I did not find Hooligan to be to my liking, but I'm not going to say it is a bad book. I found it to be a bit bland and not very exciting. ( )

I am enjoying this book when I take it at face value.

The book isn't a linear narrative, nor does it press on the reader an earnest message; instead, I read it as a collection of Douglas Thayer's memories, like the transcription of an oral history. It repeats, it loops back on itself, and it idealizes the past -- just as a story-teller will do. Within this framing device, however, the book also reveals a lot about the author: pride in his home, warm regard for his community, and a knowing reexamination of his growth in faith.

I knew very little about growing up in the West, and nearly nothing about the author's church -- which I will confess initially attracted me, a Midwest Catholic, to the book. As I read it, I felt a resonance with other stories of growing up at the time, and I also recognized a little of my own childhood developing awareness of religion, morality (I was tweaked when the author writes that membership in the Boy Scouts required him to be moral), and the world around me.

Another interesting aspect of this book was Thayer's attitude toward World War II: he and his friends were eager to go off to war as soon as they were old enough. Contemporary attitudes condemn war out of hand, but that denies the validity of feelings like those the author expresses.

I like the Thayer's voice, too. It captures a real boy's focus on fighting, fishing, and play, but there are grace notes in an adult's knowing tone that save the book from being purely naive.

There's no shortage of (auto)biographies about growing up in the same decades, and I have read quite a few of them. This one fits in well with the others because it tells about a community -- Utah's Mormons -- that's not often discussed, and so it will stay on my bookshelf. ( )

Memoirs are everywhere. Readers who gobble up true tales of actors, teachers, chefs and adventurers are in a golden age of gluttony. Seasoned writers and the newly launched are hard at work writing down their life histories, hoping to entertain and sell books. In many cases, they succeed.

Mormons are everywhere,too. Marie Osmond faints, dances and struggles with personal loss. Her brothers, with their big white smiles and graying hair, still sing and dance, too, a bit awkward after all these years. Mormons are running for President, in jail after being on America’s Most Wanted lists, and hosting Lyndsay Lohan as she goes through detox.

Put a Mormon and a memoir together and you might have something exciting. In this case, you have Hooligan; A Mormon Boyhood by Douglas Thayer.

In many ways, Mr. Thayer’s childhood was no different from my own, although we are separated by age, sex, religion and geographical location. My friends and I played games like kick the can and hop scotch, threw snowballs at cars, wondered about the opposite sex, and slammed the screen door. We had homeroom teachers, faced humiliation if we repeated a grade and were dragged to the principal’s office if we got into trouble. We had chores, got into fights and tried to get a grip on some candy any way we could. Not too unusual for most kids, I expect.

I am sure Mr. Thayer is a very sweet man and very happy to tell all of us about his childhood. I just wish I had been entertained. ( )

The book Hooligan is a series of vignettes about a boy growing up in Utah in the 1930's and 1940's. Several of the things he mentioned I was familiar with from my own childhood. Some of the things I heard from my mother from stories of her childhood. I was looking forward to reading this book and was disappointed in the lack of information about family relationships. Certain major events warranted only a sentence or two. ( )

This memoir is truly a boy's story. The narrator told the story from a boy's point of view with vivid details and wonderful vignettes. From the first page, where he comments "We were to be seen and not heard.", the narrative is filled with moments that resonated for me even though my own boyhood was much different than the author's. I found the episodic style another aspect that made this like a boy's story for it seemed more natural that he would tell it in this, somewhat unorganized, manner. Nevertheless I looked forward to each chapter and the new events and information that it would bring. The characters and events seemed real even when we learn few details about them.

The memoir provided sufficient detail to bring a different place and time alive. The accumulation of episodes and events led to a rich picture of another era when things were truly simpler. Again this rang true to me based on my own boyhood. The narrator includes changes in his life like the separation of his parents and his school experiences that provide an additional layer of meaning for the memoir. While there was a certain detachment of the narrator from all of this, the result for this reader was that the memoir took on a dreamlike quality that enhanced the feeling of difference in this particular place.

Through its presentation as an episodic boy's story the overall effect was one that made me feel that I was a participant in this story. I was satisfied as the narrative ended that I had shared some part of this interesting boyhood. ( )