Rating:  Summary: soul stirring, brilliant, real Review: I have made everyone I know read books by Sherman Alexie. I hope everyone will read his material and be moved as I have been. His words have even inspired my dance choreography.
Rating:  Summary: Pretty good, enit? Review: This is my second time through this book (I read it when it first was published), and I enjoyed it just as much the second time. Through all of the sadness and insanity of reservation life, these characters fight for dignity, a future, and meaning. Alexie suggests that the first line of hope comes through imagination. I agree.I also highly recommend his Reservation Blues.
Rating:  Summary: Alexie makes it seem like you're there in the story Review: I read the book mainly because it was supposedly the basis for the movie Smoke Signals, which, by the way, for those of you who haven't seen it, is awesome. That's why I started to read it, even though the book was pretty much nothing like the screenplay, I loved it anyway. It hooks you in such a way that you can't put it down without wanting to read more. At first you're wondering who is talking, but in the end, you don't really care that much because the stories themselves are so good. This book paints such a vivid realism of Native American life that it blows you away. If you want to read something that is so good that your mind thinks it is in the story, like you are there, you absolutely HAVE to read this book.
Rating:  Summary: A beautifully written book Review: Sherman Alexie has an incredible gift for writing direct and poignant prose which greatly impacts the reader. His style of writing swept me into the book and I was hooked the whole way through. In Lone Ranger and Tonto, Alexie combines the sad truth about life on the reservations with his wry sense of humor to create an interesting collection of stories. One story claimed: "It's hard to be optimistic on the reservation. When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half filled or half empty. They just hope it's good beer." In another tale a character said "Why should we organize a reservation high school reunion? My graduating class has a reunion every weekend at the Powwow Tavern." Not only does Alexie confront the problem of alcoholism, but he also talks about all other aspects of life on the reservation from the viewpoint of different characters. Basketball, tradition, powwows, fry bread, music and hope are mentioned repeatedly in the stories. However, the stories themselves can be confusing because the narrators, characters and even time periods can change. The best way to describe the collection of stories is that it is a photo album that contains pictures of many different people from many different times; each tale in the book acts like a photo of a person that represents one of their struggles or experiences. Together the images form a complex picture of modern Native American society, even the "photos" don't completely correspond to each other. However, looking past the confusing issue of who is telling the story and simply trying to understand what the narrator is saying makes the book worthwhile. Alexie writes with such depth, truth and wit that the book is a joy to read and I highly recommend it.
Rating:  Summary: Insightful and imaginative. Review: Alexie's stories wedge themselves into your psyche and force you to think and care about the Indian culture in America today. It's been a long time since I read Leslie Marmon Silko's "Ceremony", but it also had that effect only in the form of a novel.
Rating:  Summary: Alexie is an inspiration! Review: I read this book, expecting it to be exactly like "Smoke Signals", it wasn't but I still enjoyed it. His writing style inspired me to take a look at my own, and change it around a little bit, as a result, my fiction writing couldn't be better!
Rating:  Summary: Haunting and Poetic. . . Review: This book was assigned reading for a class I'm taking and it absorbed me immediately. I'm off to take in Alexie's other works. The analogies and parallels between a bitter past and a painful present make me weep and haunted me when I didn't have the book in my hands. Alexie is magic. . .an honor to read. . .
Rating:  Summary: Iknow this community as well as my own,and any other reserve Review: This book, if you have experienced reserve life, is funny, painful, enlightening, and like reading your own story. Never have I read a book that so closely captures our lives. I could put a 'real' person from home to each of the characters depicted. Hard at times to read such truths. Sad to know all of our communities resemble eachother so closely, yet also a real feeling of connectedness with all red brothers and sisters because of the truths. An honest,awesome book.
Rating:  Summary: A poetic look at struggle, survival, triumph, and life Review: Alexie's prose is brilliant...rich with imagery and the seamless integration of memory...this book is beautiful. The stories can be very dense and full and while I enjoy and understand them on one level, I look forward to re-reading them and gaining a deeper understanding of Native struggles - with whites, with each other, with alcohol, and with tradition. This book is not a re-telling of the movie that was based on it - "Smoke Signals" - but a very different collection of stories that hold within themselves very important lessons.
Rating:  Summary: A Lover of Booze, Storytelling and the Metaphysical... Review: Imagination, dreams, friendship, racial pride and hatred for Whites for history, sadness for family for love, disjointed memories like those seen through a smashed mirror where beer and whiskey and Jimi Hendrix form the poetic beauty of these badass, unforgiving visiontales. As an Irishman, the love of dreams, booze, potatoes, Hendrix, friends and lousy love-life as well as dancing on the roof of the sky with words and stories and even b-ball feet, speaks to me! Alexie is the f'ing man!!!! I hope his other stuff is as good.
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