Rating: 
Summary: familiarity
Review: There is something to be said about small towns. All small towns hold a familiarity that cannot be placed. This book could be taken as a compilation of short stories, or collectively. Either way, the result is an understanding of what a true character can hold. People are the same everywhere. It almost seems odd if one does not fulfill his or her destined stereotype. This book is a reminder that small towns hold all of the oddities that the rest of the world tries so hard to claim.
Rating: 
Summary: Desultory, Depressing, Dismal
Review: I really had to force myself to plow through "Winesburg, Ohio," and it's only a little over 200 pages to begin with. I can't remember a book that depressed me more, except perhaps for "Tobacco Road," and at least that book was leavened with some humour."Winesburg, Ohio" is a series of loosely connected stories, each one centering on a different inhabitant of this small Mid-Western village. In a nutshell, all of the characters are lonely for one reason or another, all make attempts to reach out to others for some solace and/or emotional companionship, and all fail miserably. Sherwood Anderson's writing is flat and airless, never varied, and the whole enterprise sinks under the weight of its own monotony. I give this book two stars instead of one because I'm feeling particularly generous today and because Anderson's writing did seem to greatly influence the course of the American short story. Read away if unbroken despondence is your bag; otherwise, pass this one by.
Rating:
Summary: Ohio verities
Review: Malcolm Cowley suggests in the introduction that Winesburg, a unified story collection, is comparable to the SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY and THREE LIVES by Gertrude Stein. "Godliness" is superbly and significantly at the center of the collection. It has four sections encompassing three generations of a prominent family. George Willard is a presence in many of the stories and his consciousness serves as a kind of organizing principle. The book is grittier than the SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY, more organic, less contrived. In this production Sherwood Anderson's artlessness works. George Willard, reporter for the WINESBURG EAGLE suffers the death of his mother. He is eighteen. At the time of the county fair he decides to leave Winesburg. The young man is going out of town to meet the adventure of life.
Rating: 
Summary: Everyone has a story
Review: This book isn't for everyone, but I love it. A story of lives intermingled in a small Ohio town in the late 1800s. Everyone has a story, and Sherwood Anderson shows us this through Winesburg Ohio. The reader learns to appreciate the characters' secrets, quirks, and desires. Everyone will find a character that they can relate to, on some level. You must read it to truly appreciate this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Who put the Whine in Ohio?
Review: Sherwood Anderson and Jean Toomer were friends and I do see similarities in the structure of this work and Cane. Winesburg, Ohio seems to have a more definite plan, with George Willard emerging as the principal character. I have the feeling that the narrator caught most of the other characters described on a bad day, when their lives might be summarized as a succession of misunderstandings and disappointments.
Rating:
Summary: Would be five stars......
Review: This would've made it to five stars if it had less than 21 stories. 21 was a bit too many stories for me to read about the same concept in being trapped and confused with your life. However, the book makes a lot of sense and portrays small town life quite accuratly. I thought most of the chapters were very meaningful and made you evaluate your own trapped feelings.
Rating:
Summary: Not the classic I expected
Review: Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson is certainly a classic book. This story of small town life in Ohio at the turn of the century has been heralded for presenting accurate portraits of real, authentic people while highlighting their flaws and shortcomings. A few of these portraits are still accurate today. I liked the circular design of the book; by this, I mean I enjoyed how the book began, ended, and centered around one character, George Williard. Although sometimes I think this can make a novel seem too perfect (or at least too planned and calculated), it was certainly an asset here. My favorite story was "Godliness, a tale in four parts." Perhaps this is because of my cynical side, but Anderson's hilarious portrayal of religious fervor kept my attention, more so than any other story. Despite these points, I really didn't enjoy this book; it seemed to continue on, and the characters were not engaging enough to mitigate this.
Rating:
Summary: OK...3 plus stars
Review: This little book is still required reading in many Lit courses. It's well written, but I have a few problems with it. First of all, it's fairly obvious that he thought most of us from rural Ohio were a bunch of nincompoops...or, gnarled apples. Secondly, the religious nut guy in the field was a stretch and, perhaps, downright ridiculous. So much has been read into this book that it has become overwrought. Everyone should read this, but not necessarily believe it.
Rating:
Summary: Unhappy people trapped in sad webs of their own making
Review: Sherwood Anderson published this collection of short stories in 1919 all set in fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio. Even though it's written in the third person, it's told through the narrative voice of George Willard, the town reporter, who shows up in most of the stories, sometimes taking an active role and at other times just telling a story. It is obvious that the writer loves these people, and is frustrated at the isolation and unhappiness of their lives, even though he makes it clear that they hold within themselves everything needed to make them happy. The character in the first story is a dying old writer who is attempting to write about all the people he has known as a "book of grotesques". What follows is the collection of stories, which each character fulfilling that expectation. There are the young lovers who don't quite connect; there is a old man so obsessed with religious fervor that he attempts to sacrifice his grandson; there is a married man who regrets it all and tries to warn a younger man of future unhappiness; there's a doctor and a sick woman who try to connect. The book is full of people who toil all their lives and never achieve happiness. As I made my way through the book I kept hoping that even one of the characters would rise above the morass. It didn't happen. The writer has a wonderful sense of place and the town of Winesburg in the early part of the 20th Century is very real. These people were not poor or disadvantaged in the usual sense of the word; they didn't suffer fire, floods or famine. Instead, they trapped themselves in their own psychological webs that made it impossible for them to lead anything but sad unfulfilled lives. This is a fine book and stands alone as a clear voice of its time.
Rating:
Summary: You are entering Diane Arbus territory
Review: I was not prepared for the emotional gravity of Sherwood Anderson's folk tales of Winesburg, Ohio. Each vingette is like a perfectly carved cameo. The sad and lonely people in this book live in the same universe as the deeply damamged goods of Nathaniel West's Day of the Locust. It is hard to read too much in one sitting, but you won't regret it.
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