Rating: 
Summary: Adrian Mole's Canadian alter ego
Review: If you liked Adrian Mole you will love Alice. If you like to laugh you will like Alice. If you like to read you will like Alice. Anyone who doesn't is devoid of irony and the ability to laugh at oneself. This is a great book, for young and old adults alike. Small town life is captured and reflected warts and all. The love hate relationship between kids and their parents is something we all experience. And Alice is a great portrait of someone who is trying to grow up in a community full of wierdos, good guys, bad girls and her mother's frightening freinds. Read it, and laugh!
Rating:
Summary: So funny I was sweating
Review: The whole time I was reading Susan Juby's Alice, I Think I was transported into a mind and life that was so compelling and funny I never wanted to stop. It was so true to my own experiences as a teenaged girl that I really identified with Alice, her screwy but lovable family, and the bizarre assortment of locals in Smithers, BC. I was so tired of reading all the usual books in the local and school libraries that I took a chance on this one, and I can't wait for more from Ms. Juby. I highly recommend this to readers of all ages as one of the funniest, most charming books you'll ever have the pleasure of experiencing.
Rating: 
Summary: If you want to read a good book, try something else.
Review: There's nothing like a good book and this is nothing like one. The best parts of the book are the author's bio and a few sparsely scattered funny one-liners such as "our haircuts cost almost as much as our car."
I only made it to page thirty. This slow moving book still is going nowhere and is filled with weird, sick people--not quirky people, sick ones.
It isn't clear until about twenty pages into the book exactly how old Alice is. Maybe I missed it the first time she said her age, but there aren't many context clues to really nail down how old she is. I forgot that Alice had a brother. I know she mentioned him early in the book, but forgot all about him by the time he came up again. This book moves at a snail's pace and is just plain weird. I have no idea where the author is planning to go with this story and I don't care to stick around and find out. I'm returning this $8.00 paperback book to the store from which I bought it and getting something readable instead.
I can't believe the reviewer who says you should read the book two or three times in order to enjoy it! There are so many books that are good on the first read, why waste your time with this one?
I hope the author realizes that there are more than two careers out there. Barring fashion design and writing, maybe she can find something else to do.
Rating: 
Summary: It was funny...but...
Review: This book was okay. I read an excerpt from it and got really excited about it, but once I finished it was disappointed. For one thing, I believe the description of the book was slightly misleading, this book is NOT about her going back to high school. Altogether, it may have a chapter (if that much) of when she is actually in her highschool. And she doesn't go to a normal highschool, she goes to an "alternative" highschool which made me wonder about Alice. I did not feel like a connected with her at all, she seems to me to be one of those "I Am Depressed and I Hate Everything That the Public Likes and I Listen to Music No One Has Ever Heard of So Therefore I am Better Than You, So Ha" wanna-bes and is very whiny. There were times in the book where I wondered if Alice was actually sane or not. The ending was very poor, for it seems like the writer got bored of the story and was just trying to fill empty space. This aside, it was very funny, and if you are looking for some laughs I would suggest this book.
Rating:
Summary: Alice, I Like!
Review: This hilarious novel captures the essence of northern small-town life, filtered through the self-centered angst of its narrator, Alice McLeod, a fifteen-year-old misfit, returning to (alternative) school after a ten-year hiatus of home-schooling by her macramé-weaving, granola-eating mother. In preparation for her re-entry, Alice is receiving encouragement from a counselor (whom she dubs "Death Lord Bob" because of his appearance) at the "Teens in Transition (Not in Trouble) Center". The novel's plot revolves loosely around a "Life Goals List", but the story's real interest lies in Alice's off-centered insights, which, while exposing her own limitations, often provide profound observations on her wider-ranging social sphere. The object of most of her concern (documented in a diary format) is her family: her mother, an unregenerate product of the sixties; her father, an indigent writer of unpublished "bodice-rippers"; her fish-raising younger brother, whose unpretentious common sense serves for both Alice and the novel as a stable norm, in the vortex of eccentric characters that comprise Smithers, British Columbia, her home-town. This broader cast of quirky characters flesh out the daily dramas in which Alice finds herself, or tries to find herself. Juby's novel will have you laughing aloud at every page, but the humor is never simple-minded, and the laughter is often a little uneasy. For a Young Adult novel, "Alice, I Think" is refreshingly adult-not a book for mindless young readers with an appetite for pablum.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome writing!
Review: This is a book you can't put down...it is pure hilarity from page one until the end. Susan Juby has made a wonderful "social critic." If I had more than two thumbs they would all be way up!
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: This was one bizarre and funny book. I liked the way Alice was messed up but she didn't try to be something she wasn't. Some people might not like that she didn't try harder to fit in and be so-called normal, but I thought she was great and I loved her family. The whole book was totally hilarious!
Rating: 
Summary: Um ok
Review: well since my name is ALICE and I have lived in SMIHTERS i decided to read the book, but it totally was not me and should NOT be classified as a kid book. I guess some people could like it but i did not relate with her and nobody in Smithers is like that! AND I AM REALLY 15!
Rating:
Summary: For parents too
Review: What a delightful read Susan Juby's book "Alice, I Think" is. Young readers will be able to identify but so will their parents. Susan has captured the somewhat difficult teenage years with a refreshing sense of humour. What a gifted writer to make us identify so strongly but want to laugh also and all without using foul language. I look forward to her next book. Edith MacKay, Smithers, B. C.
Rating:
Summary: "Alice, I Think" - my review
Review: When I checked out "Alice, I Think" at our downtown library, I thought I would enjoy it. Having read the inside cover and seeing that it was about a young, home-schooled girl coming back into society, I figured it would be interesting. For one, I dislike home-schooling a lot and I think it is very stupid, so I thought reading about it would be, well, interesting. I also read that it was told from a very sarcastic point of view, so I thought I would enjoy that. Turns out, I neither enjoyed it nor found it interesting.
After reading this book, I definitely don't recommend it. I may have gotten a few chuckles out of it, but it wasn't quite worth it. One thing that made it so hard for me to read was how ignorant the main character, Alice, was. She thought she knew everything about public schools, music, movies, people, and all kinds of things, and she even wanted to be a cultural critic. Truth be told, she hardly knew anything about any of those things, because she never really experienced much of it. She obviously didn't get out much. One cannot base their thoughts on what you see and read, you have to get out there and experience life for yourself.
With that said, I give this book a mere two stars, and I don't plan on reading anything else by this author.
|
