Rating: 
Summary: A nice bunch of short stories
Review: I'm not going to write a long winded literary review. I think this book is best read as a series of short stories. I read a chapter a day and was able to get through it that way. I never had much interest in finding out what happened next. If you're into picaresque novels a la Tom Jones you will love this otherwise I would humbly suggest you skip it. It's too long and it rambles pointlessly. As I was reading it I wondered if an editor was ever used by Bellow. I plan to read at least one more of Mr. Bellow's works. Hopefully, it will be better than this one. One reviewer states this book alone deserved the Nobel Prize. I saw nothing in this book that deserved a Nobel Prize and most of you won't either. This book is nothing compared to Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemingway or Morrison who have won the great prize and who's work blows this away.
Rating: 
Summary: Dull and tedious
Review: I'm sure it's really a masterpiece and that I have no patience, but I felt I was waiting for the story to really start. Then I discovered I was a couple of humdred pages into the book, and nothing seemed to be happening. I decided life is too short to read dull books.
Rating: 
Summary: Vastly overated
Review: It is really quite amazing how people throw around the highest grades/stars, and belch out "Masterpiece" because they were entertained until the word has been rendered meaningless. When I saw this book on the top 100 list, I had to ask myself "How many judges work for Random House"? I am a big fan of Bellow's when he sticks to chronicling the plight of intellectuals in Americana a la "More Die of A Heartbreak", "Herzog" and "Humboldt's Gift", than with the bored bourgeoise protagonists (always men) in this novel and "Henderson the Rain King". There is nothing to take away from reading this novel. It has nothing to say that other coming of age books such as Stendahl's "The Red & the Black" or Maughm's "Of Human Bondage" say with far more superiority. And that whole bit with the bird in Mexico was just more filler. Either he had been reading too much D.H. Lawrence at the time, or he does not disdain the beat poets as much as he would like to believe.When Bellow is on, there are about two or three living American authors (Delillo, Toni Morrison, Barth?) that can touch him. This is kid's stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: The Great American Novel
Review: Martin Amis calls this the Great American Novel. It is difficult to disagree. I am not an American, but I'm a great admirer of contemporary American writers like Philip Roth, John Updike and Norman Mailer. No one , I think, has given me a sense of what it means to be an American quite like Saul Bellow. It is difficult to think of another novel as representative of the cacophonic genius of America as this one. Despite the very American setting and language, like all great books it achieves a universal resonance. This is largely because of Bellow's genius for rendering into words those unspeakable yearnings of the human heart. The title of the book is ironic; all life is an adventure, yours, mine and March's. Bellow has taken it upon himself to fill us with a sense of wonder about life's possibilities.
Rating:
Summary: Exhilarating
Review: Recently Martin Amis claimed this was the great American novel, and it's as good a candidate as I've read. Bellow's long descriptions of city characters cascade through the mind, and create an instantly memorable style. Writers will be awed.
Rating:
Summary: A modern Candide
Review: Saul Bellow has addressed freedom and the saga of trying to find oneself and one's unique place in the world. The ending reminds me of Voltaire's solution to chaos: tend your own garden. I'll put good use to Saul's philosophies. Indeed, I found this book at a searching time in my life and my pursuits were reassured. I was spurred to read a novel by Saul Bellow after reading Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Rating: 
Summary: A treatise of personal freedom
Review: Saul Bellow writing is very poetic and beautifully scripted - it's not straightforward to read, but then again since Bellow is examining the purposes of our lives, I wouldn't expect the novel and writing style to oversimplify our predicament. Augie is a poor Jewish boy growing up in Chicago - "that somber city" - in a broken home with his dictatorial Grandmother, abandoned mother, and two diametrically opposed brothers (Simon and George.) He finds his brother Simon obsessed with material facts and riches that he cannot possess. Whereas Augie maintains a carefree life experimenting and dabbling with various encounters with different people and places in Chicago, Mexico, and Europe - never quite satisfied or convinced of the importance of each situation. Augie resists the Machiavellian pursuits of his older brother Simon, and is willing to live as a pauper, and as a result, not be controlled by money, wives, children, and especially responsibilities. Augie's plight is like any other introspective journey. What is my purpose? Why am I here? Bellow, I believe tries to not necessarily answer this question, but rather appreciates the quandary that many of us find ourselves in. At one point Augie's epiphany - the essential and natural course and purpose of life is each person's axial lines. Freedom of thought and emotions - and love our what keeps Augie in line with his purpose. This is not an easy book to read, but a fascinating and poetic journey that requires time and patience from the reader. I am considering reading it again to soak in all of the details I missed. I wholeheartedly recommend this book; despite the ruminations of other reviewers that took offense to the existential tract of Saul Bellow, I believe that whether you believe in a chaotic or an ordered loving universe - either way you'll find the book interesting and the dilemma facing humans an interesting mess. The book took me 5 weeks to read - I have a voracious appetite for books and usually read them in much less time - so those of you considering reading this book - make sure you are in it for the long haul!
Rating:
Summary: Life is hard and then you get married.
Review: Slow moving story of a young romantic growing up in Depression torn Chicago. Augie pursues love, happiness, and the meaning of life. Unfortunately Augie finds only unhappiness in his pursiut for love, while he learns to understand life only when it has dealt him misfortune. The supporting charcters are compelling and memorable and Augie learns from everyone he encounters. My difficulty was with Bellow's prose which was long and ponderous and sometimes over my head. I would re-read many paragraphs and still not completely understand what Bellow was trying to say. Also if this book was supposed to be comedic the humor was lost on me.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Give Up!
Review: some reviewers have complained "augie march" is a hard read, and to a certain extent they are right. i'm an experienced reader myself and found i needed a good 150 pages to settle into bellow's style. but boy, was it worth it! and now i have the pleasure of carrying augie around inside my head -- and a fascinating companion he makes. to those of you who threw in the towel i direct your attention to the priceless "how to read a book" by van doren and adler. flip straight to chapter 21, "reading and the growth of the mind" and slurp it up. a wonderful 9- or 10-page essay that'll give you the strength to keep turning those pages, and help reveal jewels like "augie march" for the treasures they are.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good, But Not a Page Turner
Review: The Adventures of Auggie March is a difficult book to read, but when read slowly, it rewards your effort more than most books do. Auggie is an odd character who meets a lot of other odd characters. During the course of his adventures, he learns a lot about the world, or says he does, but he's not good at applying what he learns to his own life, and he ends up in about as big a mess as he begins in. This is a little disappointing, but Auggie is not that sympathetic a character, so it's not as disappointing as it might be. We learn a lot too. Saul Bellow studied sociology and anthropology, and he tells us a thing or two about the poor, and people who are down on their luck. At one point, Einhorn, Auggie's mentor, tells him: "Young fellows brought up in bad luck, like you, are naturals to keep the jails filled - the reformatories, all the institutions. What the state orders bread and beans long in advance for. It knows there's an element that can be depended on to come behind bars to eat it." Similarly informative passages, about business, love, the training of wild animals, etc., can be found by opening the book at random to almost any page. (In fairness, a good part of what's said is over-generalization or just not true, but still you're going to leave this book feeling pretty impressed by what the author knows.) So why not five stars? For one thing, the writing doesn't exactly propel you from one page to the next. For another, the book is not very uplifting. You've heard of Man's Search for Meaning? This book comes very close to telling us that there isn't any. That's pretty hard to take.
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