Rating: 
Summary: Please don't waste your time....
Review: More than a year has passed since I bought and read this book, and while I truly dislike spreading negativity, I feel compelled to warn others tempted to spend their time and money on this depressing memoir. The book is mistitled; the author and her feather of friends are neither 'weird' or 'bohemian'. Re-titling this book 'Ennui: My Self-Absorbed America' would properly describe the story told within.
Honestly - from a woman who cherishes my thousands of books...I could not allow this blot on my shelves, or in good conscience donate it...I threw it away.
Rating: 
Summary: Growing up boho, by a thirty-something. Rating: "B+"
Review: Ann Powers, age 36, has led an interesting life so far. She's a nice whitebread Catholic girl from Seattle who took her first acid trip at 16; became a record-store clerk, sexual adventuress & conscientious drug-user in the Bay Area in the 80's; and is now a pop-music journalist and bohemian sellout in New York.For one who played at the edge of Bohemia in the late 60's, it's fun to read about a more-serious boho of the following generation. Starting with high-school alienation (is there anyone who's gone through adolescence in America in the last 50 years who *didn't * feel alienated?), Powers falls into Bad Company -- indie rock, soft drugs and (mostly) safe sex. She drops out of college and moves to San Francisco, America's western Capitol of Cool since (at least) the Gilded Age. She makes friends, shares cheap apartments with wildly-assorted roomates, takes lovers, menial jobs and quite a lot of dope. In short, she was growing up and having fun, albeit in a more, umm, colorful milieu than most of us manage. It's good stuff, guaranteed to bring nostalgia for your own misspent youth. I'm thankful to have had a much quieter coming-of-age, but it's fun to read about someone who had a harder go of it. Finally she gets the Big Break -- a call from the New York Times, asking her to work for them as a pop-music critic! After much agonizing -- not the least about leaving California for New York -- and a push from her boyfriend (now husband), she makes the leap to Upper Bohemia, gets married, buys a house in Brooklyn, and moans & groans about Selling Out. I'd skip over the last pretty lightly, if I were you -- "did I really think I could resist the temptation of moral emptiness, like some Boho Joan of Arc?" etc. I liked it better when Powers muses that she'd have sold out before, but no one was buying.... Powers is most engaging when she's retelling True Stories about herself and her friends. When she drifts off into boho philosophy, I skimmed, and you may want to, too. She does try to put her and her friends'experiences into perspective with the beats, hippies, slackers, etc. Powers takes pop music seriously (it's her livelihood), and the rock-indie-grunge stuff will be more interesting to readers who follow it (not me). "Weird Like Us" is a nice companion piece to David Brooks' "Bobos in Paradise" (or how Bourgeois Bohemians conquered America). Prof. Brooks is more polished, and much funnier, but Ann Powers has walked the walk. Both books are essential reading for those interested in late-20th century American pop-culture.
Rating: 
Summary: really thoughtful book
Review: Former New York Times writer Ann Powers' memoirs are a clutsy, misinformed attempt at defining a generation best known for its piercings. The only certainty that arises after making it through this stuff is that she had cool friends, though only a few.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm still waiting for a good book on today's Bohemia
Review: I didn't grow up in the sixties or seventies that is predominantly talked about in this book. I have, however, heard much about it since it is such an impact on our society today. I am a member of the fringe society that powers speak about, and therefore regardless of the time I was born in: I can relate to her. I find her book well written and insightful of the people who never feel they belong and build up "families" of their own. These networks of friendship that are her family and other experiences that she has had: drugs, sex, music, are all key elements of interest to me, and beautifully told in a style of memoir that has a strong cultural narrative subtext. My opinion is: EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS. but then who am i?
Rating:
Summary: bohemia against starbucksification
Review: i liked many parts of this book. the fact is that in America, bohemian living is so quickly co-opted by corporate America for its own purposes, that it is hard to touch or in many ways to live an authentic bohemian lifestyle. powers' book does a wonderful job of showing Americans in the past few decades struggle with sticking to principles while dealing with corporate capitalism. this struck a nerve with me as it may with many who feel at odds working in the typical structure, but haven't figured out what alternatives exist outside it.
Rating:
Summary: bohemia against starbucksification
Review: i liked many parts of this book. the fact is that in America, bohemian living is so quickly co-opted by corporate America for its own purposes, that it is hard to touch or in many ways to live an authentic bohemian lifestyle. powers' book does a wonderful job of showing Americans in the past few decades struggle with sticking to principles while dealing with corporate capitalism. this struck a nerve with me as it may with many who feel at odds working in the typical structure, but haven't figured out what alternatives exist outside it.
Rating:
Summary: Hey
Review: I thought Bohemia was a country? No wait... it's an eating disorder, right?
Rating:
Summary: weird like us; my bohemian america
Review: ok i guess its not exactly fair for me to rate the book yet cause i'm just barely halfway through the first chapter, but its totally a book that i can't put down. some other people who've reviewed this book have said things about it being stupid because ann powers focuses mainly on her own life and its not entertaining enough. all i have to say to them is: what the hell did you expect? its a friggin memoir and if you were to read the back cover or the authors note you'd know that it was about her life. maybe you just have to be the type who likes that sort of thing. in the book store i started reading the introduction and i just couldn't stop reading so i had to buy it. ann reminds me somewhat of myself and has a similar writing style also.
my only suggestion is that if you're not sure about the book go out to your local book shop and read the introduction before you buy it!!
Rating:
Summary: Everything Changes Except The Avant-Garde
Review: This book in a few words: Everything changes except the avant-garde. Well-written but very navel-gazey and self-absorbed. "Hi, like, I smoked weed, did lots of drugs, had tons of sex with unsuitable people, and then, like, you know, I grew up, and like, got a job and got married, but like, you know, I'm STILL Hardcore Bohemian, man! I'm out there! I'm making a DIFFERENCE!" Um, yeah. mmmmmm...um....take this one out of the library, folks.
Rating:
Summary: Awesom! Changed my veiws...
Review: This book was well written, thorough, and inspiring. It forces you to look at other sides of the story- look away from convention and focus on the underbelly of socity. The bohemians. Ann Powers explains "bohemia" is more of an idea than anything else, the image of bongo beating hipsters of your mothers and grandmother's era bitting the dust to make way for todays undefined shape. Bohemia, more than ever, is nothing specific to any group of people. This book explores the live-by-the moment impulses and variant lifestyles of bohima, through Ann Powers own memories while growing up in the 80's. _Weird Like Us: My Bohemia America_ renews the ideas of bohemia, moving the rock of conventionalisim to expose a colony thriving alternitive life styles. They have always been there, bohemian culture surfaces all the time, but you just never thought to look- conventional, conservative veiws brishing over them as 'unexceptable. Reading this book will help erase the stigma behind alternative housing, sex, drugs, music. Defenantly not a light selection- but flowing and fun to read. For everyone to read, no one group is intended or unintended to. Defenantly worth the 11-12 bucks.
|
