This book applies to the Triple Eight Challenge (since I’ve changed my categories).
HOW THEY MET, AND OTHER STORIES is an amazing collection of stories about love by brilliant author David Levithan. Each of these stories is fantastic in its own way, but they’re all so different! Some of them are more my kind of story than others, but even in those that were not my very favorites, I could recognise awesomeness. Every one created such great characters, and was so memorable. I felt like I wanted to read an entire novel about the characters in each story. That’s my only complaint; there wasn’t enough! I’ll talk now about a few stories I really loved.
Starbucks Boy is a really fun story about a boy who is hired for a babysitting job. His charge likes to go to Starbucks (he assumes that this must be normal for a child from New York City; after all, she’s got to be more sophisticated than kids where he’s from), and there he sees the Starbucks boy. According to Gabriel, every Starbucks has one, and he’s always out of reach. Or is he? I really just adored this story, the first in the book. This is one of the ones in particular that I wanted a whole novel out of. Seriously, David, make this one into a novel!
The Escalator, A Love Story is a lovely story about a typical high school couple. It’s just so honest and candid and wonderful. That’s all I have to say on the matter. I’ll leave you wondering. Go buy the book and read it. It comes out January 8.
The Number of People Who Meet on Airplanes is another fantastic story. It’s about a couple who meet on an airplane, as the title suggests. Totally wonderful and totally random…Right? Coincidences leading up to love is a big theme in quite a few of these stories, exemplified by the last one in this collection, Intersection (which is short, thought-provoking, and amazing).
Princes also really blew me away. It is another one that feels like it could be a novel, but, as they all are, it’s also completely wonderful on its own, without any more added to it. The characters and their relationships are amazing here.
I could probably gush about each and every story in the collection, even those that weren’t quite my cup of tea like A Romantic Inclination. Even if short stories are not necessarily your thing (they aren’t really mine), I would strongly suggest you read this book about love, in so many of its different wonderful forms. Just as love is varied, these stories are all so incredibly different; what they have in common, though, is that they are spellbinding, simply brilliant, just wonderful.
January 6, 2008 at 6:38 am
Well, one reason I *don’t* like short stories is because they aren’t long stories. I like stories where I know I have plenty of pages of writing to look forward to : )
Anyway, HOW THEY MET, AND OTHER STORIES sounds really cool – thanks for describing some of the stories in it :D
(Oh, wow, major redundancies I see…)
January 7, 2008 at 3:09 am
Great review. I’m in the mood for short stories. I think this book will do the trick. Thanks!
January 12, 2008 at 4:10 am
:) I’m reviewing this tomorrow! I didn’t have enough time to do so on Thursday, when I intended to, so I thought I’d wait for the weekend. :)
January 17, 2009 at 4:42 pm
i read this book. its awesome and i strongly recommend it to anyone who is looking for love or is in love. it shows the pain and reality of love. David Levithan did a beautiful job in capturing the concept of love. Extremely insightful and well thought out. Each story shows Levithan’s creativity and personal experiences that inspired him to create such a wonderful novel. 5 stars
February 2, 2009 at 7:35 pm
im reading this book and my favorite so far is ‘starbucks boy’ and i agree with the review i want a novel about some–A LOT of the stories maybe he should make a “how they met 2” XD
July 13, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Just finished the book today. Absolutely loved the different combinations of short stories. I can’t really pick 1 but i loved miss steamboat and princes!
August 6, 2013 at 10:54 pm
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March 18, 2014 at 4:44 pm
thanks for the review! I’m planning to buy this book tomorrow. I hope I’ll love it as much as you do ^^