Rating: 
Summary: What was Oprah thinking?
Review: This is the first book that I have ever been angry that I spent the time reading it. It has no societal value, basically it was 500 plus pages of crap. It is the most wasteful use of paper and ink. The only positive side is that after reading this, any book will seem like a pulitzer prize winning novel. I only give it one star because there was no option to have zero stars.
Rating:
Summary: Not the Second Coming of Great Literature!
Review: After all the hype, I fully expected to be in for a great reading experience. What a disappointment. Other than the fact that it's filled with current pop culture references, it's completely derivative of many novels that have come before -- read Richard Yates's "Revolutionary Road" as an example. Why he needed over 550 pages to tell this story, is a big mystery. Some of the writing is quite good, but you have to plow through so much bloated pretentious prose to get to any of it that it's really not worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: Depends on what you're looking for!!
Review: After reading The Corrections, I'm not quite sure what to think. I went in with the wrong expectations. I had just finished reading Tending Roses, by Lisa Wingate and I was looking for another heartwarming book about an estranged family getting together over Christmas to work out their differences. I saw The Corrections, and I thought, great this will be like the book I just loved. The Corrections surprised me. It was really edgy. Anyway, if you like edgy, gritty books, you'll probably like it. If you're looking for a sweet, inspiring family story, it's not your thing.
Rating:
Summary: The saddest thing
Review: is the degree of artistic and cultural bankruptcy required to make this come off as anything less than a tin man's lament. The characters are cliches, without the wit of their abbreviation, the plot's as deep and undulate as a backyard puddle, and the message, which bears the watery thumbprints of an island castaway, is of the hey it's your family I guess the old man wasn't such a (...) after all your mom did her best variety that does Hallmark proud. For only one stranded on a very rare island would think this work anything but banal, or the author that gave it life anything but second-rate.
Rating:
Summary: Among the Worst Books I Have Ever Read
Review: I don't ever remember feeling this angry after finishing a book. Angry that I wasted time reading this tome in hopes that it would become clear why reviewers thought so highly of it. It never did. And I was angry to think that anyone with such a dim, humorless, sad view of humanity would feel compelled to share it with all of us. Don't let the blurbs from DeLillo and David Foster Wallace on the jacket fool you...Franzen is _not_ in their league. There wasn't a single character who seemed remotely real to me at any point in the novel. Instead they seemed like monsters patched together out of anger and bitterness. Yuck!
Rating: 
Summary: Franzen exploits your worst nightmares for a bestseller
Review: I had high hopes for this book, as I am always eager to read something that focuses intensely on relationships among characters and explores the minds of the characters as well. Of course John Updike was a master of this, as are more recent authors like Rick Moody (The Ice Storm) and Jeffrey Eugenedies (Virgin Suicides). However, this book seemed to focus on Mr. Franzen's adolescent preoccupation with vulgarity, bodily functions, and unsophisticated ideas of human sexuality. Mr. Franzen had hinted in a recent interview that John Updike, in his opinion, was a tired hack. Franzen should be so lucky to occupy such status himself. In addition, his twisted portrait of Lithuanian people (gun-toting, murderous, donkey-eating criminals or poor, intellectually challenged fatalists) is downright insulting and racist.
The author, from his pedestal, looks condescendingly down upon midwesterners and older Americans, poking fun of their more wholesome lifestyle while portraying women over 30 in a most unflattering light as golddiggers, drug abusers, or confused and reckless lesbians. He must have been extremely frustrated or unhappy with his own life and thoughts in order to portray so vividly (and offensively)_ a swirl of unhappiness and shame. This is pulp fiction. Skip it.
Rating:
Summary: The Corrections
Review: If it weren't for the last section of this book, I would be reluctant to give it even 1 star. After struggling through to the final page, I loaned the book to a friend who gave up after less than 100 pages. Franzen is mighty lucky to have had his book selected for Oprah's Book Club, however, it does support his remarks regarding her tendency to pick less than great books.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Bother With This One
Review: Oprah usually selects excellent books. This time somebody goofed!! This book is drudgery. Some people may like it but I didn't think it was worth the mounds of paper it was written on.
I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Sorry, Oprah, but you can't please everyone with every book, but your batting average is about 90% so far!!
Rating:
Summary: Not High Art
Review: Since Jonathan Franzen has crowned himself the contemporary writer of "High Art" I expected to read the work of a newfound genius. If you must indulge your curiosity don't waste your money, borrow it from a library. He's just another arrogant American baby boomer who thinks too much of himself and his writing.
Rating: 
Summary: A book to live, but not to love.
Review: The first thing you should know about Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections" is that even though there's an Oprah seal on its cover, it is not by any means what you'd expect from an Oprah book. In fact, having just finished it, I'm trying to visualize the millions of Oprah-watching mothers across the country sitting and reading this book. It's such a cold, harsh splash in the face that either the Oprahsized masses will become better people, or they'll stop reading 100 pages in.Either way, Oprah aside, this is one hell of a book. I feel changed by it---and I'm not sure how. It's a meticulous deconstruction, I suppose, of a midwestern family. That's putting it mildly. It gets you into the heads of Alfred and Enid Lambert and their three children Gary, Chip and Denise. And, in the process, it takes you from cruise ships to kitchens to Harvey Keitel to gardens, photo labs, classrooms and as far as Lithuania. The rendering is so rich and detailed that you don't read this book, you live this book. But, to finish that thought, you don't love this book. This book is cold and icy. It's medicinal. It tells you things you don't want to hear and it shows you scenes you don't want to see. There's buckets of urine and wall-crawling feces. There's Parkinsons, dementia, depression, repression, aggression and lots of rage. And, yet, believe it or not---with all that unhappy stuff---it's a fun read. Well, maybe fun's not the right word...but the pages turn, and you want more. And when it's done it lingers in you. So, if the Oprah Seal says to you "Don't Read This! It's mushy!", rest assured: "The Corrections" is anything but.
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