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Laddar... No Instructions Needed: An American Boyhood in the 1950sav Robert G. Hewitt
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Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. Det här är en av LibraryThings förhandsrecensioner. Robert Hewitt's childhood is one to be proud of. His youthful adventures remind me of my dad who also grew up in the 1950s, and some parts are surprisingly similar to my own childhood in the 1980s. No Instructions Needed isn't a coming-of-age story governed by a single narrative, the kind you'd expect from movies, but rather a collection of chronological events as Hewitt recalls them. It's nostalgic and often humorous, like sitting around the dinner table and listening to one of grandpa's tales.The last chapter of the book deserves a special mention. Hewitt's epilogue, a sympathetic observation of the passing decades since becoming an adult, was one of the most satisfying and touching conclusions I've ever read. It deserves five stars on its own. Well done. Det här är en av LibraryThings förhandsrecensioner. When you see the cover of this book, I suppose you know not to expect As I Lay Dying or Sense and Sensibility or something. And thank God for that. That's not at all what a book like this is about. As a very human telling of his childhood, Hewitt succeeded in pulling me into his mind and made me share in exactly what he was feeling at such an important time of his life. I am a big fan of travelogues, and I saw a lot of parallels between this autobiography and the classic travel essay. The picture of the time and place, the richness of recollection, and the great characterizations of ordinary, extraordinary people. The structure of the book is very accessible, and if you have an interest in the 50s and enjoy a good laugh, this book is a great way to get both. Det här är en av LibraryThings förhandsrecensioner. No Instructions Needed reminded me a bit of the stories of Jean Shepherd, but with a somewhat different tone (the prevailing spirit of the '50s America of Hewitt's stories being different from the '20s and '30s of Shepherd's). Nostalgic, but with perspective and humor. The only thing I didn't like about the book is how short some of the stories are; I enjoyed them, enjoyed the vivid picture Hewitt gives us of the settings and people of his childhood, but I just wish there were more of it. Det här är en av LibraryThings förhandsrecensioner. I have what I suppose is a case of false nostalgia for the old-fashioned childhood that I'm too young to have experienced. Hewitt does a fine job of feeding that hunger. The collection of brief anecdotes and reminisces presented in _No Instructions Needed_ is simple, pleasant, and satisfying. There were a couple of ways in which I was left a little unsatisfied, though. Many of the earlier incidents in the book are quite short, ending just as they seem to be getting started. I would have preferred it if they had been more extended, or perhaps linked together. The chapters from the second half, when the author is speaking about his later years, tend to be a better length. Secondly, I felt that Hewitt relied too heavily on recounting what *had* happened instead of relating it as it *did* happen — i.e., talking about events that occurred some time ago rather than bringing the reader through them as he experienced them. It's a legitimate stylistic choice, of course, but I would have preferred more of the immediacy and dialogue we get only a small taste of. Showing rather than telling would also have tightened up the delivery of much of the humor of the episodes. Still, Hewitt has plenty of good material here and the right idea in his storytelling. With some additional editing, Volume 2 could be even better. inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
An affectionate memoir by artist Robert Hewitt about what it was like to be a boy in America in the 1950s, in a world where even indulged only children were expected to amuse themselves with little assistance from adults, where a boy and his best friend - another science nut - went alley-scavenging for project parts, where the family sunroom was filled with model trains, the refrigerator with chocolate milk, and a fellow's suitcase with firecrackers. It was a time of boredom in school, growing fascination with girls, and encounters of the scary kind with over-protective fathers. There was the first car that mysteriously knew to the penny how much money a boy had made that weekend bagging groceries - and shaped its repair needs accordingly. There was the brand new second car that demanded dangerous accessories. And there was the girl, the special girl, who almost stripped its gears, yet still remained an object of desire. There was all the fun of growing up in a more-innocent time in a pleasant neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else - and what they'd been up to - and were quick to tell a fellow's parents all that they knew. And there was the family, long-suffering but loving, which provided the supportive environment in a past that was really another country, where boys did do things differently. It was a lot of fun. 6 hours and six minutes. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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But it ended up being sweet and kind of melancholy and by the last few chapters I was interested to see how the author ended up. It brought back a lot of memories of my own childhood although I was pretty much a decade after the author. ( )