Customer Reviews

How They Met, and Other Stories

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It began in a high school physics class. Bored and in search of distraction, David Levithan combed his physics textbook for romantic notions. He assembled them in a story called "A Romantic Inclination," which he gave to his friends for Valentine's Day. They liked it so much that each year he wrote them another story. This tradition led to his first novel and ultimately to HOW THEY MET AND OTHER STORIES, a collection of stories about love.

Best known for his positive, normalizing portrayals of teen relationships --- regardless of sexual orientation --- Levithan's stories focus on those longings that are the common denominators for the human heart. HOW THEY MET features matchmakers, chance encounters and broken hearts, in addition to the different kinds of love that exist between family and friends.

The collection begins with "Starbucks Boy," a hilarious story about the all-too-common experience of crushing on the neighborhood barista. Readers will no doubt identify with the self-aware tone of Levithan's narrator:

"Now, it has to be one of Starbucks's more brilliant marketing strategies to maintain at least one completely dreamy guy behind the counter at any given shift. This guy is invariably known as Starbucks Boy to the hundreds of regular customers who have a crush on him, and the glory of it is that he always seems just accessible enough to be within reach, but never accessible enough to actually touch.... He is, unlike most beautiful people you've ever encountered, friendly --- and you honestly believe it's not because that's a part of his job....[you] think that the way he says `good morning' or 'have a good one' or 'here you go' to you is a little different than the way he says it to anyone else. Or at least that's the hope."

HOW THEY MET is built upon moments as identifiable as crushes across the counter. Levithan has never needed earth-shattering events or severe trauma to get across the drama of ordinary life. But the best stories in this collection move beyond the happily-ever-after moments of cute introductions and push into the hungry places that make us long to belong.

Behind many of the stories here is an awareness that we are defined by who and how we love. Nowhere is this made so clear as in "Miss Lucy Had a Steamboat," in which the narrator defends her choice to remain alone:

"When I realized I was into girls, it was scary to let go of all the things I was supposed to be and all the things I was supposed to want. It's like you're a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say, I'm sorry, but this role isn't right for me. And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing. That was hard enough. But that was nothing --- nothing, I tell you --- compared to the idea that I could let go of the desire to have a girlfriend....Talk about something that had been ingrained. I wasn't letting go of love or sex or the idea of companionship. I was just rejecting the package in which it had been sold to me. I was going to say it was okay to be alone, when it felt like everyone in the world was saying that it wasn't okay, that I had to always want someone else, that the desire had to fuel me."

Who and how we love also extends to our family narratives. My favorite story in the collection, "The Princes," isn't just about a dancer choosing between two possible suitors. It's a family romance that explores the way families define themselves and express their love for one another. The most touching moment in the story is not when Jon discovers the identity of his true prince; it's when Jon's brother makes a stand about including Jon's boyfriend at his Bar Mitzvah. Levithan includes his own family romance in the book with stories about how his grandparents met. "I am here because of love," he writes, which makes us hope we can all claim the same.

David Levithan is a true believer when it comes to love. The stories in HOW WE MET are a testament to his faith that we are all created by love, sustained by love, and saved by love. Even those stories with less than happy endings suggest that even our uncomfortable or difficult relationships --- whether it is having one's partner leave for college or taking the wrong girl to the prom --- are steps along the way to being more capable of giving and receiving love.

--- Reviewed by Sarah A. Wood

When David Levithan was a junior in high school, he found himself bored in physics class, so he started flipping through his physics book and "finding as many romantic notions as possible." He started writing a story, and, by February, he was done. He shared this Valentine's Day treat with friends, and they asked for another. A tradition was born: he wrote a new short story every year for his friends and family.

How They Met, and Other Stories by David Levithan is more than just a collection of eighteen tales written by the same hand. The author prefers to call them as "stories about love" rather than "love stories," and I agree. This anthology is a many-splendored thing, a testament to different kinds of love: first crushes, the love of family, coincidental meetings, set-ups, break-ups, and make-ups. The Memory Dance celebrates a marriage of forty years, while Lost Sometimes (previously released in the 21 Proms anthology) has someone looking for more in his relationship.

As he did in The Realm of Possibility, Levithan has once again captured multiple voices and made it seem effortless. He offers first-person, second-person, and third-person narratives, with protagonists ranging in age from their teen years to their twilight years.

Starbucks Boy was my favorite piece in this collection, with its sweet story of a six-year-old who knows what (or who) is best for her new baby-sitter. The Number of People Who Meet on Airplanes and What a Song Can Do also vied for my affection.

The stories are not connected, and yet they are: By their underlying currents. By what they envoke (empathy and sympathy, tears and laughter) in readers. Each story has a different piece of the heart; when put together, they make for the loveliest of puzzles.

How They Met, and Other Stories is recommended for teens and adults.

The stories about how people meet and fall in love are as diverse as the couples themselves. From blind dates to chance encounters, the stories of "how we met" always seem to intrigue us.

HOW THEY MET, AND OTHER STORIES is the latest book by David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy). It is a collection of eighteen short stories about love, longing, and even lust. This wonderful group of stories includes brief crushes, relationships with happily-ever-after endings, and tales of love gone wrong.

Among the stories: being fixed up by a six-year-old; two strangers meeting on a plane; coming out to your prom date; even the author's own story of how he credits his existence to a piano, a jeep, a college, and the Army.

What makes this collection unique is that every story isn't about love being realized. In some cases, the potential only exists and even passes without materializing.

No matter what your experience with love so far, you are sure to find hope, and maybe a hint of your own love story, within the pages of this book.

Reviewed by: JodiG.

David Levithan's HOW THEY MET AND OTHER STORIES provides short stories for teens which tell of different kinds of love, meetings, loss and teen longing ("I desperately wanted to have something to lose."), capturing teen sentiments about romance and providing middle school readers with much food for thought.

Stars: 3.5/5

A compilation of short stories, some shorter than others, crossing between straight and gay. Some are simple, some complex, some sweet, some fun, some heart breaking and beautiful, some romantic and eternal, these stories are much like all the different forms that love takes. All the stories have a happy ending of some sort, but some of the stories aren't a romance and are about a different sort of love. The style of writing varies between tale both in writing style and format, but most stick to a traditional format. This was a cute, fun collection of short stories that often peeked into deeper emotions and made me ponder the wonders of life and love.

Although some of the stories didn't "speak to me," there were no real weaknesses among them aside from the fact that they weren't good enough to earn a five-stare score, mostly because only one of them was extremely deep and emotionally touching.

The writing was excellent, most of the characters were charming and age appropriate, and the stories were sweet. Overall a good book of good stories, nice and strong but not amazing. Book cover bumped it to 4 stars.

I bought this book after reading Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. That book was really good, so I wanted to get more from the authors, David Levithan wrote the "Nick" part of the story. This book kept coming up in my Amazon recommendations, so I finally ordered it. It was so good. I finished it in less than a week. I read the first story and wasn't too impressed, I figured I'd send it to a friend when I was done with the whole thing. But as I read on, the stories got better and better. They were so real and heartwarming and heartbreaking. I keep it on my headboard with other books I read at least once a year. It's supposed to be for Young Adults, but me and my mother both read it and loved it.

It began in a high school physics class. Bored and in search of distraction, David Levithan combed his physics textbook for romantic notions. He assembled them in a story called "A Romantic Inclination," which he gave to his friends for Valentine's Day. They liked it so much that each year he wrote them another story. This tradition led to his first novel and ultimately to HOW THEY MET AND OTHER STORIES, a collection of stories about love.

Best known for his positive, normalizing portrayals of teen relationships --- regardless of sexual orientation --- Levithan's stories focus on those longings that are the common denominators for the human heart. HOW THEY MET features matchmakers, chance encounters and broken hearts, in addition to the different kinds of love that exist between family and friends.

The collection begins with "Starbucks Boy," a hilarious story about the all-too-common experience of crushing on the neighborhood barista. Readers will no doubt identify with the self-aware tone of Levithan's narrator:

"Now, it has to be one of Starbucks's more brilliant marketing strategies to maintain at least one completely dreamy guy behind the counter at any given shift. This guy is invariably known as Starbucks Boy to the hundreds of regular customers who have a crush on him, and the glory of it is that he always seems just accessible enough to be within reach, but never accessible enough to actually touch.... He is, unlike most beautiful people you've ever encountered, friendly --- and you honestly believe it's not because that's a part of his job....[you] think that the way he says `good morning' or 'have a good one' or 'here you go' to you is a little different than the way he says it to anyone else. Or at least that's the hope."

HOW THEY MET is built upon moments as identifiable as crushes across the counter. Levithan has never needed earth-shattering events or severe trauma to get across the drama of ordinary life. But the best stories in this collection move beyond the happily-ever-after moments of cute introductions and push into the hungry places that make us long to belong.

David Levithan is a true believer when it comes to love. The stories in HOW WE MET are a testament to his faith that we are all created by love, sustained by love, and saved by love. Even those stories with less than happy endings suggest that even our uncomfortable or difficult relationships --- whether it is having one's partner leave for college or taking the wrong girl to the prom --- are steps along the way to being more capable of giving and receiving love.

--- Reviewed by Sarah A. Wood.

I received the book in great condition. It wasn't bent, there were no marks, and no tears. It was well reasonably priced, and I am extremely happy with the book!

I ordered this book online because a. I'm a huge fan of David Levithan's work, and b. the concept sounded awesome. A collection of short 'love' stories written by Levithan? Of course I was going to get it at any cost! I read his Lover's Dictionary, and even though many reviewers weren't thrilled with it, I found it to be a genius piece of work - because of its utter simplicity.

I was sure this would be the same.

It wasn't.

To start with, I won't say it was a flop, because it's not. As usual, Levithan's writing is brilliant, his imagination is never ending and his characters are real. The fact that this whole thing started at a physics class because he was BORED, is even more incredible.

My issue however, lies in the fact that Levithan seemed to write to a very narrow and specific type of audience, which was very off-putting for me on a personal level. For a collection of love stories, I would have imagined a wider variety of stories. Yes, this book does offer a wide range of relationships put in different types of situations, but I think the most dominant theme in all of his stories was homosexuality. Sure, there were a few heterosexual stories, (and no, I don't have anything against homosexuality, I've read most of his books and Will Grayson, Will Grayson remains one of my favourite novels), but when I buy a book meant to be a "collection" of stories I expect a little more than just gay relationships. No offense. It's just that I don't connect deeply with love stories based on same-sex romance, and that's perhaps because I don't understand it, or feel it, or whatever other reason. But I don't. So for 90% of the book to be based purely on that theme, it made me feel disconnected from the characters 90% of the time. It's different when you buy a book knowing what to expect and who the characters are because it tells you on the back, than when you buy a book expecting one thing and getting a completely different thing.

That's just my opinion, and it's not meant to offend anyone, it's just how I felt about the book. I expected so much more, and I thought it would be the type of book that I would finish in one sitting because I couldn't get enough of it. Instead, I would always find excuses to put it down, because I was just. Not. That. Interested.

What an amazing book of stories from David Levithan! I laughed, I cried, and I was forever changed. Read this. You will NOT regret it.