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Summary: darling of public radio
Review: If you've ever listened to "This American Life" or read similar monologue-style essays a la David Sedaris (skip her friend Dave Eggers, though), then you know what you're getting in to when you pick up "Cannoli." Vowell, in all her name-dropping, sarcastic, going-to-outrageous-lengths-for-a-story glory, waxes about one thing--real life. Who could not feel personally acquainted with her after reading about her high school experiences in concert band, love affiars via mix tapes, and painstaking journeys down the Trail of Tears (not to mention throughout Disney World). Vowell makes me want to write, and what's more, she makes me want to open up a little more about myself. Because, what the hell, it's all in the name of journalism anyway.
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Summary: Sigh. Sarah...
Review: I like Sarah Vowell. I discovered her first - at least among my small set - listening to Ira Glass's This American Life. I immediately called or sent email to everyone I knew, instructing them to listen to this woman with the oddly seductive little girl voice. So it pains me to have to say that this book is disappointing. I was outraged at the snippy review in the San Francisco Chronicle that criticized it for being "whiney" and "irritating". How inane. That *is* Sarah. Whiney. Irritating. She makes a career of it. So I ran out and bought a copy. Sadly, the book disappoints. The translation from spoken word to print doesn't make it. And it's not just the absence of the unique Vowell voice, it really is a structural problem. The snappy one-liners have been re-arranged to try to capture the timing, sadly failing all too often. Still, this voice (not only spoken) needs to be encouraged; it is smart and funny and just needs to age in the cask a bit longer. Buy the book, listen to the radio.
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Summary: Pure joy
Review: Sarah Vowell's writing is fresh funny and relevant. I love her use of language and her ecclectic choice of subject matter- from the Godfather to guns to Disney land to Andrew Jackson. Her description of insomnia in "Dark Circles" is funny and if you have ever lived through chronic insomnia so real. But heck all of these essays are gems.
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Summary: Funny and cranky, just like me
Review: Sarah Vowell rocks. A friend recommended the book to me after commenting that I reminded him of Vowell. Guess we have the same cranky, witty outlook on life. I loved her writing.
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Summary: sarah vowell. . .
Review: How to sell books, by Sarah Vowell: Think like a 10th grader. Write like one, too. Find suitable topics: boys, family, boys, music, boys.... Drop references to the hip (Jonathan Richman, Johnny Cash), along with the slightly stodgy (Springsteen, Sinatra, Elvis), just to show that you're not above all that. Put a picture of a ugly girl in a meaningful pose on the inside flap. Get your friends' dads to blurb your book.
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Summary: Not just another book about pop culture
Review: Insightful, thoughtful, lighthearted in parts, but throughout, well written and conceived. Sarah Vowell lives, perhaps unknowingly, by the scientific method--Identify, hypothesize, test, conclude--for this is the recipe regarding each of the wonderful essays in her latest work, Take the Cannoli. Whether or not that hypothesis is actually correct is really beside the point--the idea of the book is the process, a process at which Vowell exceeds.
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Summary: A Long Way from "Tico Tico"
Review: Scanning the car radio while driving one night, I stumbled on a very young-sounding woman describing the tribulations of performing in a high school marching band during a football game: "having to maneuver into cute visual formations, like the trio of stick figures we fashioned when we played the theme from 'My Three Sons'" and then "pounded out a little Latin-flavored number called 'Tico Tico'". I remember laughing out loud, and wishing for more when she was done. This same voice - wry, ironic, cranky, always engaging, and often very, very funny - can be found sans audio (Vowell herself says her speaking voice is "straight out of the second grade") in this collection of short memoir pieces and essays. I should point out here that I'm not an unbiased reviewer: I admire many of the same elements of our culture that Vowell does: Elvis, 50's Sinatra, "The Godfather", Mark Twain, "The Great Gatsby", Beat writing, authentic music with an edge. So if Vowelll were in my high school I would have wanted very much to have compared notes when she was not performing "Tico Tico". But regardless of YOUR passions, there's plenty to enjoy in this book from a fresh new voice with a quirky but consistently insightful take on our culture. Humor is so hard to pull off well in writing - and Vowell has fabulous timing and delivery. I'll look forward to her next book - where perhaps she can more consciously try to tie together memorable snapshots like these into a more unified whole. Even here, however, the book adds up to more than the sume of its component parts. I liked Vowell's line that "'What is This Thing Called Love' is the driving question behind the entire Sinatra research project." Possibly her subsequent work could elaborate more overtly on her take of "What is This Thing Called Life?". In the meantime - this is a thoroughly enjoyable and memorable book, full of fresh and interesting takes on our culture from a rapidly maturing artist. I strongly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Take the cannoli, leave the book on the shelf
Review: This book is weak. Ms. Vowell is a pleasure to listen to on the radio...somehow her wit and timing don't translate well into the printed word. The book is somewhat redeemed by the inclusion of a well written treatise on the "Trail of Tears" tragedy.
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Summary: Ho-hum.
Review: The New York Times review of this book pretty neatly captures the essential weakness of this type of writing, endemic to both public radio and, worse, online magazines like Salon. (...)
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Summary: Being Human
Review: Sarah Vowell's sompnomore novel is an adventure in the everyday idiosyncrasies that make us the species we presumably are; human. Through her expository essays focusing on everything from her roots in Oklahoma, her father's profession as a gunsmith to the American subculture that are "the goths" Sarah Vowell conveys a brilliant depiction of a woman struggling with identity and ideals in a confusing post modern world. She elegantly and hysterically explores the influence of family, culture, the media and academics that have contributed to the ddevelopment of the brilliant, insightful writer she is today. This books alternates between a funny, lighthearted inquiry into what it means to be a thoughtful person in this age; to poignant, heartstring tugging realizations about coming of age in America. If you have ever been young and confused, and felt that you sometimes take yourself a little too seriously, or that others do not take you seriously enough, you will find the echoes of your tthoughts painted eleoquently within the pages of this book.
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