Rating: 
Summary: This is one funny book!
Review: This book is cute, funny, sad, insightful and a totally fresh look at growing up gay! I highly recommend this book for anyone who has ever felt out of place/like an alien on this planet. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: A comfortable read
Review: Albo writes an easy to read story about a young gay man. The book fluctuates between his current city life and his childhood. His book is easy to identify with, for a gay man growing up in small town U.S.A. His description of "retro" products helps set the scenes and provide realism.
The book is not a painting of misery. Things weren't always fun; but by and large he has a cheery outlook on life. That is such a change from so many biographies of gay men.
Rating:
Summary: Any urban gay man's lie life
Review: I read the first few pages of Hornito in a local bookstore and was immediately hooked. Not so much hooked by the story, but rather by the piles of description and the absurdity of the situation that opens the book. The main character is sitting in a car in a strip-mall parking lot, waiting for his parents who he is visiting to come back, itching with crabs, but already missing the insanity of life in the city (in this case, NYC). Although the book opens in the present, the story flashes back to childhood memories. At first, I wasn't interested in reading these flashbacks, as they distracted me from the main story. I wanted to identify with the main character as an adult and see how he resolves his problems. Particularly the problem of forming a real connection with someone in an urban, every-man-for-himself, artificial, market-segment of a world. Once I got into the book a bit, the childhood and teenage memories seemed more relevant, not to mention painful and at times, embarassingly familiar. I found myself laughing aloud many times. I think the first person point-of-view and the exruciatingly detailed, brand-name description work in this story, because it is so easy to identify with the main character. The experience is universal, but I strongly identified as one who grew up in the 70's and 80's feeling different from everyone else, alone, and who moved to the city filled with romantic ideas about love and life. I give it 4 out of 5 stars (although I really enjoyed reading it), because so few of the characters really get a chance to be developed and there isn't much in the way of a "traditional" plot. However, the situations, description, and honesty deserve 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding depiction of a life that lots of guys lived
Review: I spent a thoroughly delightful afternoon with this book and a series of mugs of beer, and I can fully agree with other interviewers that it is an absolute treasure. Relationship problems? You don't know from relationship problems, but Mike Albo does. Literary talent? Doesn't get much better. Making people remember what childhood and adolescence was like for a gay person in America? Oh, yeah. I can't use this book to put down Sedaris, who in my view is also hilarious, in a different way -- "Santaland Diaries", for example, must not be read while eating, because spitting up with laughter is a distinct possibility. I can put up both hands to recommend both Sedaris and Albo. I hope both of them continue to write more and more and more.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding depiction of a life that lots of guys lived
Review: I spent a thoroughly delightful afternoon with this book and a series of mugs of beer, and I can fully agree with other interviewers that it is an absolute treasure. Relationship problems? You don't know from relationship problems, but Mike Albo does. Literary talent? Doesn't get much better. Making people remember what childhood and adolescence was like for a gay person in America? Oh, yeah. I can't use this book to put down Sedaris, who in my view is also hilarious, in a different way -- "Santaland Diaries", for example, must not be read while eating, because spitting up with laughter is a distinct possibility. I can put up both hands to recommend both Sedaris and Albo. I hope both of them continue to write more and more and more.
Rating:
Summary: Clever Writing of a Too Familiar Story
Review: Mike Albo can spot a funny moment and can describe it deftly. This novel, Hornito, is full of these small moments that add up to a light and easy read. The characters are never developed but that could be because the main character never really connects with anyone but it does leave a film of shallowness over the entire surface of the novel. This may work better as a series of monologues but does not entirely hold together as a novel. The territory covered in this book has been covered before by other gay authors. The humour helps create the illusion of originality but it does feel, at times, that one has been here before. The novel, though, does come together nicely toward the end. There are no big revelations but the small discoveries are handled in a sweetly touching manner that does ring true to the character and to life. It is not a bad read but neither is it a great read. It is a light novel that will fill some time with its humour and then dissappear forever.
Rating:
Summary: Much more than a witty diversion!
Review: Mike Albo has talent to burn. This adroitly written diary/memoir/fantasia of the past and current struggles of a young man to establish a meaningful relationship in a world that is centered on transience is at once humorous (even hilarious) and soulful (even sad). Albo cleverly writes as though this were an autobiogrphical confession, so much so that it is difficult not to buy in to every bizarre recall and projection. How much of this is fantasy, how much reportage? To this reader there is no discerning that line. Much of main character Mike's recounting of his childhood sexual fantasies and acting out sound like terrific stand-up comedian material, but since they are so carefully woven into the fabric of his young adult escapades as the novel speeds along, they gain credence, and in making all of this story credible, Albo forces us to examine the sociology of the last quarter of the 20th Century. There is a lot of stern observation about our status as social beings. And I think this is the test of a really fine humorist: Make 'em laugh like crazy until they go home and, in solitude, think and even cry a bit. A solid Bravo for Hornito!
Rating: 
Summary: over the top novel about growing up gay
Review: Mike Albo's "Hornito" tries to be clever, and a good novel about a perspective that is not often talked about. Mike, the narrator, talks about his various loves, while telling us how bad "crabs" are, and the dreadful treatment of it. We see glimpses of his childhood and high school years, and we cringe. He tells of his job, which sucks. Frankly, it tries to be comic, but it is quite dull.
Rating:
Summary: over the top novel about growing up gay
Review: Mike Albo's "Hornito" tries to be clever, and a good novel about a perspective that is not often talked about. Mike, the narrator, talks about his various loves, while telling us how bad "crabs" are, and the dreadful treatment of it. We see glimpses of his childhood and high school years, and we cringe. He tells of his job, which sucks. Frankly, it tries to be comic, but it is quite dull.
Rating:
Summary: Buy vodka head to CVS hunker in the corner and READ ALBO
Review: One of the best books I've read in a long time -- much better than Me Talk Pretty -- but Albo writes in an entirely different style. While Sedaris recounts humourous events, Albo recognizes the humor in what being single, gay, and in NY really is about. I'm giving this to everyone I date from now on -- with the words "If this ain't you move along!" Albo, whether he thinks so or not, has it all figured out. My only complaint is I read it in one night and there's nothing left -- where's book two?
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