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lspargo's review against another edition
3.0
I really like Sarah Vowell. This book was kind of a diary of a year listening to the radio. She listened to different music and programs every day and wrote thoughts about them. The year was 1995, so the book is pretty dated. There were a lot of events and music that I didn't know about. I was still amused by her comic wit, and it was very interesting that she talked a lot about Rush Limbaugh and how much of an idiot he is. I guess some things don't change much in 14 years.
smolek's review against another edition
2.0
I love Sarah Vowell, but I'm not a fan of the diary format in this book. I just couldn't focus on it and had to keep putting it down and picking it up again later.
carrieliza's review against another edition
3.0
I love Sarah Vowell, but this one falls short. Still an enjoyable read (for me), though.
ivanssister's review against another edition
4.0
Sarah Vowell definitely Has Views when it comes to music. She and I wouldn't see eye to eye on everything, but we do have the same opinion of the Grateful Dead. This is really where she all began, and it's fun to read about her visiting Ira Glass at the birth of This American Life.
bryce_is_a_librarian's review against another edition
3.0
As I do whenever she has a new book coming out I'm busy rereading the collected work of Sarah Vowel. She's has one of my favorite voices period, warm, funny, intelligent, confidential, conversational, and occasionally scathing.
That being said as of Radio On she hadn't quite got it right. Not that she had it wrong, she always had her knack for seeing beauty in strange places, humor where there seems little chance to find it, and a keen sense of how pop culture and history shape our lives.
It's just all a little off, the tone is for lack of a better word, too damn bitchy, the voice is too impressed with it's own intelligent, it's generation X in it's worst most navel gazingly self satisfied.
Imagine if you will that Reality Bites wrote a book.
That being said as of Radio On she hadn't quite got it right. Not that she had it wrong, she always had her knack for seeing beauty in strange places, humor where there seems little chance to find it, and a keen sense of how pop culture and history shape our lives.
It's just all a little off, the tone is for lack of a better word, too damn bitchy, the voice is too impressed with it's own intelligent, it's generation X in it's worst most navel gazingly self satisfied.
Imagine if you will that Reality Bites wrote a book.
akooda7's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent. From an Okie in Muskogee to PJ Harvey and lots of Rush in between. I enjoyed pulling up old favorites - Hole and finding new ones. Sarah Vowell keep on rocking in the free world.
renatasnacks's review against another edition
3.0
I love Sarah Vowell's essays, but I held off on reading this based on lukewarm Amazon reviews. And now, here I am, about to put out my own lukewarm review. This book had some great moments, and it was an interesting time capsule of 1995. I especially loved reading tidbits about the history of This American Life. But, well, it reads like a diary, not like an essay collection--there's something appealing about the unpolished vibe, but mostly I'd take Partly-Cloudy Patriot over this any day. Still, worth a read if you like Vowell's other stuff, or if you like radio, or, whatever.
finesilkflower's review against another edition
3.0
This is Sarah Vowell's first book, before she discovered her thing of narrating history like a story. It's actually in the mold of that "I did a thing for a year and wrote about it" type book that is so popular now. For one year, 1995, Sarah (radio being an intimate medium, I feel like I know her and will therefore refer to her by her given name) listened to the radio each day. She also did some reporting, visiting radio stations, including sitting in on production of WBEZ's "The Wild Room" and "This American Life" (in its first season!), and her own former college radio station. The book is a diary of her impressions and mini-essays on the medium of radio and the type of content found there, including music (oh, the 90s: grunge, rock, oldies. Jerry Garcia dies this year, but the major ghost is Kurt Cobain, who'd died the previous year, and who Sarah loved); news (Clinton, Oklahoma bombing, Michael Jordan); pundits (man, Rush Limbaugh has been around forever); public radio (at a turning point and just beginning to introduce new voices to its staid Morning Edition/Garrison Keillor lineup).
This book is graded on a curve. It's Sarah Vowell! She's young here, 25 or so, but fully herself in all her different sides--the serious but goofy academic, the cool but nerdy music lover, the cynical but hopeful liberal patriot. But the book is hard to get through. It can be dense and meandering, lacks an arc, and the topicality, though interesting (1995 is an interesting year), also makes it quite dated. I admit I didn't read every word. After about the first half, I ended up skimming for the parts about Ira Glass.
There are interesting tidbits here for the This American Life superfan. (Me.) I think it documents Sarah and Ira's first meeting--she sits on on his pre-TAL show, The Wild Room, and then Ira and Anahed drive her home and they listen to Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner," from which she gets the title of her book, "Radio on!" So cute. Later, Sarah observes as Ira, Nancy, and Alix rush to cut together an episode (#4, "Vacations") with five minutes to spare before the to-air deadline. Sarah is a reporter/fan here, but she must have gotten her job at TAL, with her affectionate and admiring title "Consigliere Sarah Vowell", shortly after this book was written.
This book is graded on a curve. It's Sarah Vowell! She's young here, 25 or so, but fully herself in all her different sides--the serious but goofy academic, the cool but nerdy music lover, the cynical but hopeful liberal patriot. But the book is hard to get through. It can be dense and meandering, lacks an arc, and the topicality, though interesting (1995 is an interesting year), also makes it quite dated. I admit I didn't read every word. After about the first half, I ended up skimming for the parts about Ira Glass.
There are interesting tidbits here for the This American Life superfan. (Me.) I think it documents Sarah and Ira's first meeting--she sits on on his pre-TAL show, The Wild Room, and then Ira and Anahed drive her home and they listen to Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner," from which she gets the title of her book, "Radio on!" So cute. Later, Sarah observes as Ira, Nancy, and Alix rush to cut together an episode (#4, "Vacations") with five minutes to spare before the to-air deadline. Sarah is a reporter/fan here, but she must have gotten her job at TAL, with her affectionate and admiring title "Consigliere Sarah Vowell", shortly after this book was written.
jwmcoaching's review against another edition
3.0
The least enjoyable of Vowell's works, I still liked what is essentially a year-long diary of listening to the radio at random times almost everyday. The diary was done nearly 15 years ago, so it's interesting to recall the things that she writes about -- the recent death of Kurt Cobain, the rise of the Republican Congress, Rush Limbaugh, the Clinton Administration. It was also nice to discover new music that I'd never heard before and to hear about the early years of Ira Glass and David Sedaris on NPR.
heathrayhay's review against another edition
3.0
I'm in this habit of purchasing books by Sarah Vowell in hopes that I will be wowed enough to keep them around on my bookshelf. With this in mind I have purchased two of her books and, after reading them in the span of a few hours or a few days, turned around and sold them right back to a second-hand bookstore.
"Radio On" was a decent read. It kept me occupied on the bus rides home. Vowell's ascerbic criticism of NPR radio personalities echoed similar conversations I have with myself when listening to the radio. I never knew those kinds of random rambling could make it into print. As a concept, diligently followed everyday for an entire year, it is impressive in its inspection of a something most of think of as background noise. Her chapter on Michael Heizer's "Double Negative" was, by far (and possibly my only), favorite Sarah Vowell excerpt. The image of Sarah and her friend tossing a frisbee across the void made my day. Oh, if she could just put together a volume of sneering at obnoxious male artist personalities I just might retain that on my bookshelf.
"Radio On" was a decent read. It kept me occupied on the bus rides home. Vowell's ascerbic criticism of NPR radio personalities echoed similar conversations I have with myself when listening to the radio. I never knew those kinds of random rambling could make it into print. As a concept, diligently followed everyday for an entire year, it is impressive in its inspection of a something most of think of as background noise. Her chapter on Michael Heizer's "Double Negative" was, by far (and possibly my only), favorite Sarah Vowell excerpt. The image of Sarah and her friend tossing a frisbee across the void made my day. Oh, if she could just put together a volume of sneering at obnoxious male artist personalities I just might retain that on my bookshelf.