Customer Reviews

All Summer Long

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

With so many authors aiming for your wife's interests, it's great to finally have a novel written for a male's summer reading enjoyment. The book is an excellent summer escape -- it will take you back to long ago times that still seem so near and will keep you hopeful about the future. If you're a fan of Greene's columns or you just want to feel better about life, then you have to read this book!

Do yourself a favor and read this book, and then go out and read everything else by Bob Greene that you can get you hands on. You'll thank me later...trust me.

I stumbled upon Bob Greene's All Summer Long a couple of years ago when I read his "Hang Time" book about Michael Jordan. The subject matter of several friends putting everything aside for a Summer and roadtriping around the country has always been appealing to me and this story didn't disappoint. Although this is a fictional account, you really feel as if the author is recanting a journey that he actually took. I found myself really wanting to do something like this someday as well. I highly recommend this book.

I read this book at a time in my life when I was troubled
and didn't know where I had been or where I was going. Since
then, I have read the book twice more. A perfect book for
someone in their mid to late 40's. You will remember much of
what he talks about, and his fears and worries are the same
fears and worries that we all have. I consider this to be
one of his best.

This book will take the male reader - from 18 to 80 - on a fantasy ride that will hold his interest from page one to the end. This wasn't written to be considered "literature;" it simply entertains very well and gives the reader's his money's worth.

I'm now reading it for the second time. How many books get THAT award from readers?

As someone who loved "Be True To Your School" and liked "You Know You Should Be Glad", I was disappointed.

This is a novel, which to me is fiction. But Greene covers the same material as he does in the two books mentioned above. Bristol is Bexley and his friends are the same as in the other two books. Either you take away the novel label or you disguise the characters a lot better. That thought stayed with me through the entire book.

Bob is a few years older than me and his vanilla world and mid-life crisis struck me as navel-gazing after a while. Still, he is a good writer which made the book bearable.

You don't have to be in your forties to enjoy this terrific novel. I read the book in my early 20's felt a remarkable connection to these characters. There is a universal feel to many of the passages in this book. In particular, the images and memories of friendship and summers gone by, speak to anyone who has cherished memories of times gone by. The book is is both touching and hilarious. It is the perfect read; summer, fall, winter, or spring. This novel among the very best I have ever read. My copy is all underlined--just as I used to do in school--this time, though, it is for the pure enjoyment of it. This is an example of Greene at his very best--his sentimental side. Greene often uses his pen these days to fight injustices in this country, so this is a treasure of a Greene from days gone by (and one we don't see so much anymore).

Bob Greene takes you back in time to a summer that you will never forget and in his usual way tugs on the memories and heart strings that remind you of the best that was. I couldn't wait to pick it up and was upset to put it down when I was finished.

No wonder Bob Greene's so much more well known as a columnist than a novelist. All Summer Long, while full of good writing and interesting situations, seems to me to be self-serving and melodramatic. If only this had been written as non-fiction, I would have not only believed it, but would have respected it. Instead, I could predict what would happen pages ahead of time and kept thinking that maybe I have can have career as a novelist after all. It's just not very interesting to anyone but the characters. If I ran into any of these guys in a airport or at a ballgame or in a hotel lobby, I'd not only think them quite unspectacular, but wouldn't dig too deeply into their lives, as I'm sure I'd be bored before they got around to reliving their first "adventure."

Oh, woe is the forty-three year old Midwestern male, who can't face the reality of everyday life. Sure, there isn't a person alive who wouldn't like to take the summer off and travel, but I don't know how many of us want to do it with a bunch of people that we were really only close to 25 years ago. Forget my friends from high school, I want to take off with the people who mean something to me today -- people with whom I have something in common besides having attended the same school two and a half decades ago. This is exactly why we have reunions every five years, not every day. For the most part, they have no relevance in our daily lives.

That said, I still enjoyed the escapism this book offers. Greene offers simple, but significant insights into human nature, especially those that I imagine for men in their mid forties. The trio's travels are both funny and sad, and Greene doesn't necessarily push the reader one way or another. Things just happen and the summer is over, just like it is for you and me. And just like yours and mine, no one can really say they're interested in these sad sacks.

Greene steals the title from the Beach Boys song, although a song more representative and equally sappy might have been Terry Jacks's Seasons In The Sun. They had joy, they had fun, they had a season in the sun. Big deal.