Rating: 
Summary: Good, not great, Perrotta work.
Review: I really enjoy Tom Perrotta as an author, having stumbled upon "The Wishbones" by accident and enjoying it so much that I read "Joe College" and "Election" in rapid progression thereafter. This novel, written as a series of short stories detailing different events as Buddy, the protagonist, grows up in Cranwood, NJ.The novel introduces us to an 8-year old Buddy as a Cub Scout and leaves us when Buddy comes home from college before he ends his teenage years. There are many funny moments throughout. For example, the "weapon" Buddy chooses to take to the race riot made me laugh aloud. There are also many poignant snapshots of disappointment and maturity, such as the one provided by the "bad haircutter". Despite all of this, I left the book feeling that I never really got to know Buddy that well. Sure, he seems like your average kid who has hopes and fears and experiences more than his share of peer pressure, but other than that, who is he?
Rating:
Summary: Great book up until the flop ending
Review: I really enjoyed the short stories of adolescence that Tom Perrotta collected in this book. Even though I grew up more in the 80s than the 70s, it was close enough. Or maybe every child/teenager in a small town has similar experiences no matter what the era. At any rate, the stories were very well-written and made me remember what it really felt like growing up. Until the end, that is. I guess I expected the last story to leave me with an idea of what Buddy (the main character) learned from all this, and where he thought he was going. Instead (SPOILER ALERT!), I got something about him being a pall bearer for a guy he hardly knew and that guy's wife getting all choked up over a picture she once took of Buddy and her husband. Huh? Maybe I'm a little dense, but I just didn't get the significance.
Rating: 
Summary: Growing up in North Jersey (Union County) in the 70's
Review: If you grew up in the 70's (and graduated high school at the end of the decade), this book is for you. It truly captures the essence of growing up in the post war era and deals perfectly with the mundane realities of the teenage experiance. If you are from North Jersey, the stories are even more meaningful. Read it and read it again.
Rating:
Summary: Fun, Quick Read
Review: its fun and quick and keeps you entertained while making you think about your life and remeber your own expieriences
Rating:
Summary: Remember your favorite album from high school?
Review: Remember your favorite album from high school? The one that you really can't call your favorite now, but that brings on a wistful smile whenever you here it? The one that takes you back like nothing else? That's the effect of reading these stories. Bad Haircut is a wonderfully evocative collection that takes you back to the seventies like nothing else. Perrotta drops in unassuming tiny details in each of these linked stories that are dead on. These stories will make you laugh, both at Buddy, the boy in the stories and at yourself you see reflected in Buddy. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Deeper than you may think
Review: So easy to read, you may think of it as "light." But there are actually plenty of deep issues and real emotions beneath Perrotta's crisp, warm, deceptively simple style. I've enjoyed each of his books, but this is the one that's touched me the most.
Rating:
Summary: A trip through the 70s
Review: Some of my fondest memories are from the 1970s. If you spent
most of your childhood in the 70s, do yourself a favor and
read this book. It's a quick, easy read that will put a
smile on your face.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: The book, Bad Haircut, by Tom Perrotta is an excellent book. Bad Haircut is a book filled with short stories about Tom?s life growing up in the 1970s. The first chapter is called The Wiener Man. This is about when Buddy?s (the main character) mom was the den mother of his Boy Scout troop. The troop went to go visit the Wiener Man, but it ended up that the Wiener Man was an old friend of his mother?s. They sit and talk about their life stories. This is just an example of the types of stories Tom included in Bad Haircut. My favorite chapter is Forgiveness. Forgiveness is about when Buddy is on the football team and meets Wendy, the girl who was suspended for not standing for the Pledge. In this chapter Buddy is faced with moral issues verse what this peers are doing. The controversy in within the football team proves that Buddy knows the difference between right and wrong.
This book is a very quick and easy read. This was the fastest book I have ever read. Bad Haircut is the type of book you don?t ever want to set down. I felt that I could really connect with Buddy because even though I have grown up in the 1990s, I feel I have gone through a lot of the same situations he has. I recommend this book for 15 year olds and older. It does have some inappropriate topics for younger children. Some of the stories would be fine for all ages, just not the whole book. Bad Haircut is a great book and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Rating:
Summary: Realistic capturing of adolescence
Review: The stories in Tom Perrotta's "Bad Haircut" are deceptively simple. The subject matter of these stories is not exactly what you would consider earth-shatteringly original. Yet what makes these stories work so incredibly well are exactly those facts. I was extremely impressed at how well Perrotta was able to remember the mindset of the teenage years. He hits on so many real truths about teenagers: they way teens tend to overdramatize small events, the way otherwise nice teenagers can behave poorly due to peer pressure, the disappointment of early sexual experiences, the way early childhood dreams tend to creep into a more mundane reality, loneliness, and the realization that adults are not flawless. There were so many times in reading this book where I would be simply amazed at how right-on Perrotta was in describing an experience I went through, or a feeling I had back not all that long ago when I was a teenager myself. Because when people get older there is a tendency to laugh at the stupid things they did or thought when they were younger, sometimes in writing about teens, writers forget one of the key elements of adolescence, which is the fact that the things you laugh at taking seriously when you get older, were things that seemed legitimately important when you were younger. Because of this, oftentimes in books, TV shows, or movies about teens there is a tendency to get too overly nostalgic about the teen years and forget how during that time of your life, sometimes just getting through another day seems like a struggle. Or alternatively, it seems too many writers think that the day-to-day drama that teens create in the course of their daily lives isn't "dramatic" enough to be interesting, so instead the teenagers in many books, TV shows, or movies go through a series of contrived dramas where they act like grown-ups in kids bodies. Perrotta is able to avoid both of these pratfalls by portraying the teens years for pretty much what they are - a process of slowly growing up, experiencing new things, and coming to view the world in more realistic terms than one may have in childhood.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, easy read.
Review: This a book for, anyone who grew up in the 70's. It was a pleasure to read and relate to the story's main character, Buddy. I'm sure many guys my age will be able to, look back and, fondly remember some of the best times of their lives with a bitsweet sorrow after reading these passages of this book.
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