Customer Reviews

Be True to Your School

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I loved Greene, but had resisted buying this book. What could I, someone who graduated from private school in Chicago in 1992, learn from 1964? I've never much cared for the 1960's. After reading Greene's novel, All Summer Long, I went out and bought Be True to Your School. The novel contained flashbacks to high school--Be True...contains the real stories. In most ways, the power of Be True is even stronger than the novel because it was all true. As many of the other reviewers have said, it rings true to high school. I laughed, I cried, and I underlined the book. It will stand among my favorite works. Greene was a talented writer even at 17. He poesses a very rare gift. He has the ability to capture life's small moments and illuminate them. He celebrates their importance and makes no excuses for it--nor should he. He finds wisdom in those youthful experiences. He cherishes them. That is the lesson I take from this book. Too many people these days want to forget their teenage years and "move on." Greene teaches us that we will be forever shaped by those experiences, so we might as well celebrate them. If we take their lessons and memories and keep them close to our hearts, we will not only be true to our schools, but true to ourselves. As he does so often in his column, Greene shines again.

The Beatles coming on the Ed Sullivan show, the endless wondering of exactly how to attract the opposite sex, and the simple ups and downs of growing up are captured dead on in this. Wish he'd kept a diary of his senior year and his four years of college. Good stuff!

Bob Greene is the journalist who knows how to find the hooks in any story and plant them directly into you, without pain. He makes reading effortless and unstoppable.

This may well be his best book because he was working from his own diary of the year 1964. The detail of that journal calls up personalities, events, feelings, ritual, love and yearnings, all of it tossed wildly around by the musical tidal waves created by the Beatles.

This is also a fine telling of an american story: how events shape the course of a life... and create an extraordinary human being.

Reading Bob Greene is like reading Stephen King (mostly) without the horror. It is reality which carries the message of great writers, and Bob Greene is a great writer who will take you back to high school in Ohio as surely as Stephen King took you to 1958 Maine in "It."

I can barely wait to start re-re-re-re-reading this book. Five years is too long.

Tim Niles

Which came first? Was it Bob Greene's book "Be True to Your School" or the popular TV comedy series "The Wonder Years"? Well, truth of the matter is, the book came first in 1987. And, I really loved reading Bob's book. Then, I saw the premiere season of "Wonder Years" on TV in 1988 and I thought to myself, "Well, how about that? Someone turned Bob's memoirs into a real winner of a TV show!" The TV series ran through 1993 and (just like the book) many of the TV episodes reflected actual events that happened to many of us in those bittersweet days of junior high school. It was like someone had been following all of us around with a clipboard taking notes. The TV show won a Golden Globe and 22 other awards before it was finally through. Sadly, Bob Greene's book now appears to be out-of-print and only available as a used book (if you're lucky enough to find it). Kind of ironic. More than likely, there was no real connection between Bob's book and the TV show. However, perhaps you've heard the Law of 100 Monkeys. Well, one of those monkeys escaped and caught someobody's ear over at ABC-TV. If you ever find Bob's book somewhere, it's a great, great read - especially if you're one of those people that remembers after-school sockhops, passing notes during class and hanging out with your friends after school, listening to The Beach Boys or The Four Seasons. Those were the days.

Reading this book reminded me much of my HS days. This should also be combined with "And You Know You Should Be Glad", these people 30+ years later.

Here is one point to ponder as you read this book: Did these people EVER eat at home. It seems like all these kids did was eat at one fast-food shop or another and hang out together. Didn't their parents feed them once in a while?

Be True to your School. By Bob Greene, is one of the best books I've ever read. "I couldn't put it down." Every time the teacher told us to stop reading,I just had to keep on going. And the thing is I don't like to read! Every thing in it, is in young adults age group. "Bob shares with us his thoughts and every aspect of his teenage day to day life." There hasn't been anything in this book that I don't like. From getting the girls to going to the parties. But I don't agree with the drinking that went on in his teenage life, but I guess it has to happen sometime. I think its neat how Bob Greene's life went, and how it ended up. Its hard to believe that the things he did really happened, but it did! Like getting the girls, bad times with life and friends, parties and cruising. "Bob is unbelievable." From here on out anything that Bob Greene writes, I will read it. And if you are a highschool student with day to day problems and also some very great days this book is for you.

Be True to Your School by Bob Greene is a journal of Bob's life in 1964. Bob had a journalism assignment to keep a journal/diary for the year of 1964. He was to write an entry everyday. Bob shares with us his thoughts and every aspect of his teenage day-to-day life. Bob experiences many hurdles and many obstacles during this year of his life. He deals with alcohol, friends, girls, and most importantly, school. He describes these events to us in a chronological fashion. He explains the troubles of high school, concerning relationships, friends, and his first job. This book really appeals to me, a high school junior, because we still deal with a lot of the same issues today. Bob Greene's diary is an interesting story, told to us, through his eyes only. I would recommend this book to former or current high school students.

I read this book when I was twelve, and at that time I thought it was "explicit." I reread it last week and cried. The story is so real, so genuine, that I thought about my high school days and all the crap we got in to and out of. Greene, unknowingly, captured how uncertain being 17 is.

I baught this book a few years back and i finally had time to read it this past month...and i couldn't put it down. i would like to take time out of my life to thank Bob Greene for opening up his heart to us by publishing his journal from his senior year. I am currently a senior at a private school in Chicago and I connect with everything he wrote. My friends and I want to do what he did on new years eve. The best part about reading it was that I knew Greene from the newspaper and him bringing us into his life when he was 18 was awesome. i have started to journal because of him. thanks bob i'll never forget you.

It's about time I spoke up. I've read this book 3-4 times (I allow at least a couple of years between reads). I've given it as a gift twice and recommended it to many, many more via email and at social get-togethers. So, I've kept my recommendations in-house, so-to-speak, until now. Time to go public.

I like the book so much that I use the dog-earred paperback for reading and the hardcover for display in my library. One step further in my adulation will have me pointing a spotlight at the display copy! But I can control myself.

"Coming-of-age" stories have been a favorite since my 8th grade teacher read Booth Tarkington's "Penrod" to us. It was and is a classic...but it was fiction. Not so with 'Be True to Your School'. Because it was written from a daily diary Bob Greene kept during his junior year in high school (and who was urged to include as much detail into his entries as possible), it is rich in texture and (to the rest of us) full of nearly forgotten, seemingly trivial but wonderful realities of being a teen in 1963. In it's richness is found it's timeless joy. As Huckleberry Finn is everlasting, so, too, will this snapshot of the awkward, humble, fumbling, funny and adventurous transition from boy to young adult.

Whether you're a man or woman, Baby Boomer or not, if you love friendships, discovery of the opposite sex, popular music as a soundtrack to life, and fun, fun, fun, you will love this book.

The single most universal reaction from readers of this book, if not spoken, then felt, has to be the frustrating wish that Mr. Greene had continued making entries in his diary past his junior year. You'll love the characters, the small town and the adventures that surely must await.

We want more!!

A wonderful and poignant prologue, of sorts, by Mr. Greene is the also true, "And You Know You Should be Glad".