Rating: 
Summary: Lovely but incomplete
Review: Blixen writes beautifully. It is interesting to note that English was not her native tongue but that she paints with it a beautiful portrait of Kenya between the world wars, its people and its landscapes.But unlike Conrad, another non-native English speaker who wrote of his Colonial-era experiences, Blixen has neither written a book nor really told a story. She begins very well, and beautifully. And her description of the loss of her friend and then her farm are wonderfully and poingnantly done. But the middle of the book is a series of short - often less than a page - vignettes, largely unconnected, many of which are frankly nonsensical. This, very unfortunately, is not a story of her life; she is the autobiographical protagonist but there is no insight into her, her life, her love or even her loss. Nor is it a story of Africa in transition. it starts out to become these things, but it does not succeed. It's a lovely, easy read but it is not history nor is it literature.
Rating: 
Summary: Some scattered fragmented passages can't derail the power
Review: For anyone who's ever had to leave somewhere and never forgotten it, this is a must read. You really get a strong sense of heartache here when Blixen is forced to give up her plantation toward the end of the book. I think the final pages of this story are some of the saddest ever written in literature. And yes, you can call someone's memoirs literature.
While the fine film version is based on three books, this is the definitive, haunting one which expertly, more than any visual medium, describes what it's like to be possessed by a place. More than Blixen being in Africa, this is more like Africa being in Blixen.
Rating: 
Summary: a return to africa
Review: how can the reader not adore her? ten stars for karen blixen........and 100 for africa........where we honeymoned in 1970. i went back to nairobi with izak dinesen.
Rating:
Summary: An incomplete version
Review: If you want the full version of Out of Africa, this is not the audio book for you - its abridged.
Rating:
Summary: luminous and magical as the African moon over her farm
Review: Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) has been elevated to star status by the feminists for her independent stance and courage, but don't read this book because of that. Don't look for the tragic story of her misguided marriage and the heartbreak and barrenness it brought her, or for descriptions of her love affair with adventurer Denys Finch-Hatton. None of that appears here. Instead, "Out of Africa" is a storytelling book woven in the imaginative Danish style. Dinesen's finely tuned sensitivity is revealed here, as well as her (again typically Danish) well-developed gift for friendship with many kinds of people. In her case this gift extends to African animals as well, like Lulu, the beautiful gazelle who graced her plantation for years.
Her descriptions of the Kenya of her day are exquisitely written, factual and magical at the same time. Africa is the star of the book, not Dinesen herself, not the tribespeople or the colonials, not her struggles with raising coffee in land "a little too high", nor her political dealings with the government officials. Her writing evokes the Africa she knew well and loved deeply.
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Summary: Struggles
Review: Isak Dinesen's novel Out of Africa is a recollection of her time spent in Africa while struggling to cope with the immensely different cultures and struggling to run a coffee farm at too high of an altitude. This book is a collection of her stories most of them about her adventures shared with lover Denys Finch-Hatton. Many of the stories are very dangerous, like when they go lion hunting. These stories show the wild side that Dinesen posses. These stories are in no chronological order and at times make the book hard to follow. The best part of the book is the astounding imagery used. The imagery describes the breathtaking views from the on top the Ngong hills and allows you to feel the lack of oxygen, smell the coffee plants and feel the strong African sun beating down upon your skin. The down side to this book is, even after experiencing many adventurers with Dinesen you will probably feel that you do not know much about her personality. This is due to lack of character development since she is telling the story and never describes herself. You do however learn about the struggle she faces being a European woman living in a minority, in a place with very different and diverse cultures. She has to adapt to these cultures and even though she finds her European traditions very different from those of the Africans, she realizes that there is some common ground between the two. Even though this book can be at times hard to follow I highly recommend reading it. The magnificent imagery makes up for the down sides to the book and causes you to realize why Dinesen fell in love with Africa. You will probably find yourself falling in live with Africa and its people just as Dinesen did. A truly remarkable book.
Rating:
Summary: Julie Harris does a perfect read
Review: It's amazing how each media gives a completely different feel of this fabulous book. Dinesen's book gets 5 stars. The movie gets 5 stars for telling the stories in the book as well as its beautiful handling of the relationship between Karen and Denys. The audiotape of the book would get 5 stars as well, if it was unabridged. Julie Harris gives me goosebumps (in a good way!)
Rating:
Summary: Julie Harris does a perfect read
Review: It's amazing how each media gives a completely different feel of this fabulous book. Dinesen's book gets 5 stars. The movie gets 5 stars for telling the stories in the book as well as its beautiful handling of the relationship between Karen and Denys. The audiotape of the book would get 5 stars as well, if it was unabridged. Julie Harris gives me goosebumps (in a good way!)
Rating:
Summary: A Work of Art
Review: Out of Africa is an literary accomplishment that will remain in history as portraying Africa as it really was in that era. Karen Blixen was so in touch with the native tribes of Kenya. Her deep respect for their customs and lives is obvious in this book, which wasn't common then among the new European settlers. The way that her fascinating stories unfold is remarkable, making long hours of the night spent trying to put the book down without success. I saw Out of Africa as a child, and read the book in college, which inspired me to go to Kenya when I graduated. I visited the land that Karen Blixen donated upon her departure from Kenya, which was turned into a town named "Karen", and her home and everything in it have been preserved, down to the lantern she would leave on for Finch-Hatton. Still today the town's people speak of Karen Blixen in great admiration, perhaps giving back what she unconditionally gave to them. I would recommend this book to anyone who knows how to read!
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Summary: A hymn of praise and love for what was once Africa
Review: Out of Africa is the very best of many memoirs of Africa in the early part of this century, the era before two World Wars changed that continent completely. For 15 years, between 1914 and 1931, Baroness Karen Blixen ran a coffee plantation in Kenya. Her unhappy marriage and her much happier, though tragic, love affair are not prominent subjects in her book, as they were in the movie of the same name (excellent, with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford so excellently cast). Isak Dinesen (Blixen's pen name) is primarily a story-teller, and this lovely book is a collection that elevates her stories to mythic, poetic, and epic levels. While one of the first of the era's feminists, she was also gifted with sensitivity, the ability to form deep and lasting friendships, awareness of what was being lost in Africa, and an appreciation for both the mundane and the magical. It all comes through in her writing.
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