Rating: 
Summary: Extremely Entertaining
Review: Original written as a newspaper serial, Armistead Maulpin's TALE OF THE CITY may not be great literature--but it sure is fun.Mary Ann Singleton is an up-tight midwesterner when she vacations in San Francisco and on the spur of the moment decides to make it her home. Once installed in a Russian Hill apartment and employed by a powerful advertising agency, she finds herself embroiled in one soap opera situation after another: drugs, sex, and intrigue abound in her newly adopted city, and the lives of the people that she meets overlap in some very unexpected ways. Although Mary Ann's adventures--which range from coping with suicidal help-line volunteers to dealing with extremely unpleasant pornographers--form the backbone of this novel, TALES OF THE CITY casts a broad net. Reigning over Mary Ann's apartment house is the engmatic owner, Anna Madgridal, who seems to have formed a suspiciously deep affection for another tenant, advertising artist Mona, who is greatly attached to her gay room mate Mouse, who is friendly with lady-killer Brian who is warm for Mary Ann's form. On the business front, her boss Edgar is coping with socialite wife Frannie and their excessively pampered daughter Didi--not to mention Didi's no good husband Beauchamp. And needless to say, Frannie, Didi, and Beauchamp all have a few issues of their own. What with one thing or another, they all run rampant through enough mood rings, gay beaches, opera societies, macrame, free sex, and Quaaludes to choke a mule. If there is a problem with TALES OF THE CITY, it is that it is a very topical, very localized sort of novel; if you didn't actually live in San Francisco during the 1970s (and I didn't), you may occasionally feel you're missing something when it comes to Maulpin's more topical charactures and bits of satire. But don't let that stand in your way: Maulpin writes in a witty manner, and the characters and various threads of the story are so entertaining that you'll likely finish the book in one enormous gulp. Extremely entertaining and tremendous fun.
Rating: 
Summary: The best of light reading...
Review: When I look back on the 300+ books I've read in the past 10 years, no list of irresistable, up-all-hours reads could be complete without the "Tales of the City" series, starting with volume one. (There are six in all, and I loved all of them.) I'll never forget the image it created when I first read it; the back porches and neighborly spirit of Barbary Lane, the apartment unit that centers the lives of its disparate characters: landlady Anna Madrigal, who is carrying a secret of "Crying Game" like propotions, ... hottie Michael Tolliver, future journalist Mary Ann Singleton (a role perfectly fleshed out by Laura Linney in the TV movies), lovable slug Brian, and Mona Ramsay, who might be seen as the fictional sister-in-spirit of Courtney Love. Their episodical adventures are fancifal and hilarious and the spirit of love that ties them together will ring true to anyone who ever created a second family of friends in an adopted hometown.
Rating:
Summary: rememberances of things past
Review: Evertime I open up the Tales series, memories flood into my mind. Perhaps everyone falls a little in love with their childhood city, but very few have a chronicler as Armistead Maupin.(pun intended) Dorthy went to the Emerald City and no she didn't go back to Kansas, she stayed.
Rating:
Summary: San Francisco's Human Comedy
Review: This is much more than a story of some pleasant and funny people and their city: this is a veritable , compassionate and humorous portrait of the human species, in that idyllic time,when everything seemed possible. Sophisticately bohemien,yet down-to-earth and charming.I've loved the subtle charachterization,the athmosphere,the way Armistead Maupin contrives to treat even the most sombre passages whit a lightness and a wry humour who never fails to enchant and to move.
Rating:
Summary: A book you'll love! Characters you'll Love!
Review: I couldn't put this book down. The characters are all excentric, yet absolutely loveable. If you are a San Franciscan or have at least visited, its an extra special treat.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous, Fascinating Time-Capsules
Review: I love Tales of the City! And I like to recommend them to people, but there's been some backlash from some folks about a certain laxity of morals in some characters' behaviours...It can be a wee bit difficult to reconcile 70s San Francisco with the 21st Century. Since the first couple of books in this series are pretty much collected compilations of the columns he wrote for the SF Chronicle, they're very much time-capsules of the period in which he was living and writing. It's tragic to read them with 20/20 hindsight, knowing whats we know about AIDS, but also important to remember why the 70s were the way they were. Maupin has always fearlessly and shamelessly mined his own personal life(and others') for fictional material, so it seems pretty safe to assume that, in broad outline (minus some of the absurdity and semi-magical-realism of the books) that the emotional plot-matrix is true and semi-autobiographical... i.e., he was there, he lived it, he writes about it, and to change the politically-incorrect parts would be disingenuous (though they weren't so incorrect then--they were pushing the envelope on what was moral, social and political---perhaps it was adolescent rebellion, but it was rebellion nonetheless). I wish I could have been there. I don't know if I would have behaved the way that Michael, Marianne, and Mrs. Madrigal do, but I would have loved to have known them, then and now.
Rating:
Summary: i never bought this movie
Review: but it said i did and wanted me to write a review.
Rating: 
Summary: A Gazillion Chapters
Review: The author sneaks short peeks of 2-45 minutes into the lives of the characters. Most of these peeks are 3-4 pages each making it a fast read. Maybe this helps keep the reader from getting bored, Frankly, for me it was frustrating as just as you get acquainted and reacquainted with the interesting characters the chapter ends and the next chapter takes us to other characters, much like TV soap-operas except the author is not so cruel as to always leave us at the most dramatic moment. Most of the story takes place through conversation and it is very close to realistic, except there's a lot more wit in the book then in most real conversations. The author also glosses over the sex which is ironic given that the stories take place in very liberal, sexually open San Francisco. Finally the vast majority of characters are masochistically unhappy; they ought to be taken out back and slapped around to get them to realize how happy they should be.
Rating:
Summary: Good to the last drop
Review: "Tales of the City" is the first of six novels in one of the most enjoyable series I have read in a long time. Beginning in the mid-70's (anybody remember mood rings and pet rocks?) with its false promise of free love and rampant promiscuity, the series' progression brings along with it the inevitable slide into the materialism and the specter of AIDS which characterized the lost innocence of the 80's. We watch the main characters progress (or decline) as the series unfolds, and while the changes and deterioration can be painful to watch, they are also eminently believable. We shake our heads at Mary Ann's metamorphosis from a corn-fed innocent from Cleveland looking for success and Mr. Right into a career-driven egomaniac who will sacrifice anything and everything that stands in her way, and we cheer Michael on from one adventure to the next in his frantic search for his own Mr. Right, knowing that his final happiness will have a time limit caused by his past bed-hopping which will result in a slow death sentence; we just want him and his lover to make the most of the time left to them. Watching the antics of the younger set is Anna Madrigal, the benevolent landlady of 28 Barbary Lane, a self-made individual in every sense of the word, everybody's favorite "aunt" figure, accepting, non-judgemental, knowing how to keep her distance, but always there when you need her. We wish Armistead Maupin had written a seventh book to bring us yet another installment in his characters' lives, but maybe it's best that he left off where he did, and let us use our imaginations from that point on. It's a great series and great fun by a very talented writer.
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars for the entire Tales of the City series!
Review: I have just finished the sixth book of the Tales of the City series. I loved every one of them and am only sad the series has ended. Maupin introduces you to a group of diverse individuals in San Francisco who have been brought together by their address and their very eccentric landlady. With each book you will follow your new friends on adventures in career, travel, and love. These books will stay on my bookshelves to be read again and again!
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