Rating: 
Summary: I didn't get this one
Review: I started reading Fight Club with high expectations, but never really got to grips with it. I found it amoral, and lacking in humour. It also takes swipes at modern (American) society without suggesting any alternative but a rather primitive response, namely responding with mindless violence, destruction and the creation of mayhem. I give it two stars because Palahniuk can clearly write well, but the whole theme of the book just put me off. And this is not because I particulary dislike books that contain violence and anti-social behaviour- I loved Burgess' brilliant A Clockwork Orange, for instance. I think the absence of humour put me off this book more than anything else.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the greatest books of all time.
Review: I personally think this is one of the greatest books of all time. The film is my favorite film ever, and the book is right up there in my top 5. Read this now.
Rating:
Summary: Food for thought.
Review: This book is not for the faint of heart... or stomach. It is, however, essential to our generation. We have no great wars, no Great Depression...
Our lives are empty, directionless, spiraling out of control, and the only way to get back on track is to let go of everything. This is the lesson this book teaches us.
The mentality behind Fight Club is revolutionary and original. The first rule of reading FIGHT CLUB: Open your mind and dive in.
Rating:
Summary: A raw exercise in original thinking
Review: Books that take no prisoners are the kind that are likely to upset people in search of a happy ending. Shakespeare specialized in the tragedy and killed hundreds with the stroke of a pen. Rarely in Shakespeare to you find a happy ending, or even any type of real catharsis. Welcome to the mindset of Chuck Palahniuk, and his first novel, a book that was made for the manic imagination of director David Fincher, "Fight Club". First and foremost, this is thought-provoking stuff that doesn't even come out of left field--we aren't even in the same sport. Palahniuk's emphasis on raw violence and healing qualities contained within the wounds inflicted on our persons, as well as brilliance in dialogue, character study, and wonderfully sneaky foreshadowing ("How much can you really know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?" Took me a long time to understand the real slyness in these words.) make "Fight Club" one of the most original books I've ever read.The entire novel, written in first person, focuses around an insomniac, unhappy in his life, his job; material comfort means absolutely nothing, despite how much time he's meticulously devoted to furnishing his apartment. The narrator finds comfort in the most unlikely of places: Support groups for various diseases he doesn't even have. This lasts for years until someone else develops the same kind of addiction: The chain-smoking Marla Singer. His support group comfort ruined, he finds solace in the presence of a stranger named Tyler Durden, and together, using the healing properties of violence, form Fight Club. They establish the rules, organize the place and time, and let the blood flow. The problem comes, of course, when Fight Club comes out of the basement and becomes an underground pseudo-political movement called Project Mayhem. Run solely under the direction of Tyler, who is now banging Marla on a regular basis, Project Mayhem's plans continue to spiral out of control, inflicting damage on a near global scale. There's not much more to say about "Fight Club" without giving away a great deal, other than to say it's extraordinarily original thinking put down on paper in almost poetically-crafted sentences. Palahniuk's vision not only translates well in print, it was converted even more wildly on the big screen, in David Fincher's outstanding adaptation of a terrific first novel from one of the more interesting authors I've ever read. This is one for your own collection.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best books of this generation
Review: I liked this book for a lot of reasons and on a lot of levels. It has a quick and loose flow to the story, much like the current array of slasher novels that are so popular (and which I also like). It also makes you think both while you're reading the book and long after you've finished it, much like most of the classics. It's not one of the all-time greats, but it does make you think on a lot of levels you probably have thought on before. It tests your perspective on the retail intensive world and culture we live in and more than once, it makes you reassess your values and priorities. If you have a narrow-minded view of the world around you and are afraid to challenge your current perspective and personal philosophies, you will not like this book.
Rating:
Summary: I want you to hit me as hard as you can, Mr. Palahniuk
Review: First things first, Chuck Palahniuk is a master when it comes to bring the late 20 Century regular male specimen's psique to the paper -- and the female too, mainly in "Invisible Monsters". His world is compound of regular people, like us, that in a edgy moment make a slight change and it affects everything. So far, we've seen this in hundreds of books, but his characters, their fears and joys are so unique that he makes me wish writing like him. Or at least be as smart as him. And if you think he is a fluke, try his pos-Fight Club novels, whatever. Personal issues aside, "Fight Club" is a delightful novel about the nihilism an other feelings of the late 20 century and the prospect of mankind somehow for the 21. The narrator is numb, like many drug addicts he cannot feel new experiences, so he must go to a higher level in order to have his neurotransmissors working. He can't even sleep. Insomnia is not his actual problem, this is just a sympton. The first step is to meet people with terminal diseases in support groups . Later, this doesn't work anymore. His biggest step: Fight Club. Forget all about you've heard about violence. If you think this novel is violent you haven't paid too much attention to the world lately . The violence here is graphic sometimes, but it is not the hardest part for reading. Nevertheless, it is a scary and painfull experience. It seems to me that FG is one of the best portrait of my generation. The desperate feeling for new things and for getting things harder and harder. From time to time a stunning sentence pops up in the novel. "It's your life, and it's ending one minute at a time." "(...)Our culture has made us all the same. (...) Indivually, we are nothing." Or "I am the toxic waste by-product of God's creation." And many others called my attention. Palahniuk's sentences are very short, but at the same time very effecitve. The periods are also small what makes the reading pretty fast. The movie based on the novel is remarkable, thanks to Jim Uhls' script & David Fincher's dark, smart and unique mise-en-scène among other things, like Edward Norton's perfect numb nameless narrator & Brad Pitt's subversive and funny Tyler Durden. After seeing the movie, it is impossible to imagine two other actors playing there characters. Despite some different through the narrative and the ending, both --novel and movie-- leave quite the same feeling in the audience/readers. The result is the same. I don't recommend reading --or watching -- "Fight Club" to everybody. It tackles subjects that are too hard to some people, like self-improvement -- self-destruction --, terminal diseases and "Michief. Mayhem. Soap.", as the cover says. But those who dare to step into the fight club will not regret. You may not like it, but you won't be indifferent to it. In the end it feels like you've spent your whole Saturday night in the Fight Club, and you can't hardly wait for the next weekend. Like Tyler says to the narrator, you'll say "I want you to hit me as hard as you can, Mr. Palahniuk". And hopefully he will do so with another amazing book.
Rating: 
Summary: See The Movie
Review: I can't remember saying this about any other work, but the movie is better than the book. The book has some great lines, but all those lines are delivered perfectly in the movie, and in more compelling situations. The folks who worked on the movie did an outstanding job, developing what is a slightly sketchy work into something much more complete and polished. Silence of the Lambs? Great movie, a landmark. But an even better book. Little Big Man? Another great movie, and yet, a way, way better book that will even make you feel betrayed by the movie! Fight Club? Great movie, sign of the times. Passable book.
Rating:
Summary: It's not about the fight
Review: The theme of Chuck Palahniuk's novel, Fight Club, is that 21st century male has given up his life of adventure and passion in exchange for a life of passive consumption. I was first turned off by Fight Club's title and movie trailers thinking it was just another silly and mindless expression of entertainment. I was delightfully proved when I discovered that the fight club itself is merely a backdrop into a meaningful discussion about the direction and quality of one's life. Hundred's of men across the country are intoxicated by the passion and sounds of the fight one night a week, but they are also drawn into the self-discovery in which figh club leads them. They subject themselves to such self-destruction because only then do they really feel alive. Some would scoff at such a definition of life. But that's the point really. Only through fight club do these men awake to the reality that in their "normal" and safe lives they are in fact, on an aimless walk whose direct target is a meaningless death beyond the horizon of tomorrow. Will you agree with every conclusion, strategy, and goal presented by Tyler Durden's underground society? No. But again, that's the point. Most of us never agreed or understood the mission statement our boss handed us. We just adopted it for our jobs and our lives. "Work harder, consume more more more more." And if we took a good hard look at our lives right now, would we agree with every conclusion, strategy, and goal you think you live by? No. And that's the point of Fight Club - to get us to finally reckon with ourselves and the meaning of our lives, knowing that when we die, no one after our grandchildren will remember us.
Rating:
Summary: Big disappointment
Review: Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk, disappoints. Readers rarely enjoy movie adaptations over their literary counterparts, but I would be shocked to meet someone who enjoys the book more than the movie. Fight Club is not a book. It is a screenplay. Palahniuk over uses commas. The commas prohibit the reader from ever establishing a coherent flow to enjoy the book. Nothing annoys me more than fragments and poor grammar. I had such high hopes for this book. Fight Club, the movie ranks as one of my all time favorites. The book disappoints on every level except on a few insightful observations of the society we live in. However, don't expect these insights to be eye-opening revelations. Chuck manhandles them in such a crude and shallow manner that it undermines any brutish charm it may have had.
Rating:
Summary: Tyler Durden and _____
Review: I'll admit it. I saw the movie first. It was quite brilliant. I decided to buy the book one day when I was visiting Chicago with my friends. On the way back from Chicago I couldn't stop reading it! I actually got half way through! This book is amazing.
It's about an insomniac with no name who goes to support groups and uses them as a kind of sleep aid. He feels the only meaning to his life is IKEA. One day he meets a ruggedly good looking man named Tyler on a nude beach. This is what the film does not tell us, probably because it wouldn't be "manly" enough or something. Anyway, the narrator and Tyler hit it off. He's impressed with Tyler's wit and intelligence. And his appartment gets blown up. He is obviously feeling a little down, so he goes out for drinks with Tyler. That night, for fun, they begin to beat each other up. They enjoy it, and feel like it brings some meaning to their lives. They move in together. Soon they start a fight club, and soon more and more men are finding the meaning to life..........
Simply brilliant. The ending was a little dodgey, but the rest was amazing.
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