Rating: 
Summary: The WORST Book I Ever Read!
Review: (One star because zero was not an option.)I had many accomplishments during my years at university, but I must say that I have no idea how I got through this one. Other "modern novels" appeal to me greatly such as _Ulysses_ and _Remembrance of Things Past_, but this one is just garbage, in my mind. While I am a great defender of the right to read, and the need to read books that are detestable as part of the study of literature, I so strongly disliked this book that I keep it only as a reminder of the torture that my students face as they read literature they would never normally choose. I'm sure we each have our least favorite book, and this is most definitely mine!
Rating: 
Summary: Good book, but Beware AUDIBLE.COM version -
Review: Amazon.com offers customers Audible.com audio book selections - but beware - they are often abridged without (ever) being labeled as such. Audible offers many abridged books which, by the universal omission of the honest and legal "ABRIDGED" denotation, are misrepresented as complete. Do not under any circumstances order the Audible version of Tristram Shandy. The narrator is wonderful, but entire chapters are missing, making the piece completely nonsensical. One example of missing information is a pivotal marriage proposal by Uncle Toby, and the title character's exploits have been all but completely excised! Unconscionable. It's not Amazon.com's fault, however, if they are unaware of Audible's odd practice. I have informed them of this and one hopes they will take timely action.
Rating: 
Summary: Continues and begins traditions in English
Review: As an undergraduate English major, I was recently dragged through this book kicking and screaming. "There's nothing happening!" I kept arguing in vain. How wrong I was. Fortunately, my Professor saw the value in making me continue. This book continues the work that Shakespeare began in the English language and that Joyce would later undertake. All explore the human condition excellently, but none do it in as funny a way as Sterne. Within marbled and black pages, instructions to re-read chapters and descriptions of courtships as battles, we see not only Sterne going through the growing pains of being a novelist, but the novel itslef going through its own growing pains. Sterne helped to define the genre and created a scathing farce in the process.
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Summary: Zany philosophical fictional autobiography
Review: Had this review been a farce, which, unless everyone's opinions and impressions are to be looked upon as a farce as well as mine, I see no reason to suppose - this paragraph, Sir or Madam, has finished the first act of it, and then the second must be set off thus. Flip--flap--cra.a..a...a.ack--flip--flap--'tis a well bound book.--Do you know whether the book in my palm is good or no?--flip--flap--crack--I break the spine at each turn (much like my own). I must warn you, though, between the last 'flap' and 'crack', when you thought you had me all to yourself, I was in fact sipping warmed cointreau and thinking about noses for a full five minutes straight. It is quite good of me to tell you (don't you think), otherwise I may have fooled you completely into not seeing reality.
--Your worships and your revereneces love literature--and God has made you all with good eyes and minds; I suggest that you all join me in a good read. Let me read on --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- Zounds! that was a good bit, wasn't it? O! there are - which I could sit whole days with - books that expand one's ideas of the construction of reality, but give one a laugh and some good dirty jokes. The ideas and opinons of Tristram Shandy (here reborn into a review) form just such a book.
Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary tale of an 18th Century family
Review: Have you wanted to read a book where the author decides to "rip out" one of the chapters, or leaves a blank page for you to 'draw' one of the characters? Would you enjoy a story which takes many chapters before the hero manages to be born? This 18th-Century tale is touchingly told. The characters are real, and fascinating. It's not their fault that their story is frequently and impishly interrupted by outlandish "digressions" on the part of an author so creative that his modern descendants are considered to be Joyce and Beckett, as well as many others. Would you enjoy a chapter on Chapters? About buttonholes? About whether parents and their children are kin to each other? A chapter on curses? Poor Laurence Sterne has so much trouble getting two of his characters down the stairs that he finally calls in a "critic" to help! Advice on reading such an unusual, even unique, book: read the first several chapters, then stop and reread them. Continue that process and soon the book will feel quite familiar, and that's when the fun really starts. The Oxford World's Classics edition follows the first edition of the book, and is preferred. Amazon also offers the fully-annotated edition, the "Florida" edition, in three volumes.
Rating:
Summary: It may be famous but its not worth struggling through
Review: Having tried so hard to finish this I have become convinced that its reputation comes from people who have, somehow, managed to read it and didn't want to feel all the effort was for nought. It really isn't all that good either as satire or entertainment. Swift or Fielding are infinitely superior. I have met others who, after a few drinks, were willing to admit that they too couldn't read this balderdash. The only person I know who claims to have read and enjoyed it had, on closer questioning, no idea what it was about.
Rating:
Summary: The first seriously cool novel (at least in English)
Review: I first picked up Tristram Shandy when I was about 16. I knew nothing about it except that it was a Classic and therefore probably very boring. I was a big Kathy Acker fan at the time (still am, 14 years later) and liked the way she littered her books with strange pictures and diagrams. Imagine my shock on finding that Sterne had been doing the same stuff in the 1760s. Tristram Shandy is one of the earliest so-called novels in the English language, but it's probably the most astoundingly innovative work of fiction ever written. When a character dies, there's a black page. When Sterne wants to demonstrate the randomness of life, there's a marbled page (marbling being a random process in the original edition - the point is now lost in mass-market paperbacks). When a character makes a gesture with his stick, there's an extravagant scribble. I had assumed, in my Teen Ignorance, that your typical Penguin Classic was a sturdy but boring narrative about supposedly real people doing this and that at interminable length. The brilliance of Tristram Shandy is that Sterne displays totally credible (if utterly daft) characters in a proto-Dickensian manner, while at the same time asserting the material character of the book in your hand. I couldn't get academic about this book even if I wanted to. It's the most completely mad novel I've ever read. It's infuriating, yes, because Sterne is so good at the two things he's doing: telling a good story with living characters, and reminding you in his smirking whisper that it's only a story and that you're reading it in a book. This edition is as up-to-date as they get, and besides having comprehensive and very useful notes (Sterne is big into the tradition of Learned Wit, and many of his allusions can be a tad obscure without a modern scholar explaining them) it includes the excellent introductory essay by Christopher Ricks, carried over from the earlier (1967) Penguin edition. The UK price is three quid; it seems almost indecent that such a stunning performance can be had for so little. Dr Johnson famously remarked (in 1776) "Nothing odd will do long. 'Tristram Shandy' did not last." Almost a quarter of a millennium later, it's still there, tongue thrust firmly into cheek. It's worth the whole of Fielding, Smollett and Richardson put together, in my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Read
Review: I had to read Tristram Shandy for a class on eighteenth and nineteenth century novels, and I found Sterne's novel to be the most interesting and entertaining of the bunch. I was overwhelmed by it at first, but, once I got into it and realized that plot was not the point, I really enjoyed the many characters and the unconventional structure. I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who appreciates the postmodernists...I had to read Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds at the same time and noticed how similar these books (though centuries apart) were in wit and style.
Rating:
Summary: Note About the Oxford World Classics Edition
Review: I just wanted to note that pages 29 and 30 of this edition are supposed to be black, not blank. Whether this was a simple mistake by the publisher or just a way to save money-two black pages must take alot of ink-doing so alters the possible interpretation of Sterne's work. Given the fact that Sterne closely watched the original publishers to prevent deviations from his intent, I expect that Sterne would be appalled that the black pages were not included. Otherwise, I have no negative comments about the work. While many complain that the narrator jumps around to much and it is difficult to understand, that is part of the fun of reading the book. The narrator essentially makes the reader a character in the book-ground breaking methods which are way before his time. Excellent
Rating:
Summary: Note About the Oxford World Classics Edition
Review: I just wanted to note that pages 29 and 30 of this edition are supposed to be black, not blank. Whether this was a simple mistake by the publisher or just a way to save money-two black pages must take alot of ink-doing so alters the possible interpretation of Sterne's work. Given the fact that Sterne closely watched the original publishers to prevent deviations from his intent, I expect that Sterne would be appalled that the black pages were not included. Otherwise, I have no negative comments about the work. While many complain that the narrator jumps around to much and it is difficult to understand, that is part of the fun of reading the book. The narrator essentially makes the reader a character in the book-ground breaking methods which are way before his time. Excellent
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