Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful book that gives a different cultural perspective
Review: I read this book during my high school senior year for a world literature class and was caught up in the story right away. Perhaps since I have a different perspective then the average Western person, reading about another culture with a different perspective was very interesting to me. Then there is the emotional attachment that you gain to the characters. I mean, wow! It is very easy to understand how all the characters feel. Great book, everyone should read it.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Book of all Time
Review: Its a story about the Struggle between Change and Tradition.It's a story about a culture on the verge of change, Things Fall Apart deals with how the prospect and reality of change affect various characters. The tension about whether change should be privileged over tradition often involves questions of personal status. Okonkwo, for example, resists the new political and religious orders because he feels that they are not manly and that he himself will not be manly if he consents to join or even tolerate them. To some extent, Okonkwo's resistance of cultural change is also due to his fear of losing societal status. His sense of self-worth is dependent upon the traditional standards by which society judges him. This system of evaluating the self inspires many of the clan's outcasts to embrace Christianity. Long scorned, these outcasts find in the Christian value system a refuge from the Igbo cultural values that place them below everyone else. In their new community, these converts enjoy a more elevated status.
Rating:
Summary: A Difficult, Worthwhile Read
Review: The first time I read this book, I hated it. Just flat hated it. That was my junior year of high school. Flash forward a few years to college, and it's on the reading list again. "Why, oh why?" I moan. Then I read the thing. And you know what I discover? It's a masterpiece.Chinua Achebe describes "Things Fall Apart" as a response to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", which is, comparatively, a denser, perhaps less accessible read. The parallels are there: the ominous drumbeats Marlow describes as mingling with his heartbeat are here given a source and a context. We, as readers, are invited into the lives of the Ibo clan in Nigeria. We learn their customs, their beliefs, terms from their language. Okonkwo, the main character, is the perfect anti-hero. He is maybe Achebe's ultimate creation: flawed, angry, deeply afraid but outwardly fierce. To have given us a perfect hero would have been to sell the story of these people drastically short. Achebe's great achievement is in rendering them as humans, people we can identify with. So they don't dress like Americans, or share our religious beliefs. Who's to say which method is correct, or if there has to be a correct and incorrect way. Achebe provokes thoughtfulness and important questions. His narrative is easy to read structurally, but the story itself is painful and frustrating. It is worthy of its subject. "Things Fall Apart" provoked some of the best classroom discussions I've ever experienced. As a reader, it has enriched my life. My thanks to Achebe for his marvelous contribution to literature. This book has a permanent place on my shelves.
Rating: 
Summary: not that great...I wouldn't consider it a classic at all!
Review: I had to read this book for my senior year in high school and it was not on the reading list for teachers as a mandatory book to read so my teacher chose this book for us to read...I wish she hadn't...I found this book to be the most boring book ever! I had to read the first chapter four times to figure out what was going on! This book is beyond college level to understand..I don't even see how high school teachers could understand this book....half of it is written in another language (thank god they had a index with translations) and the other half is just plain boring! I would rate this at one star however I gave it two, because it does give us a good life lesson in that one mistake made can change your life forever to the point where you do something drastic as Okonkwo figured this out. Other than that, the book is terrible and really hard to understand...I felt this book was too challenging to me with the Ibo language and the way everything was worded put me in a loop. If you have to read this book for school, I suggest you get cliff notes for it or go to gradesaver.com and/or sparknotes.com..I wouldn't recommend this book and don't bother reading it if you have to....you probly won't understand about 80% of what is said.
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Summary: I HATE THIS BOOK!!!!!!
Review: I had to read this my sophomore year of high school. And of course, I had one of those teachers that was obsessed with analyzation and symbolism to the point where I even got to hate it, even though I'm a poet and a writer. The main character had a lot of mental problems, including violence, chauvinism, and overambition to become the 'model citizen' of his tribe. I had no sympathy for him, neither should you. Overall this book was very slow-moving, very dull, very boring, and as a result some of my most sardonic and thoughtful essays in that class were based upon this book. Thanks a lot!!!! Even if I was just reading this for my own personal leisure, I'd give it a relatively low grade.
Rating:
Summary: Crummy
Review: Slow from the get go. This book never really got going unless you consider the last thirty pages going. So many other books out there are so much better. This one is really quite poor.
Rating:
Summary: Just Plain Awful
Review: I am being forced to read this book for summer reading to enter AP Lit for my senior year. This book is definitely not something I would ever want to read. The author goes on pages and pages about yams! Then, the main character is such a pig. He's all "I am Man hear me roar". Sometimes I just want to put a sock into his mouth. He beats his three wives. Sure this may have been life at that time but it's definitely not something I wanted to read. Hearing about an abusive man who has three different wives and who also pays no respect to his father. And he's the HERO of the book? This is awful. Now I have to go to school, write essays about this horrendous novel and do group work on it. I am dreading the torture.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: I was a bit sceptical about reading this book at first, but you really get into the storyline. The writing is easy to understand and flows very nicely. I really enjoyed this book and it's one of my favorites.
Rating:
Summary: not the usual
Review: this was not the usual type of book that i'd read b/c i usually like horror books. but i had to read this in high school and i absolutely loved it. okonkwo is THE archetypal hero and it's just so amazingly written. i think that reading this book has truly opened my eyes to a different genre of reading material. i'm so glad i HAD to read this in high school, b/c it's now one of my favorite books. D*
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Summary: The Struggle Within
Review: This book describes, completely, the probable outcome of an internal struggle monitored by fear, prejudice and intolerance. I am an Igbo man from Nigeria. The book reveals the extent of compelled order that existed in my culture before the coming of the British. Of significant note is that the order was sustained by continous fears and complete loss of freedom. One sees a society that lived in perpetual fear most of which are not explicable. The fear, though, kept things in check. Coming back to Okonkwo, we find a man whose arrogance and morbid fear for failure eventually lead to his tragic failure. The very things that made Okonkwo great eventually brought his downfall. It was not until Ikemefuna was killed that Okonkwo's final descent in life commenced. For a man to kill a boy that called him father is the height of human callousness. It is an "aru" (abomination) in my culture. The consequecies for Okonkwo were tragic and immediate. It highlights the importance of keeping faith with one who calls you his brother or friend. Violations of such trusts are visited with calamities. It is true in my peoples pre-colonial times as it is true in this global technological age.
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