories and life after leaving his home. Several reviewers seem to dislike that part, but I enjoyed it greatly.
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Summary: Straight shootin'
Review: For me, reading Rick Bragg's work is akin to eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich -- with its piled-high, sticky contents oozing over the sides -- and downing it with an ice-cold glass of whole milk. There just ain't nothing better than that.Rick's charm as a writer comes as a concoction of raw honesty, keen insight, and his ungentrified Southern upbringing. He uses his charm to tell his story just the way his granddaddy would swing a hammer to build a sturdy frame for a house in the pines of Alabama... swift, sure, hitting the nail on the head every time. It is rare that an author brings me to tears. But being touched by such simple eloquence, sometimes I just can't help myself. Last night, when I read in this personal memoir about Rick's taking his momma to New York to receive his Pulitzer, it was one of those times. I bawled for about 15 minutes, as much for the tragedies he describes as for the overcoming of them. I just wish I could write Rick's momma a letter to tell her how special I think she is. Her life's story, and Rick's, are true inspirations.
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Summary: Great Read
Review: This book was a reminder of a way of life that I'd forgotten about. It gives us all hope. I married and moved to Michigan and raised my family there. This book made me sad that I didn't try to help the family I left behind more. A great read and shows insight into life in the south. Author of "Edge of Heaven" and "Children of the Mountain".
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Summary: A MASTER STORYTELLER'S MASTERPIECE
Review: I had never heard of Rick Bragg 'til I read this book, but will never forget him and will be on the lookout for any further writings by him. This is an autobiography and more specifically a paean to his mother. This is also a story of a talented person starting life in abject poverty and eventually reaching the highest pinnacle possible in his newspaper reporting career and working for the New York Times, the most prestigous newspaper in our land. If you want to read a book guaranteed to please, this is it!
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Summary: Where are they now?
Review: This touching memoir is primarily Rick Bragg's tribute to his extraordinary momma. Unfortunately, towards the middle of the book, he strays (I think) a bit too far from his most important story- that of his momma and his family- to tell about some of the many stories of his career. Still, everything does come full circle in the end, when his momma accompanies him to receive his Pulitzer, and then, when he finally "gets even with life" and buys his momma her own home. I truly enjoyed reading about the author and his family, and I wonder what has happened in their lives since this book was published five years ago. Has Mark conquered his demons? Did their momma finally go to Pell City to get her dentures? Has Rick gotten married, or had children? After all, he said that "I don't think I have ever made it clear to her that I would never, ever be able to start building that part of my life (marriage and a family) as long as this part, this promise (buying his momma her own home), was unfinished . . . " Well, he did finish that promise. Did he start building that part of his life?
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Summary: All Over But the Shoutin'
Review: This book was heartfelt, heart-wrenching and hilarious. It is very well written and I did not want it to end. Rick Bragg is a very gifted storyteller and his stories are worth reading and worth knowing. When I finished this book , I read "Somebody Told Me," which is a collection of his newspaper stories, some Pulitzer prize winners. Excellent!
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Summary: He's going to put the rest of us writers out of business
Review: If I'd read Rick Bragg's books before writing my midwifery memoir, BABY CATCHER (Scribner, April 2002), I might have been too discouraged to continue . He writes so well, with such craft and passion. I went recently to Book Passage (an independent bookstore in Corte Madera, CA) to hear him reading from Ava's Man, and I just wanted to kidnap him so he could be my own personal writing muse. He talks like he writes: warmly, honestly, and from the heart.
Highest praise.
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Summary: A momma's determination and Pulitzer winner who captured it
Review: A criteria in selecting books is a desire to be taken to a place, a place I can picture and learn about and, a time or era in someone's life. Describe to me in vivid detail the setting, share the fascinating characters with me, make me feel the passionate words written across the page. Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg does just that. He has more than an art with words. The 1997 story is about his courageous loving momma, a strong-willed woman whose alcoholic mean husband was very frequently absent from their lives, leaving her and three sons, with no money, no car, nothing. If not for her grit and determination and without help from family members, they couldn't have survived. In the book, Bragg doesn't have many memories of his absentee father. Of the few, Bragg writes about his alcoholic sickly father's phone call to the home, asking for his momma, "between bone-rattling coughs, the kind that telegraphed death". When his father died, he and his brothers didn't even go to the funeral. But take a look at the diction here: "between bone-rattling coughs, the kind that telegraphed death." Wow, how can I ever begin to learn to write like this? Bragg has the gift for storytelling. He is able to make you experience the feeling he writes about, whether he takes you down memory roads, or shares a gripping story of real people. He offers enjoyable humorous recollections of the family and is blessed with natural wit. ......MZRIZZ.
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