Susie Duncan SextonResenhas

I received this book as part of the Early Reviewer's program but I have to admit I would have been attracted to the cover immediately if it were in a book store. It's a sweet, short novella filled with reminiscences about growing up in a small town. I don't want to beat a dead horse, if one looks at the other reviews, but this book needs a better editor. The stories are good, some of the writing is excellent but the structure and grammar could use some tweaking. The e-book format is not my favorite but I think it's a great idea in order to get this book into as many hands as possible. I think some people will find it quite quaint (not meant pejoratively). I enjoy that tone myself. The author is a progressive thinker and the flavor of the book reminds one of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, a book I admire. She's irreverent regarding the small town mores she grew up with.

As unbiased as I can be... Like a great record album it is perfectly sequenced. I have read all of these multiple times and I kept reading wanting to know what was next. It feels like a conversation with Susie - intelligent, profound, funny, heartbreaking, enlightening.

I love the turn it takes after the first third when nostalgia through a modern lens gives way to postmodern social critique, signaling a seismic shift from comforting sepia to brazen technicolor. Exhilarating and shocking and authentic. A fully realized being laying bare every influence

I came across a notice about this book on facebook. The author is so passionate about animal issues, I figured I would like it. I was surprised to find that the book is about so much more. Clearly animals are Susie's first love, and her care about this subject brought me to tears in a couple of moments. I also thought it was great to read about her hometown though. I liked what she said about classic movies and movie stars too - like James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor. I thought this was really fun and easy to read. Meant the world to me to find someone like me.

I thought this book was a remarkable set of personal essays told with wit and honesty. I find it hard to believe that some of the other reviewers even read this book or even gave it a fair shot. I realize we have become a culture in which "Twilight" is high art, but this book is literate and creative and deeply confessional in nature. I feel like I learned a great deal about the author, her upbringing, and how that shapes her current view of today's world. She has a distinct and compelling style (something that should be celebrated in the literary community), and I can't help but wonder if some of the below folks would level similar accusations against Vonnegut or Twain, Hawthorne or Melville. Folks, it is a collection of first-person essays forming a kind of memoir. There are no "characters." These are colorful people in the author's life populating an equally colorful town. Like many other classic essayists, Sexton takes a spark from real-life or an overview of a moment in time to use as a lens on some matter of import today. It is a clever approach and should be appreciated for its form and substance. If you like reading cookbooks or gothic horror romances, don't read this book. If you enjoy beloved memories warmly shared and juxtaposed against contemporary perspectives on a world that sometimes seems perilously close to spinning out of control, then you will find this book appropriately challenging, enlightening, and fun.

I could barely read this book. Run on sentences, sentence fragments and inside information make this utterly incomprehensible. The only part worthwhile was the piece on Susan Boyle.

Review: Secrets of an Old Typewriter – Susie Duncan Sexton

This book was a story of life, written in journal form. I usually like reading books written in this form. However, this one was written in such a sporadic way, that I could not get through it. The writing is like someone on Ritalin. The author speaks in sentence fragments and run on sentences and is hyperactive the entire way through. Here is an example:

“August calendars about to be ripped off, September demands textbook expenditures, back-to-school clothes, and supplies. No longer do affordable spiral notebooks, No. 2 pencils, and rulers send parents to local downtown 5 & 10 cent stores. Laptops for everyone regardless of the financial burdens which that expectation may cause. Pull out those credit cards for Best Buy cashiers to scan.”

I could not finish it. I give it a 2 out of 5.

I have to start off by saying that this was an eBook and my eyes are not fabulous to begin with, so there was a bit of a damper on my reading experience from the get-go. (However, I do understand that eBooks are much more affordable and easier to access so I understand why it was distributed that way for now.)

I love the idea, but like many of the other reviews, I felt that there were parts that bordered on the bit too rambly side. That being said, I thought that the dialogue seemed authentic and fun.

I was really excited to receive this book as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers promotion. I do have to start off by saying that the edition that I received was an e-book format, which seemed counter-intuitive and not entirely appropriate for a nostalgic book about small town life in the 50's and 60's; however, that is a personal media preference that should probably be overlooked in an impartial critical review. That said, the cover image seemed very fitting and pulled me in to the cozy small town feel immediately. I enjoyed Sexton's voice as it reminded me of a quaint and meandering conversation over tea with Grandma. Overall, though, I struggled with the text and its many quotation marks and long sentences and huge paragraphs. I didn't end up connecting with any of the characters in the first half of the book and I ended up skimming through the second half of the book just to try to give it a fair evaluation.½

Review based on ARC.

I'm feeling nostalgic these days and this book fit in with that mode. While I could not relate to the time of this book, I did enjoy learning about it. Sexton's style is easy and conversational, though not as polished as I have become accustomed to. However, the style of the author - in its somewhat clumsy, completely accessible, old-lady-next-door way, was endearing and comforting.

Coming from a relatively "small town" (not this small) myself, and having been raised to appreciate Soda Jerks and Otis Redding, after spending over a decade out in the real world, this was a welcome saunter down simplicity.

I can understand why many were frustrated with the book. The plot is less a plot and more a series of memories, the writing style is basic, and the references do not always involve the younger reader in its import. However, I think if you take the book as a series of conversations with your grandma or neighbor, it becomes enjoyable and sweet.

I recommend. It will more likely appeal to older readers who can relate to the period and the mentality -- and many younger, more impatient readers will have difficulty staying focused. But if you're looking for that simple little break, pick it up and read a chapter or two...

(note: I was born in the late 70s)

I wanted to be excited about reading this book. I grew up in a small town and love reading books with that setting. But, I found the story hard to follow. The characters just did draw me in enough to want to read to the end.

I was very excited when I received my digital copy of this book. I eagerly uploaded it to my Sony Reader in preparation for a roadtrip. However, I was sorely disappointed. While I have to be honest and admit that I did not finish the book, I also have to say I have no intention of doing so in the near future. While Sexton's tone is cute and I admire the history she has with her typewriter itself, I found the writing itself to be so scattered, juvenile, and unpolished, that I was unable to get into the book and find a purpose to continue reading.

As an essayist myself, I value the ability to write individual pieces that can be linked together to create a picture of a certain time or place, which this book certainly aims to do. I sadly found it falling short.

I liked it this and thought it was cute. Since it was more my mom's time period of growing up I gave it to her and she LOVED it. We grew up in a REAL small town. It never had a movie theater, still doesn't. But did have a drugstore with a soda fountain, a small dept. store and the skating rink was only 2 miles away. If you grew up in a small town in the 50's or early 60's and enjoy reading people's personal experiences, give this a try. It's not too long & won't take you a lot of time.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. While I am a fan of the well-turned phrase, it felt like every sentence was overdone - too many multi-syllable words, one complicated sentence after another with no variation, unusual word order for the sake of novelty. It got annoying after awhile. Probably another point of difficulty for me was the fact that Ms.Sexton, as a personality (and in memoirs personality is important) wasn't that appealing. Too quick to point out where the world is going wrong (and where she is not) and a bit fond of name dropping. Though certainly she must have lived an interesting life as it intersected so often with the well-known. I'm sure there is an ample audience of readers that would find this memoir fun to read - I'm just not part of that audience.

This book is a series of essays by the author, which I assume were published on her blog or in the local paper. Growing up in a small town and always thinking of myself as a small town girl, I thought that I would really like this book (and I am embarrassed to admit this, but the title and cover art helped sway me) . However, I found that I could not get into the rhythm of the book and found that I did not "click" with the author's voice. The stories, while interesting, have a strong local flavour which I did not identify with, and found it difficult to relate to my experiences.½

This book wasn't what I thought it would be. The title caught my eye but the book was much different from what I expected. I found the book to be a bit scattered. There were references to people without any background information, and people came into the story as quickly as they left it. Overall, I just didn't enjoy it.

This book caught my eye because of the cover art and the blurb posted on LT under the Early Reviewer's Program, in particular the statement that Anyone who has ever lived in a small town certainly knows that secrets are sometimes not so secret. I thought to myself, now this has potential for an interesting read!

Interesting it is, but probably not geared towards myself as the target audience. Comprising of 4 parts and a total of 44 chapters, Sexton provides the reader with her personal trip down memory lane of growing up in Columbia City, Indiana; her collegiate years; and adult life in the same town as a Language Arts instructor, animal rescuer and all around civic citizen. One could call the book a collection of vignettes, opinions, and insightful words of wisdom wrapped up and delivered with Sexton's personal flourish.

As previously mentioned, while interesting, I wasn't taken with this one. I found the trip down memory lane chapters to either contain references to movies, books, and famous people I had only a passing knowledge of, and references to local town folk that I had no knowledge of at all and no hope of gaining any knowledge of. Context, to a large extent, is assumed here, which left me wondering sometimes while reading if I was the outsider to a private joke. I also found the use of quotations. colloquialisms, cliches and the italicizing of words and phrases a bit on the excessive side, which didn't help with some of what i found to be a series of run-on sentences.

Overall, the story does deliver what it claims - a view of small town life in America from the 1950's and '60s through to current day, with opinions on a number of diverse topics (religion, politics, etc) told from the perspective of the writer. Sadly, I had a lot of trouble developing interest in the majority of the snippets provided by Sexton and came away feeling that the book would probably fair better in the hands of more localized readers or possibly a generation that also grew up during the 50's and 60's.

This book was courtesy of Librarything's Early Reviewer Program.½

I received this book via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

I requested this book because the title caught my attention. I expected it to be a humorous and thoughtful glimpse as to what it might be like to be a woman in a small town. Unfortunately, this book did not live up to my expectations. I did not find that it had much structure- it kind of just dove right into the storytelling without any background. Most of the references were lost on me. As much as I wanted to like this book, it was a struggle for me to get through. I couldn't relate to the characters or the story itself and wasnt sad when it was over.

Disclaimer: This review is coming from a girl in her mid-twenties who grew up in a big city... I can easily see this being a book that someone who is my mother's age or older might appreciate.

As much as I wanted to love this book, I just could not. While there were some sections that were enjoyable, it was hard to follow and get into. I just did not relate that well to the book. I would not recommend this to my friends, but I might to my mother.

It was an enjoyable read! Something to curl up on the front porch and enjoy a crisp fall morning with. Not overly complicated, but engrossing enough to keep me captivated page after page. Would recommend to friends!

Poetic, energetic. Sentimental, temperamental. Those stories I could relate to were easy reading and enjoyable. Some I just didn't get and a few weren't in line with my political bent. All things considered, it is a fun read and I would recommend this book to some of my friends.

A child of the 1940's and '50's, Sexton aptly describes her autobiographical stories as 'sassy.' She visits various topics as a senior citizen looking back through her personal history, colored at times by old TV shows, movies and song lyric references. There are few political comments and little political bias. She is a vegan and animal lover. Her treatment of religion will no doubt be considered irreverent by fundamentalists, but she calls it like she sees it and as a free-thinker, lifts up the hypocrisy of time-honored conventions. The writing is sporadic at times, morphing into poetry on occasion, sentence fragments and stream-of-consciousness narrative. I was reminded of Vonnegut as I read this relatively short book, at times poignant, scathing, and compassionate. It is worth a second read sometime in the future.

An Early Reviewer copy in eBook format for review.½