Rating: 
Summary: a wonderful and, yes, sweet, book
Review: i bought this and looked it a good month or two before reading it. there was something about the way it was set up that i found off-putting. it wasn't a typical memoir or autobiography but blount's not a typical writer. once i began, though, i couldn't stop. it's funny, of course, but tender, biting and revealing all at once. we love our mothers, we may hate our mothers but we will never forget our mothers. a better book on a related subject is rick bragg's "All Over But the Shouting."
Rating:
Summary: bitter with the sweet
Review: I was lucky enough to stumble across Roy Blount reading from this book in a Vermont bookstore. I bought it on the spot, telling him that it was the first one of his books that I had paid full price for. He thought this was pretty fun, the store employee sitting next to him didn't. This book is worth its full price.Be Sweet in no way sets out to "make fun of the mother-son relationship". I suppose because Blount is such an irreverent goof-ball on the radio and in print, it seems fair to have that preconception. However, Blount has always let us know that some things are sacred and after you get a short way into this book you realize that family is one of them. He desperately does not want to cast aspersions on his own mother's character, but he has to acknowledge that she did drive him to distraction throughout his life. There were several points in this book were Blount seems to be going off on a tangent. To be honest I began to wonder if he was just filling the space between the covers. Oh me of little faith! In the last third of the book I was progressively more amazed and impressed as I discovered that his seemingly unconnected threads were actually germane to the resolution of his mid-life psychic wrestling match with himself. Bill Bryson's recent A Walk In the Woods similarly surprised me. I don't expect journalists to write deeply personal prose. Roy Blount beats Bryson hands down as far as the psychological depths that are plumbed and illuminated. If the presentation of the psychological dimension of things bores you or insults your sense of decorum, then don't read this Roy Blount book. If you want to know what is going on in the head of middle aged white Southern guys of above average emotional honesty, then this is a pretty good place to start.
Rating:
Summary: bitter with the sweet
Review: I was lucky enough to stumble across Roy Blount reading from this book in a Vermont bookstore. I bought it on the spot, telling him that it was the first one of his books that I had paid full price for. He thought this was pretty fun, the store employee sitting next to him didn't. This book is worth its full price. Be Sweet in no way sets out to "make fun of the mother-son relationship". I suppose because Blount is such an irreverent goof-ball on the radio and in print, it seems fair to have that preconception. However, Blount has always let us know that some things are sacred and after you get a short way into this book you realize that family is one of them. He desperately does not want to cast aspersions on his own mother's character, but he has to acknowledge that she did drive him to distraction throughout his life. There were several points in this book were Blount seems to be going off on a tangent. To be honest I began to wonder if he was just filling the space between the covers. Oh me of little faith! In the last third of the book I was progressively more amazed and impressed as I discovered that his seemingly unconnected threads were actually germane to the resolution of his mid-life psychic wrestling match with himself. Bill Bryson's recent A Walk In the Woods similarly surprised me. I don't expect journalists to write deeply personal prose. Roy Blount beats Bryson hands down as far as the psychological depths that are plumbed and illuminated. If the presentation of the psychological dimension of things bores you or insults your sense of decorum, then don't read this Roy Blount book. If you want to know what is going on in the head of middle aged white Southern guys of above average emotional honesty, then this is a pretty good place to start.
Rating:
Summary: An amazing book; very serious, but still true to past work
Review: I was very surprised by this book on a number of levels. I've thought Blount's past works were funny, but also quite well thought out. Blount is never "funny" in the sense that Dave Berry is funny. There is no silliness about Blount; he is firmly grounded in reality. This work is very serious. It is his attempt to displell his "family curse." He explores his relationships with his parents, sister, and ex-wives. He speculates on the nature of humor and humorists. I thought the book was brilliant. It's like Blount is willing to talk about things that no one else will because doing so would sound stupid, but it's still what you want to say. An added bonus is Blount's voice. He is not a particularly elegant reader. But it is hard to imagine any other voice reading this work. I compare it to Jean Shepard, who also has the perfect voice for his own work.
Rating: 
Summary: This man is just flat-out funny.
Review: If you have never read Roy Blount, Jr., start with Be Sweet:A Conditional Love Story. Then begin to work your way through his many works. If you read Be Sweet, you'll understand the foundation for this man's incredibly deep vein of humor and his unique ability to observe this human race and mine the genuine humor that life creates. He's a classic.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting mother -son history
Review: Roy Blount Jr. writes a rambling account of growing up with his strong yet troubled mother -- a woman who despite an abusive upbringing herself managed to raise a son and a daughter with little help from a good but passive husband to be individuals with a strong sense of themselves. Blount is funny and he makes good points about the defensive nature of humor, the lurking self-loathing beneath the humorist. The only turnoff in this saga is that as a middle-aged man, Blount still is in rebellion against his mother for her guilt trips, so much so that he can't, it seems, "be sweet" to the women in his personal life whom he claims he has loved. Otherwise a good read for anyone intersted in family relationships and 1950s nostalgia.
Rating: 
Summary: A not very funny humorist!
Review: This book is several things. One thing it is NOT is funny. Blount worries that, having attained the age of 55, he is experiencing some sort of humorist's change of life and is no longer capable of evoking guffaws. Well, then, this book is a self-fulfilling prophesy. In the process, we get to squirm through such incessent dissing of his mother that we want to turn our heads in embarrassment; so much what-did-I-do-wrong whining about lost loves that we're inclined to "card" him to see if he's really past 15; and yet more tired and feeble attempts at what, I suppose, is to pass for "Southern humor." If this is the best we're to expect from Blount as he flounders through middle age, he ought to confine himself to his periodic appearances with Garrison Keillor, reading jokes sent in by people who know what "funny" really is.
Rating:
Summary: Self-absorbed, self-indulgent, unfunny whine-fest
Review: This book is several things. One thing it is NOT is funny. Blount worries that, having attained the age of 55, he is experiencing some sort of humorist's change of life and is no longer capable of evoking guffaws. Well, then, this book is a self-fulfilling prophesy. In the process, we get to squirm through such incessent dissing of his mother that we want to turn our heads in embarrassment; so much what-did-I-do-wrong whining about lost loves that we're inclined to "card" him to see if he's really past 15; and yet more tired and feeble attempts at what, I suppose, is to pass for "Southern humor." If this is the best we're to expect from Blount as he flounders through middle age, he ought to confine himself to his periodic appearances with Garrison Keillor, reading jokes sent in by people who know what "funny" really is.
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