Rating: 
Summary: Rock solid portrayal of small town life
Review: McMurtry's large body of work contains mostly fine novels mixed in with a clunker or two. "The Last Picture Show" was the first one that I read, and it remains for me one of this two best, along with "Horseman, Pass By." It is the story of small-town Texas life in the '50s. Nothing much happens, on the surface at least, in the dusty place that the teenage Sonny, his best-friend Duane, and Jacy, the high school heart throb he secretly lusts after, call home. McMurtry's sharp, clear style brings the town vividly to life: the single theater in town they all frequent, the dusty pool hall presided over by Sam the Lion, the fly-blown diner, the Friday night football games, and the endless adolescent yearning for sex and adventure. Beneath this placid surface, however, McMurtry reveals a community under strain. It cannot retain its young people once they graduate from high school; its women are sexually frustrated and chafe at the restrictions imposed upon them; many of the residents are bored by the sameness of their lives but either see no way or demonstrate no willingness to change them. In the end, this novel offers a bleak vision for the future. Sam the Lion, the most respected member of the community, dies and the light from a picture show flickers in the theater one last time before closing for good, leaving the wind to howl across the prairie, and the characters we have grown to care about scatter like tumbleweed. McMurtry, with this novel, revisits a theme that has wended its way throughout his books: the passing of the Old West and of a small-town way of life he knew as a young man. He was later to resurrect (much less successfully, in my opinion) some of the characters from "The Last Picture Show," but as is often the case in life, the charm and vitality that these characters possessed as young people vanishes when we meet them as adults. A first-class piece of writing from a reliable and wise voice.
Rating: 
Summary: fair
Review: Not the best book I have ever read, not the worst either. Guess it falls somewhere in between. Does not come close to being great literature--then again, it would be unjust to call it hack work. Mildly entertaining, would be closer to the truth. See the movie. The black and white photography, small town feel and some of the performances (you choose) make the movie work better than the book (even though the flick itself is way overrated.)
Rating:
Summary: fair
Review: Not the best book I have ever read, not the worst either. Guess it falls somewhere in between. Does not come close to being great literature--then again, it would be unjust to call it [bad] work. Mildly entertaining, would be closer to the truth. See the movie. The black and white photography, small town feel and some of the performances (you choose) make the movie work better than the book (even though the flick itself is way overrated.)
Rating: 
Summary: Great book but terrible presentation.
Review: Poor binding quality. One page nearly unreadable.
Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre fiction by an occasionally-great novelist
Review: Readers who loved Lonesome Dove will be surprised at how far McMurtry has come as a writer since 1966, when he wrote this unremarkable little book. Its only salvation is that it was made into a movie with Jack Nicolson and Cybil Shepherd. Last Picture Show portrays life in a tiny rural town in Texas in the early '50s, among a group of high school teenagers whose primary preoccupations are sex and keeping themselves from dying of boredom by drinking and playing pool. The characters are card-board cut-outs who lack depth, reality, and humanity. The writer cares little about his characters, and treats them with a condescension that shows little insight into their actions or compassion for their foibles. Meanwhile, only the most naive of readers will have not anticipated that the protagonist (Sonny) will gain and then lose the town sexpot for whom he's yearned for most of the novel. The pervasive sex is the only thing that keeps the book from being as boring as the town it portrays, but while it tries to be daring, by modern standards the book falls flat. See the movie, and stick to McMurtry's better work. This one is a dated embarassment that is best forgotten.
Rating:
Summary: Dated?
Review: Sorry to say it, but this book seems terribly dated to me. It is hard for me to relate to a time when everything was informed by something that no one wanted to talk about--sex. I mean, everthing is still informed by sex, but at least we talk about it. Perhaps it is because it so much from the male point of view and Jacy is so despicable. Women still only had two choices--to be considered a whore like Lois Farrow, or to be considered nothing, like Ruth Popper. I suppose for some people this might still be true and that there are plenty of people who would like to go back to a time when sex wasn't talked about, but reading about it did not sit well with me, perhaps precisely for this reason. It was just so depressing to think that at age eighteen these kids already were hopeless and had no way of figuring out how to look forward to something. (It's taken me 31 years to fully figure this out!)To torture myself I will probably have to read Texasville, and see how things progressed.
Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest, most subtle reads of all time.
Review: The Last Picture Show is a rare treasure of a novel that will simply haunt you. It's chock full of characters leading lives that they don't understand or can't control, just like you and I and everyone else in the real world. The characters are rich and real, and do things that they can't explain, just as we do in our own lives. You might never read a starker portrayal of real life anywhere else, so I wouldn't suggest passing this chance up. None of the characters have the benefit of figuring it all out by the end, but this novel will definitely start you thinking differently about your own life. Trust me, it's a must-read.
Rating: 
Summary: High-Schooler's Response
Review: The Last Picture Show was an interesting book from the view of a 16 year old. The lives of Jacy, Sonny, and Duane were so simple compared to life today. In the 90's it is hard to grasp the theme of the book. I am told it is a coming-of -age story, but it does not apply to many today. The sex was open and unhidden. But Sonny, Duane, and Jacy's feelings about sex were masked. I enjoyed this book because it is so different from my own life. I experienced life in a small town with little entertainment offered. This book shows how 3 kids deal with sex and managing their lives around it.
Rating:
Summary: Looking for love in Thalia, Texas. . .
Review: The melancholy at the heart of this novel is heartbreaking. And if you know the movie, you have a really good idea of the characters, setting and storyline of McMurtry's novel. Like the movie, the novel itself is in black and white. A handful of likable characters are surrounded by small-town ignorance and trapped by circumstance or their own limited understanding of the world. Meanwhile, much of the story takes place in the bitter cold, colorless months of north Texas winter. A year passes, from one football season to the next, and during those twelve months, the central characters, Sonny and Duane, graduate from high school and have a number of adventures, as much as two single young men can have in a small rural community. Duane is obsessed with Jacy, the richest, prettiest girl in school. Sonny, who has the more tender heart, befriends the coach's 40-year-old wife, Ruth. And their story is a sweet contrast to the generally coarse, unfeeling or blighted relationships among the rest of those in the town. Of the very few in town who seem to feel something like full-hearted love, McMurtry only gives us glimpses and dwells instead on what is to be lamented in the rest of his characters' unlived lives. Like the R-rated movie, this is an R-rated book, with somewhat more graphic detail. Meanwhile, the inner lives of his characters, as McMurtry reveals them, give the reader a great deal more of their shifting moods, ironies and nuances of attitude and emotion. With Sonny as the most central character in the novel, you get a much deeper and more sympathetic portrayal of him. And finally the book is worth reading for the scenes that did not make it into the movie. Like his two earlier books, "Leaving Cheyenne" and "Horseman, Pass By," this is a finely imagined novel, with strong, memorable characters, and a mood that ranges between the farcical and the profoundly sad. I'm happy to recommend all three.
Rating:
Summary: The antithesis of (most) every Texan Sterotype
Review: The problem with so many portrayals of Texans in the broad spectrum of literary works and on the silver screen is the reliance of shop-worn stereotypes and misconceptions that are, quiet simply, laughable. About the only thing many non-Texans have right about The Lone Star State is the fact that it gets hot as hell here and that we are proud of our state and heritage. Everything else is a stereotype, a half-truth, a stretch of the truth or an outright lie. Hollywood, in particular, is guilty of creating thinly-drawn, one-dimensional Texan characters that easily conform to many people's pre-conceived notions. Hollywood is pathetically inept at getting the subtle nuances of Texan life. That's why this book is so refreshing. The same can be said about the movie made from this book. (True, Bogdonavich is not a Texan but look at the material he had to work from.) The characters in 'TLPS' are richly-drawn, diverse, and human. They are not cutout cardboard caricatures from someone's out-of-whack imagination. Highly recommended.
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