Rating: 
Summary: Sick reflection on our times?
Review: Couldn't wait to finish this book. Who cared what happened to these people. If this a reflection of the 90's generation, who is going to pay for my retirement!
Rating: 
Summary: A superficial critique of a superficial culture
Review: I wanted to like this book but it ultimately succumbs to the same pretentiousness and superficiality it purports to refute.I tried to finish it but finally gave up around page 500. It's true that A Man In Full had a poor ending but at least it was a book you could finish.
Rating:
Summary: Reading for lightweights
Review: Yawns all around. Nothing there. The plot was weak. The characters were ineffective, even in Anderson's trying to convey their shallowness. Can't anybody sit down and write a good book anymore? Wait a minute - wait a minute...that's it! I'll do it! OK guys, gotta go... I'm gonna go write the great American novel. Just hold my mail and take a message if the phone rings. See ya in a few weeks...
Rating: 
Summary: THE MEDIUM IS THE ADVERTISING OF OURSELVES
Review: This book is Marshall McLuhan meets Walt Disney. The author hits the nail on the head describing how self engaged we are with technology and what it can offer. The characters are as transparent as Saran Wrap--but that's what makes them fun to loathe. Some of the twists and turns with .com are fun to see. A must for the coffee table.
Rating:
Summary: an entertaining read
Review: maybe not the classic that Bonfire is, but it captures the moment. Well-written and LOL-funny in many spots. K.A., if you read this, get an editor to correct your German.
Rating: 
Summary: Ignore the cranks--a rich, wonderful, awesome book.
Review: A fabulous feast that's rich with invention and humor and humanity. Dead-on depictions of contemporary life. Beautifully written. Fun and satisfying.
Rating:
Summary: Puh-leeze. Anderson is a second rate everything.
Review: Don't believe these reviews who are saying, "Ooh, you've got to be from the city to get this book." Trust me, I live in New York and work in publishing and run in many of the same circles that Anderson does, but this book STILL bored me to tears. Anderson's gunning for Wolfe (ain't gonna happen), trying to do with the '90s what The Bonfire of the Vanities did to the '80s. The only problem was, Bonfire was a helluva book by a talented writer, while Anderson's just a hack (albeit an incredibly well connected hack). One of the funniest things in Turn of the Century is that, over a hundred pages in, the narrator just happens to mention that of one the main characters is missing a hand. That's pretty damn funny. Imagine if Kafka had written The Metamorphosis that way: the fact the Gregor Samsa had awoken one morning to find he'd been turned into a large cockroach would be buried somewhere on page 93. And even though I thought what turned me off in Anderson's book was his cloying language and supposed media hipness (the words "dot" and "com" being used much too gratuitously), what really bugged me were the three cute kids the main couple has, and I think their amount of page-time really shines the light on what Anderson is, as opposed to the shadow of what he'd like to be: he wants to think he's Sherman McCoy, but he's really Ward Cleaver. If you want a good book about New York, read Bonfire of the Vanitites or, better yet, Bret Easton Ellis's American Pyscho, which is still as vital and shocking and important as it was when it was first published almost a decade ago.
Rating: 
Summary: Shallow characters, ironic humor; still, compelling
Review: Yes, the characters are blanks; Anderson gives us no clue as to their motivations or self-awareness (do they realize how empty their lives are?). And the humor is not really funny, but rather a kind of ironic parade of contemporary foolishness. I finished the whole book knowing I hated the characters and everything they (apparently) stood for. And yet ... it is a compelling read, because of Anderson's dead-on aim at turn-of-the-century obsessions. It's a dead-on portrait of a small, self-obsessed, maybe over-rated segment of society, and that's what made it hard to put down.
Rating:
Summary: someone please slap Po Bronson
Review: ugh. Could you remove that Po Bronson quote from the site. Makes me want to reach for some Pepto.
Rating:
Summary: Jim Cramer likes it, but I didn't
Review: TheStreet.Com's Jim Cramer (who I admire as a trader and financial writer) plugged this book, written by a buddy, and especially mentioned the realistic portion of the book that has to do with stock trading as especially realistic - in fact based on Cramer's trading activities. But the first 150 pages or so were so affected, so pompus, so boring, so poorly written, with characters so unsympathetic and one dimensional, I had to slam the book shut unfinnished. Cramer, while I love you, stick to financial writing, not book reviews.
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