The Year of Yes [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Maria Dahvana Headley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 2006

Like many young people everywhere, playwright Maria Headley had had her fill of terrible dates. Discouraged and looking for love, she decided the time had come for her to eliminate her own (clearly not adequately discriminating) taste from the equation. Instead-as she vowed to her roommates one frustrated morning-she would date every person who asked her out for an entire year, regardless of circumstances. It would be her Year of Yes.Leaving her judgment and predispositions at the door, our heroine ventured into a world suddenly brimming with opportunity and found herself saying yes to:l-The Microsoft Millionaire who still lived with his mom.l-An actor she had previously sworn off as gay.l-And finally the significantly older man, divorced with kids, who she never would have looked at twice before the Year of Yes-and to whom she is now happily married.Hilariously funny and ultimately inspirational, The Year of Yes will appeal to every person who has turned down a date for the wrong reason.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Idaho-born Headley, a 20-year-old NYU drama student, laments, "I felt like I'd dated and then hated every man in Manhattan," she thinks perhaps she's too critical. So she "decided that I would say yes to every man who asked me out on a date." It sounds disastrous, even scary, though she chose to exclude the drunk, the drugged, the violent, and cheating husbands. The first date was the Puerto Rican handyman who came to fix the toilet with his daughter in tow, the second a 40-year-old who spoke only Polish. One took her to a strip joint, one wanted his penis bitten, one was a woman and one asked her to marry him on the first date. One of the nicest turned out to be the 70-year-old Latino who made obscene sucking noises and claimed to have 11 children. The one Headley got a crush on turned out to be "mostly gay." And then what happened? Believe it or not—true love. Reader, she married him. It's sheer chick fluff, but amusing, with names changed "to protect the indignant, the infantile, and, of course, the innocent."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

At the age of 20, Headley was already frustrated with the dating scene. An Idaho native, Headley headed to the Big Apple to study playwriting, and while Manhattan offered a wealth of men, Headley was decidedly unimpressed. After two years, she decided she had been too picky and resolved to say yes to everyone who asked her out (within reason). Despite the skepticism of her two roommates, Headley boldly began her year of yes by accepting a date with their building's maintenance man, Mario. That date was followed by an unfortunate tryst with a sleazy older classmate, who regaled their class the next day with the details of their one-night stand. Headley kept her head up and went on dates with a techno-geek, a homeless guy, and a driven career woman, among others. Just when it seemed her year of yes wasn't going to produce any success, Headley found herself unexpectedly smitten with a soon-to-be-divorced playwright. Snappy and readable, Headley's fun memoir will be sought out by singletons everywhere. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 276 pages
• ISBN-10: 1401302300
• ASIN: B000JGWDV4
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,309,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Maria Dahvana Headley is the author of Queen of Kings (2011) and The Year of Yes (2006). Other work has been published in various anthologies, magazines, The New York Times and more. She's been interviewed on television programs ranging from The Today Show to Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and heard on radio stations all over the world. She lives in Seattle, with her husband, playwright and screenwriter Robert Schenkkan. You can follow her on Twitter, at www.twitter.com/MARIADAHVANA, learn more at the Queen of Kings Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/MariaDahvanaHeadleyAuthor , or visit Maria's website at www.mariadahvanaheadley.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quite Entertaining, January 20, 2006

By 

Little Miss Cutey (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Year of Yes (Hardcover)

This is a book written by a woman who was tired of her dating scene and decided she needed to date with an open mind, so she spent one year saying yest to litteraly everyone who asked her out. There was 150 dates including a homeless man, a couple of non english speakers, 10 taxi drivers, a mime and even two lesbians. There was a guy she knew from school who was now a boxer and asked her to meet him at a strip club (one of the bad dates), a Frenchman who was a software millionare yet lived with his mother and he wanted to introduce her to god (turned out to be his private parts), a 70 year old and on and on it goes.
In the end, Maria learns that perfect doesn't exist and perfect isn't the point. Love can come in the most surprising packages and you have to appreciate that love is many things including hard work.
All has ended well for this adventureous girl, who subsequently met the man she's now married to, at the Kennedy Center and is very happy with him (despite a 25year age difference) and his two children from a previous marriage.
This is a very entertaining read and even through her recounts, it's an eye and mind opener for sure.

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars funny and thought-provoking, January 17, 2006

By 

Beth Biester "Beth Biester" (Urbana, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Year of Yes (Hardcover)

Maria Dahvana Headley's memoir is a bit different than books I typically choose to read, but I'm glad I read it. The premise is simple: she, dissatisfied with her love life, decides to say "yes" to everyone who asks her out--for a year. Had I written this book about a year of my college experience, it would have been a very short book, but I digress... The strengths of this book are some of her hilarious descriptions of her predicaments-- particularly the part involving Ira the shrieking dachsund, and her fleeting, troubling stories about her mentally ill father. The weaknesses of the book are that she keeps trying to get the reader to believe that she is a fat, ugly, dork. This is clearly is not the case, evidenced by her picture accompanying the author bio and the staggering number of people who hit on her and tell her that she is sexy and beautiful. Also, she makes frequent, somewhat pretentious references to scads of classical and hip lit, which I suspect are lost on many of her readers. Heck, I'm an English teacher, and I haven't read *all* that stuff! All in all, it's a very entertaining book that I started and finished within the same weekend, and it makes the reader aware of the importance of making connections with people every day-- even people who make you wanna say "no".

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I didn't make it past the second chapter, May 1, 2006

By 

L. Doll "book fanatic" (Virginia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Year of Yes (Hardcover)

I wanted to like this book - really, I did. I loved the idea of saying "yes" to everyone who asks you out with the idea that inital impressions are not always the best way to make dating decisions. However, this book was so full of pretentious literary references and narcissistic ramblings that I couldn't make it past the second chapter. The author seemed to want the reader to understand that she is extremely well read. Nothing wrong with that, except she couldn't manage to contain her glee with how intelligent she was that some of her stories were complete non sequitors. For instance, there was a part in the book where she discussed how, as a child, she read every book in the entire library in alphabetical order all the way up to "m" (I think). Great, but what does that have to do with your present dating situation? I just couldn't take it after awhile and had to stop reading. I guess my overall criticism is that this book is marketed as a fluffy, light read, which is what I expected but didn't get.