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Comments (39)

What did you think about this title?
1 to 25 of 39 items
Jul 11, 2023gmoney83 rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Road trip through 1950's America, at the tempo of fast jazz. This is the novel that put Jack K on the map (pun intended). A group of characters with different motivations ( reconnect with someone, one wants to be a writer) go on a cross…
Nov 17, 2022mjrw13 rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
I really wanted to read this book, given that it is considered an American classic. Having read it, I do wonder why it has received such acclaim as I would classify it as merely okay. It is not a particularly readable novel - I honestly…
Jun 30, 2022lmustafa92 rated this title 1 out of 5 stars
WOW. This literary classic is straight up.. not good y'all. Evil, dare I say? I dreaded every day I had to pick this up to complete it because my brain won't let me just not finish a book. Sure, I had some moments in the book where I was…
Nov 09, 2021trhwaupaca rated this title 0.5 out of 5 stars
I wasted 200 pages of my reading life waiting for the "quintessential American vision of freedom and hope," as the 2011 paperback blurb puts it, and all I got was a sick, sycophantic relationship between the narrator Sal (based on Kerouac…
Sep 05, 20211tarheel rated this title 1 out of 5 stars
Ugh. I knew I needed to read this one, if only for its influence on later generations. And, now that I've done it, yep, that's the only reason I can think to read it. Constant non-sequiturs, weird word choices, and an absence of any…
Aug 11, 2021PRWalz rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
I left the Army in 1997 and began managing a used bookstore in N. Virginia when I came across this book. It was the first book that I read, then immediately read again. There only a handful of books that I call life-changing, and this is…
Jul 30, 2021
'On the Road' tells the story of two young men as they travel across America during the 1950s. Kerouac tells this classic tale of two 'angry young men' looking for a dream with spontaneity and life.
May 21, 2021BayouJohn rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
In counterpoint to other's reviews of this "classic", I just don't get it. So tedious, repetitive, tiresome, pointless, self centered aimless wandering. Kerouac's bohemian wanderings with his posse of drunken, drug addled, thieving and…
Apr 05, 2021dgiard rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
In Jack Kerouac's "On the Road", narrator Sal Paradise and his friends crisscross the United States, searching for America, God, and themselves. Along the way, they also search for jazz, booze, drugs, girls, and adventure. Although Sal…
Mar 06, 2021Shuken_1989 rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
"On the Road" is part travel journal and spiritual treatise capturing the listless and curious spirit of America's Beat Generation. Jack Kerouac (referred to as Sal Paradise in the book) is on of the patron saints of the Beat Movement,…
Dec 12, 2020mikey69 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
There's nothing more American than the road trip. People hopping in their cars and taking to the road. It's hard to tell why that is; perhaps our penchant for mobility. Perhaps our gleeful giddiness over anything new. Or maybe it's a…
Aug 10, 2020alecbussott rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Take Hemingway's meandering storytelling and add the Beat generation's stream-of-consciousness writing style, and you will have On the Road.
Aug 05, 20201aa rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This was among my favorite novels... once. Upon re-reading it I found that apart from their trips, we don't really get to know much about the characters. The characters are quite a wild bunch: sex, drunkenness, drugs, and crime are all…
Dec 27, 2019dixithanoop rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Obviously, we all know this book is a classic. Reading this was pure bliss! Reading this was meditating via reading. Reading this was a bibliophile orgasming. This is also the first book that I've read this year that I'm going with a five…
Nov 10, 2019maiki69 rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
The road trip is a popular theme in American literature. Ever since Lewis and Clark chronicled their expedition of 1804, America's appetite for the genre has been insatiable. But there's more to a successful story than the mere nuts and…
Aug 04, 2019Waluconis rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Was there ever a novel with a history like this one? When Jack Kerouac brought the manuscript for "On The Road" into the publisher's office, it was on one long, taped-together scroll with no pagination and no paragraph breaks. When he…
Jun 02, 2019lendmeyourears2017 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
I want to see what he has seen. I want to know the people he has known. I want to share these experiences. Sal Paradise/Jack Kerouac takes you on a truly satisfying trip, told in journal style, down the American back roads in…
May 29, 2019
This book made no sense to me. Halfway through, I realized it was just a random series of events about driving across the country. Too many run-on sentences. The plot was going nowhere. Did not enjoy it.
May 25, 2019MustInvolveEggs rated this title 0.5 out of 5 stars
I read that Joan Haverty Kerouac brought her husband split pea soup to keep him going while he wrote this book. If that’s true, it is now my #1 reason to hate split pea soup. To be fair to On The Road, it’s great material for drinking…
Feb 25, 2019rdtansey rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
I really tried to understand what Kerouac was trying to say in this book - there isn't much of a plot and the book just ends. After reading the reviews it is supposed to be an anti-capitalism statement about "living in the moment" and not…
Feb 15, 2019whatcomhillwalker rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
When it was written it was an expose of the shadow side and hidden aspects of the American dream. The original road trip book for America. By now it has been done so many times in book and in film that I can't imagine it still holds any…
Sep 08, 2016stewstealth rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
A stream of consciousnesses novel regarding the author's travels back and forth across America and eventually into Mexico most often with his friend Neal Cassady ( I read the original scroll version of this book which is not edited for…
May 25, 2016xiaojunbpl12 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Dean, the devil (vs S. Paradise's angel), driving me mad... till the end of the road/book, when I lost the grip on his soul. Not for one who focus on pure rational description of human behavior, who is only comfortable with plain coherent…
IMolina3
Jun 25, 2015
I just watch this movie because of kristen stewart was in it..
Jul 10, 2013MyrtleLouise rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Well, now I at least know what all the hullabaloo is about. Interesting, but not one I would recommend.