The Basketball Diaries

Rating:
Summary: A timeless classic!
Review: This is a very compelling read that is excellently written. It is very unfortunate that someone had to live this life but at least they got away from it eventually. You do feel like you are following Jim Carroll through the ups and downs (there are many downs) of his teenage life. All in all a book that will never date and that everyone should get a chance to read.

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Summary: Jim Carroll reads his classic for Audio Literature
Review: The audio version of The Basketball Diaries is no less intense than the book itself. The author reads his book with great feeling for details. No one could have better interpreted it than Jim Carroll himself. Just the way he reads the book, he's telling a story. As a little "extra-treat", Lenny Kaye (guitar player for Patti Smith and Jim Carroll) accompanies the reading with music. If you have never listened to Audio Literature before, this is an excellent book to do so for the first time!

Rating:
Summary: Still not dated even though written over 30 years ago.
Review: The Basketball Diaries is an amazing book. It was very well written. Even though it was written over 30 years ago, the book isn't dated. Young people still face today many of the problems that the author had to deal with more than three decades ago. Today's teens can easily connect to the book because they feel in a similar way as the author did, too. Furthermore, it also helps today's youth to realize that drugs aren't all fun and that they can easily get addicted to narcotics, too, because the author gives an amazing insight of how living with a drug addiction is really like. He doesn't glorify the use of controlled substances, rather, he plain and simply writes the truth about drugs. The Basketball Diaries is the book I've ever read and I strongly recommend it to everybody!

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Summary: A true story about the hardships of growing up in New York.
Review: I found this book to be amazingly realistic and enjoyable. If I had to prefer a book to someone I would most likely prefer this one. The book is an amazing story about the hardships of growing up in the big city of New York and how so much that goes on is unknown to the people outside of the city. Unlike other books I have read, I found myself actually interested in it. I'm not the one to be reading books but this one was outstanding.

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Summary: I recomend this book to all.
Review: I believe this was a great book overall. However I do think that the vocabulary in this book was a little over my head. I believe this book was wriiten for a younger audience, and with the words that Carrol chose to use it would be hard to understand. Once you pass over the vocab you will enjoy the book.

Rating:
Summary: A troubled teens life through his own eyes
Review: I thought this book was very interesting and well written. I think John Carroll wrote this book to show kids that you don't have to do drugs or alcohol to fit in. This book was very exciting, every time I opened it up I could not put it down. I think other people should buy this book and read it. If you want to read a book that you will get your money's worth out of buy this one. I think that people who should read should be at least 16 or older.

Rating:
Summary: A teen's life justified as if you were him.
Review: John Carroll showed life through a teen's eyes while growing up in the nineties. So when you read this book, you should not expect any less then what you see a teenager being capable of doing. In Basketball Diaries, The extensive usage of vulger language, sexual conduct, and drugs was described to us in the step-by-step procedures taken as if you were him. I feel that John Carroll wanted to show the readers that how easily a boy or girl, in the society today, could be placed in these events. But as John Carroll had provided us with this information he had lost track of the title of this book. He wrote too much on how the teenager had been committing unmoral actions then he had been involved with basketball. If this was his intentions in the first place I feel that the title should have been changed to fit the contents or provide some involvement of basketball within the actions that had occured. But if you are just looking for a good book to keep your interest in, then I would recommend this book to anyone that is of 15 years or older for the reasons of maturity. Someone has to have a developed mind on understanding information that you would be reading. This book kept my attention for the time period that I was reading but you have to understand that some parts are not as interesting as others. Finally, I would like to state that John Carroll did do an excellent job in writing this piece of literature but I don't think that I could classify this book as being good enough for the superior rating of five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely Depressing
Review: I thought it was incredibly well written, and I liked the fact of it being so depressing. It's hard to believe that some one, Jim Carroll, actually went through this hell on earth. Well, it just is a matter of time before you could get over it.

Rating:
Summary: This was the most interesting book I've read.
Review: The Basketball Diaries kept me interested through the days that we got to read in class. Overall the book was not the best written due to words that are not in my vocabulary. I thought the book was a good read.

Rating:
Summary: I thought that the book was very well written.
Review: In my opinion this book was very good. I thought that it was very well written and gave in-depth descriptions on what growing up is like for some people. Some people grow up on robbing stores or selling weed and smokling stuff all the time. I believe they do this for a way to survive because they have no place left to go. I believe this is a good book for people to read if u are at least 15 because of the language and the more grown-up things discussed in the book. I thought that the book needed to be more about his basketball career or his poet career. The book is called Basketball Diaries and the main points in the book were about sex, drugs, and an occasional basketball game here or there. Many kids may read this book and be like that will never happen to me i won't do any of that bad stuff but when I read this book i couldn't believe half the things kids would sink to just to get an ounce of weed. At the begining of the book Jim's mom found heroin and Jim said that is was only weed that you get addicted to. It turns out that Jim wasn't only addicted to weed but also the heroin. Kids are always like well if I try it i won't like it so I guess it doesn't matter and they try it and the next thing they know is that they are addicted and can't stop. So again I thought that this book was very good but the author could have fixed the book more to concentrate more on basketball instead of weed and sex.