carolbsmith's review
3.0
It was well-written, but I guess I'm not a big fan of memoirs. I got bored...
mg_libros's review against another edition
5.0
Me ha gustado. Hay un trozo a mitad del libro que se me ha hecho un poco más pesado, pero en general muy bien.
nakedsushi's review against another edition
5.0
Masterful and wonderful to read. Like a good scotch, The Tender Bar should not be rushed through and instead, savored slowly and thoroughly. Also like scotch, it took me a couple of exposures to The Tender Bar before I started liking it.
The first exposure was when my husband and I were researching bars we should visit while in Tokyo. During my googling, I found a few mentions of this book but read a blurb about it and thought it sounded boring, so I let it slip my mind. In Tokyo, we visited an eponymous bar on the fifth floor of an anonymous looking office building. (Coincidentally, the master bartender who works at this bar shares the same first-letter, lastname combination as a former colleague at Goodreads.) At this bar I had one of the most expertly shaken drinks of my life. All subsequent drinks would be compared to the ones I consumed at the Tender Bar.
My second exposure was after I had read The Great Gatsby for the first time since highschool. The book that I only thought of as a requirement during my first reading revealed its subtleties and sad themes during my second reading. After finishing the book, I wanted more books like it and consulted some reading lists online for comparable books. The Tender Bar was mentioned and I added it to my to-read list. It wasn’t till a year later, when someone on a gaming forum mentioned the book, that I finally got around to reading it.
Although I categorized the book as a bildungsroman, it’s less of a coming of age as it is a coming to terms book. Moehringer crafts a Dickensian (I hope you like that word because it comes up more than a handful of times in the book) tale about the men at a bar. Like life, it’s not any one story or experience or even one person at the bar that changes the boy, but a culmination of events and disappointments that pushes him into being the type of man that makes his mother proud.
The Tender Bar is the type of novel I’d want to read by the fire with a comforting glass of scotch. It’s heartbreaking at times, but there’s a certain hopeful undercurrent to the writing. Even in the sections where Moehringer is an adult, it was easy to see that he was still very much still a boy.
The first exposure was when my husband and I were researching bars we should visit while in Tokyo. During my googling, I found a few mentions of this book but read a blurb about it and thought it sounded boring, so I let it slip my mind. In Tokyo, we visited an eponymous bar on the fifth floor of an anonymous looking office building. (Coincidentally, the master bartender who works at this bar shares the same first-letter, lastname combination as a former colleague at Goodreads.) At this bar I had one of the most expertly shaken drinks of my life. All subsequent drinks would be compared to the ones I consumed at the Tender Bar.
My second exposure was after I had read The Great Gatsby for the first time since highschool. The book that I only thought of as a requirement during my first reading revealed its subtleties and sad themes during my second reading. After finishing the book, I wanted more books like it and consulted some reading lists online for comparable books. The Tender Bar was mentioned and I added it to my to-read list. It wasn’t till a year later, when someone on a gaming forum mentioned the book, that I finally got around to reading it.
Although I categorized the book as a bildungsroman, it’s less of a coming of age as it is a coming to terms book. Moehringer crafts a Dickensian (I hope you like that word because it comes up more than a handful of times in the book) tale about the men at a bar. Like life, it’s not any one story or experience or even one person at the bar that changes the boy, but a culmination of events and disappointments that pushes him into being the type of man that makes his mother proud.
The Tender Bar is the type of novel I’d want to read by the fire with a comforting glass of scotch. It’s heartbreaking at times, but there’s a certain hopeful undercurrent to the writing. Even in the sections where Moehringer is an adult, it was easy to see that he was still very much still a boy.
yrpalal's review
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Death of parent, Grief, Emotional abuse, Violence, and Cursing
kricketa's review
2.0
read for book club. not my cup of tea. (or in the case of our book club, glass of wine.) i got so far in it, though, that it seemed stupid not to finish it. too long, too whiny, waah waah waah.
kitkat2500's review
3.0
A well-written memoir full of colorful, larger-than-life characters. The most present, of course, is the bar at which the author spends so much of his youth. The book is written with lots of emotion, with a particular focus on the need that a young boy has for male role models. His relationship with his mother is quite prominent as well. I hope the author writes a follow-up book that explores the challenges of the years after he left the bar...