The Dead Side of the Mike: A Charles Paris Mystery Audiobook (Unabridged)

" i always kind of shied away from bellow, i think because i didn't want to be one of those girls who said things like 'gee, i really love bukowski', because it seems really disingenuous somehow. or burroughs, i mean, i've read burroughs, but i can't imagine ever doing it again. and not to split along gender lines, but bellow definitely seems to me like a 'man's' writer. but this novel was quite compelling, just a really good story, and well-told. a few bits where sammler's monologues got preachy towards the end, but overall, i really liked it. "

" A novel about a Polish Jew who escaped death in the Holocaust by crawling from the mass grave in which he and his wife were buried, and then hiding in a mausoleum until Poland was liberated. He is now living in New York City and the Americans are about to make their first landing on the moon. The hospitalization of his nephew with a fatal medical condition forces upon him reflections and conversations that trouble him. His intellectual need to concisely summarize the meaning of life from his unique perspective is continually challenged by the antics of his younger relatives. A careful and thoughtful reading of Bellow's frequent three-page paragraphs of Mr. Sammler's reflections were well worthwhile. Bellow won a National Book Award for this novel. "

" This is the story of a holocaust survivor living in New York City in the 1960s, trying to deal with illness and misbehavior in his family while coming to terms with the evolving culture of the place in time that he is living, in contrast to the life that lead him there. Like other Bellow novels, the book often meanders off into intellectual pontifications that are sort of an aside to the story itself. I had a little bit of trouble wrapping my head around the characters. There are a couple interesting scenes in this book but overall not nearly as enjoyable or engrossing as the other Bellow novels that I have read. "

" Bellow's... an odd bird, at times. "

" I bought this book 8 years ago in a used book store that doesn't exist anymore in Aurora, CO. I found it in the science fiction section! I read SF, but thought that it was fate that I found a Bellow book in SF so I had to buy it. The cover I have is a big planet with a stone face of the Mr. Sammler looking to the right--all floating in space. Terrible. But it's about the space age and HG Wells, among many other things of course; it wasn't too much of a mistake. If you are a Bellow fan, you should read it. "

" Mr. Sammler's Planet is a heavy book - to riff on a theme, it's got serious gravitational force, for better or worse. The novel really pulled me in, but unlike all of the other Bellow novels I've read, this one didn't always leave me feeling good to be along for the ride. I don't want to agree with Sammler's assessment that the modern liberation of the individual is a dirty failure. Bellow's letters reveal his contempt for Hannah Arendt, so I suppose what he's doing here is combatting the banality of evil argument by shedding a little light on the passion and carnal spirit behind misdeed. The elderly Sammler, with his experience and intellect, is a good filter for postwar America, but I had trouble appreciating his position as an outsider. It left me feeling helpless. "

" I don't know why this book made it onto my reading list. I think it was on one of the Wall Street Journal's weekly "Top Five Books on . . ." lists a few months ago for some topic or category that I cannot recall now. What I do know is that I liked the writing more than the story. This was my first book by the award-winning Bellow. If I had to summarize it in one sentence I'd say "old man who's been through hell in his life deals with the rot of late 60's New York, the meaning of life, spoiled young relatives, the state of civilization, and the death of a friend." This is a book for sunny pessimists only. "

" One of Bellow's best. Up with "Herzog" and "Augie March". "

" I would recommend this book to those who love internal monologues of hyper-intellectuals. "

" In appreciate even what I don't understand in this book. "

" Depressing but interesting. A close look into the difficulties of the Jewish immigrant after the First World War. Sorry, canot carry on with this review as as Ebay.fr window keeps popping up and making typing difficult "

" read in college modern fiction class. entertaining enough "

" for bookclub. I enjoyed it much more after our discussion, otherwise it was an ok holocaust survivor book interspersed w/ pointless philosophical essays that went in apparently meaningless circles. "

" A compelling book. I could relate to the way Mr. Sammler looks inside from outside very well. "

" I really liked this. I had an edition with no pictures on the cover. It was a hardback. I think it was green. Green was the best edition. "

" One of Dylan's books from his American modern novel class. Did not dig it. My least favorite Bellow. But it does follow the theme of seeing America from the eyes of a European. "

" What do I think? I think Saul Bellow really, really hated 1970s NYC and its hippies, its muggers, its subways and subhumans, its crackling youth-urgency, its cryptozoic youth-energy (Where does it all come from?), its mystic-crystal renovated buildings, its civic losses and its cultural cashouts. "

" I read this book for my American Lit. Class. It's a little too cerebral to be call "pleasure reading." "

" I still need to read this a few more times. "

" Given that it won a Nobel prize for literature, I'm sure there's something redeeming about this book, but I couldn't see past the sexist and racist elements to find it. "

" I read this for a literature class while studying abroad in Israel. I had a lot of trouble with the dense style and the plot, if I recall, was some what bizarre. "

" As expected - although I did love Charlotte Greene's cameo. "