Rating:  Summary: Deliciously inspiring and knock-down, drag-out hilarious! Review: I first read this book about a year and a half ago and have been shamelessly forcing it on all friends/family/acquaintances/farm animals since then! Tomato was the first "novel heroine" that I've ever related to so well--reading the novel, I felt like I WAS her. I felt absolutely empowered by the book, and was ready to buy a motorcycle on a whim after reading it! Erika Lopez writes with such savvy; the mental imagery she creates is beyond fabulous! By all means, buy this book, read it, and then pass it on to everyone YOU know. Nobody should be without the experience of a Lopez "All Girl Road Novel Thing"!
Rating:  Summary: one heck of a ride!!! Review: i read this book last summer mostly sitting on my porch in the sun and laughing out loud through the whole thing. i had just purchased a purple motorcycle, so it was perfect inspiring fate that brought this book to me. if you are a woman with a sense of humor-- read this!!! you'll not regret it. oh, and the clip-art/rubberstamp illustrations are just wonderful art even by themselves!
Rating:  Summary: Funny, funny stuff Review: I was sitting, well actually squatting, in the bookstore and reading the first few pages of the book when I started laughing like a nut... Well people stared, so naturally I purchased it to avoid making a scene, and what a wise purchase it was. It's crazy, it's funny, it's so much more readable than "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". I felt empowered, I feel inspired, gosh darn I want a motorcycle gang too, and maybe someday I'll cross Canada and write a novel comparable to this.
Rating:  Summary: You go, girls... Review: I'll tell you up front - I'm generally biased toward books about motorcycles, as an avid rider myself. But I have to say, _Flaming Iguanas_ is just outstanding. Some of it reads like free association straight from Lopez's brain, which I really got into, along with the wacky-but-usually-related-but-sometimes-not illustrations. The story is a winner, as our heroines trek around on their bikes, but it's the delving into Tomato's psyche that I enjoyed most. Well, that and the one-liners that made me laugh out loud. Overall, just a phenomenal book, and I highly recommend it to anyone, even though people who don't know the exhilaration of riding on two wheels.
Rating:  Summary: Run, don't walk, to get this book! It's seriously funny. Review: If you've ever wondered what it would be like to read a bookwhere someone was witty, funny, honest and inspiring, then you shouldget this book. In only a few words, Erika has you hooked and you'll either love her or hate her, but my bet is that you won't stop reading until you finish...
Rating:  Summary: A great trip! Review: It was a great road trip -- through Erika Lopez's very creative brain -- from ear to shining ear. I loved every turn of the road -- uh, page
Rating:  Summary: The Great American Road Novel, late-90s version Review: Recently, on my own book tour, I happened to ask a sales guy at Shaman Drum Books in Ann Arbor if he could help me. I was an English grad student, I said; I was trying to draw up a syllabus for a course I hoped to teach in a year or two, on the American Road Novel. I'd come up with a handful of obvious titles--ON THE ROAD, ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTAINANCE, LOLITA, TRAVELS WITH CHARLIE, even THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ. But all of them were by white guys, and I was looking for the rest of the picture. Was there, I asked him, a literary equivalent to "Thelma and Louise"? He handed me FLAMING IGUANAS. "Here," he said. A woman on a motorcycle takes on America. This is a great book. Erika, I am in love. It is an infectuous, cheerful, honest, ragingly sexy--but never prurient--book. It is very much within the tradition (Kerouac, Henry Miller, and several other sex-and-road dudes are mentioned explicitly, as sort-of precursors; Erica Jong's FEAR OF FLYING is a good point of comparison, too), but it also extends the tradition, and gloriously so. At moments Lopez makes the confessional-thing look so effortless you're tempted to try it yourself, but such ruthless self-exposure, no matter how fictionalized, is its own stringent discipline. This is a soaring, liberating read. Week 12 on the twelve-week American Road Novel syllabus, without a doubt. Some undergrads may be scandalized; WILL be scandalized. Too bad. Erika, I love you. I tell all my friends in the Princeton English Department about you. I am a one-man word-of-mouth machine, spreading the gospel. You are too much. Exuberance is beauty. Don't stop!
Rating:  Summary: The only book of its kind Review: The first book in the Flaming Iguanas trilogy is absolutely fantastic. I picked it up expecting some kind of pro-grrrl feminist memory book, after all, the cover calls it "an all-girl road novel thing". The premise is that it is a cross country road expedition by two women, but one of them ditches very early on. So it is really about one woman, her motorcycle, the voices in her head, and the road. This is a book for women like me who think Bridget Jones is a weak pathetic twit, and who deserve a WORTHY manifestation of their minds. Erika Lopez delivers that to us. -Lalenalefay
Rating:  Summary: The only book of its kind Review: The first book in the Flaming Iguanas trilogy is absolutely fantastic. I picked it up expecting some kind of pro-grrrl feminist memory book, after all, the cover calls it "an all-girl road novel thing". The premise is that it is a cross country road expedition by two women, but one of them ditches very early on. So it is really about one woman, her motorcycle, the voices in her head, and the road. This is a book for women like me who think Bridget Jones is a weak pathetic twit, and who deserve a WORTHY manifestation of their minds. Erika Lopez delivers that to us. -Lalenalefay
Rating:  Summary: Flaming madness! Review: This book arrived when I was suffering a bout of flu and feeling very depressed. I cheered me up immensely - I couldn't put it down, and read it in 4 hours - there are a lot of pictures in it! Erika set off on a journey that many bikers dream of, despite her naivety to motorcycling in general. The only downside to the book was that it seemed to concentrate on her confusion about her own sexuality, something I had not expected in a book about riding a bike across America. However, well worth the few dollars it costs.
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