Rating: 
Summary: A book to keep and go back to.
Review: I keep "Birds of America" on the top shelf of my bookcase in the center of my house. Just as I had with her collection "Like Life". I go back and read these stories over and over again. Lorrie Moore owns the English language. She says things we all wish we had said. She says things we all have said. Her puns and metaphors stay with you. I cannot recommend her enough. For everyone. My favorite story in this one was "Whatever You Want Fine". No one but a masterful storyteller could get away with naming a character "Quilty". Bravo!
Rating: 
Summary: Moving Tales, Artfully Told
Review: With a clever turn of phrase and perfect pitch conversation, Lorrie Moore tells stories that are enlightening, heartbreaking, and smile out loud funny. One caution: Be careful where you read this book. I'm not sure what the passenger next to me on the plane thought when he saw tears running down the face of the well dressed middle aged man reading a book. The next to last story... a first person narrative/journal of a mother facing her infants cancer... is painful and life affirming. I will not forget it.
Rating:
Summary: Misunderstood
Review: I'm pretty surprised by the number of negative reviews Moore's work has received. Many readers have complained that the stories are about tiny people with tiny, unimportant lives. Well, that's the whole point! Moore is without a doubt the best chronicler of tiny people with tiny, unimportant lives. She knows - which many of us do not - that we all have tiny, unimportant lives. But, like her characters, those lives are filled with regret, longing, heartache, joy, laughter, wit and irony. And of course that makes them anything but unimportant. Every story she writes makes me laugh out loud at least once. Every story she writes makes me cry just a little. Every story she writes somehow pinpoints some tiny emotion or thought or feeling I never knew I had. Her sheer empathy is astounding.It may seem like I'm gushing, but I've been reading her short fiction for over a decade now and there is no one writing today whom I enjoy more. Granted, a story like "People Like That Are The Only People Here" can be unwieldy for someone not accustomed to short stories. Probably the best introduction to Moore can be found in "You're Ugly, Too," which is in Like Life, the Best American Short Stories of 1990 and the Updike-edited Best American Short Stories of the Century. But a story like "Charades" - in Birds of America - is easily accessible and is vintage Moore. It's sad, hysterically funny and all-too familiar. There are many like it in this collection, including "Whatever You Want Fine" and "Willing" and "That's More Than I Can Say About Some People." One reviewer complained that the stories were over as soon as you started to get into the characters and that at the end they didn't live on, they were just dark type on a white page. That is untrue. Lorrie Moore's characters live on everywhere. They're in your office. They're at the grocery store and the bank and the dry cleaners. They are us.
Rating: 
Summary: Dreary, Already Dated
Review: There's an already dated 1990s prose style that I've come to dread: laconic, irony-laden, whats-the-point? writing that offers no lasting richness, no feeling, no sympathy. I'll grant that Lorrie Moore is the best of this school (The LaconoDepressoBoys Genre, that is--Carver and pals), but also grant me that she's a bit of a tedious bore, and that reading her work is a joyless task at best. There are some jewels amidst the scruffiness, and some very fine insights into relationship angst. But honey, if you've read about one hair-chewing manic depressive in a Days Inn, you've read about them all.
Rating:
Summary: First-rate collection.
Review: Lorrie Moore is really hitting her stride. For the most part, the stories in this collection are excellent -- a bizarre mixture of humor, extremely self-conscious narrators, and whimsy. Much has been made of "People Like That Are The Only People Here," and rightfully so; it's a terrific story. But don't neglect "Agnes of Iowa" (whose heart "engages gross quantities of hope and despair and then sets them wildly, side by side, like a Third-World Country of the Heart"!) and "Terrific Mother," which, for my money, is the best story in the collection.
Rating:
Summary: Good collection of short stories
Review: Moore has written a collection of short stories and they're pretty good. She has a very creative style and I like how she uses rich metaphors to describe different emotional impacts. Still, there is a sameness to the stories. Most of them revolve around a common theme of emptiness or shallowness. I found myself getting tired of it after a while. I wish she had varied her themes more. But that is my only complaint. I enjoyed reading it and I recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Yes, that good. Exactly that good.
Review: It chills Mink to the bone to read that anybody could possibly consider this collection of stories anything but utterly brilliant and hysterical and glowy all over. Ms. Moore has such a command of language, such a deep understanding of humanity, such a fierce sense of humor. One can only pity those who do not see it. One can only wish more cable channels for them. If you like David Sedaris, you will like Moore, well, more.
Rating: 
Summary: Good but not *that* good
Review: In general I find it tough plowing through short stories. It seems to me that one just begins to care about the characters when the ending looms and they revert to black print on white pages, their lives wrapped up and done with. However, I hardly had this problem with 'Birds of America', probably because of how engagingly Moore writes. This reminded me of Raymond Carver - especially 'People Like That are the Only People Here' compared with 'A Small Good Thing' - only with more flourishes and more humour. Her descriptions, metaphors and insights are elegant and can be startlingly original. The reason I gave this 3 stars, with all the good things I've said, is primarily that while it's good it's not *that* good. For one, she's less subtle than Carver. Sometimes the pithy observations end up coming through directly, resounding in the author's voice instead of via the story. For another, some of the stories border on the unbelievable ('Real Estate' comes to mind). And lastly, most importantly, they aren't powerful enough. They're witty and they're elegant and they're true, but they didn't truly touch me. I agree with another reviewer when he said they were 'hardly lifechanging'.
Rating:
Summary: The Best I've read in a while
Review: What can I say? Birds of America is absolutely fabulous and took my breath away. The characters are real, flawed and likeable, not to mention unforgettable. A must read!
Rating:
Summary: they are just short stories... what do you expect?
Review: Short stories don't usually leave one with life-changing insights. Why not be content with original ideas, e.g., "The thing to remember about love affairs," says Simone, "is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney. ... We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney ... And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped that the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead." Simone swallows some wine. "Love affairs are like that," she says. "They all are like that."
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