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Aug 15, 2011

Flannery rated it:

I miss Boston. I miss walking through the Commons in the fall, drinking on roof decks in the summertime, riding the T and just getting off at random stops, shoveling my car out, pumpkin ale, my book club besties, Fenway franks, that feeling that a bar gets when a Dropkick Murphys song comes on, and perusing the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. Hell, I even miss the frakking BU students who ride the green line and the 57 TWO STOPS instead of just walking. This book almost made me physical More...

55 comments like (40 people liked it)

May 10, 2008

KT rated it:

I know I'm in the minority on this book. Lots of people I know and admire love it, and I wanted to like it, but I had a hard time believing anything that happened in it, and it didn't work as a fantasy for me in the way "Boy Meets Boy." did.

I found the voices of the three teen characters to be the same (I was constantly having to look up at the chapter heading to see who was talking), and they all sounded like middle-aged gay men to me. The whole subplot with the deaf six More...

4 comments like (13 people liked it)

May 01, 2011

Catie rated it:

3 1/2 stars

I am just not cut out for this kind of book. I am that kid that, at age six, figured out that Santa does not exist and then pressured my mom into confessing all. No, I was not upset. I was triumphant. It’s not that I don’t have a heart or an imagination; it’s just that both of these things have always been firmly rooted in reality. If I were in Mary Poppins having a tea party, that table would be made of solid granite and would be heavily anchored to the ground. No a More...

17 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jul 19, 2009

GraceAnne rated it:

My favorite YA novel of the year so far. It pulls every single heartstring and makes you glad it did. I really did laugh and cry, and sometimes both at once. Completely over the top, and yet somehow utterly believable.

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Aug 27, 2008

Jennifer rated it:

Reviewed by Randstostipher "tallnlankyrn" Nguyen for TeensReadToo.com

T.C., originally Anthony Conigliaro Keller, was born into a family who loves baseball, and speaks with a very distinct accent. Like his family, T.C. loves the sport and practically knows all there is to know about baseball. It certainly helps him with his grades; if only it could help him get the girl of his dreams. With quite an odd family, a knack at frustrating those around him, making sure he only gets More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 26, 2008

Jaime rated it:

I was not going to buy this book. I already had two perfectly good paperbacks in hand. But then I read the first sentence, and I couldn't put it down. [Note to Ms. LaFontaine: I didn't meant to give you a hard time about this assignment, but "My Totally Excellent Year" would have been like so 1995, we'dhave been laughed out of Brookline if anybody found out.] The subtitle's also a gem- 'a novel of love, Mary Poppins & Fenway Park.' That's right, this book was written for you, Kelly and More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 18, 2010

~Tina~ rated it:

This is an incredible story!!

This book is written entirely in assignment form, e-mails, texts, diary entries and journals, so at first I thought this would be distracting since I'm not use to this style and usually don't prefer it. But, I liked it and thought the way this book was delivered was very well put together and only added to it's appeal.

My Most Excellent Year tells the tale of three people, TC, Alejandra, and Augie (and then later on Hucky) as they tell about th More...

5 comments like (5 people liked it)

Apr 24, 2011

Minli rated it:

“If you don’t like it, just lie.”

A friend lent me her copy of Steve Kluger’s My Most Excellent Year after I said I wished there were more novels that just happened to feature characters of diversity, instead of having their diversity carry the whole book. This is not to devalue books that specifically highlight a certain experience, but so few of them are equally entertaining as they are important. When was the last time I read about a black Mia Thermopolis or a gay Percy Jackson? I’ More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 27, 2011

Monica rated it:

You know, I love YA novels and I love Boston. I have a good feeling about this book.

Now, having devoured it in a day, I can confirm that my good feeling was accurate. But I would like to add to the subtitle of the book, making it "A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, Fenway Park, Musical Theatre, Self-Discovery, Determination, Family, Friends, Magic, Belief, and Most Especially Love." It has all the pieces of the sort of YA novel I adore: teenagers figuring out themselves and the More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 27, 2008

Chelsea rated it:

I'm in love!

I'm trying to come up with a way this book could have been more perfectly tailored to my interests, and I'm failing miserably.

It's a brilliant combination of Jaclyn Moriarty's banter, wacky characters, and epistolary flair, a fully appropriate level of loathing for all things Yankee (specifically Mr. Bucky Bleepin' Dent) to complement the Carlton Fisk adoration (brilliantly discussed in The Greatest Game, for those who are interested), an absolute adoration of More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 17, 2008

Kristi rated it:

My feelings are kind of torn about this one. There's no doubt that the book is full of hilarious moments. But sometimes the funny felt a little forced. All of the characters are so clever and amusing and witty that sometimes I wanted to scream that real people aren't like this! (At least not where I'm from - maybe Boston is a whole 'nother world.) All of the characters of course had the exact same sense of humor, and their voices started to sound an awful lot alike after a while. And some of th More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2012

Jim rated it:

4.5 Stars

Wonderful! Funny, insightful, obsessive but in a good way... and unashamedly, universally romantic.

Should I admit that I knew all the movie stars mentioned, and all of their movies? Oh, and Mary Poppins is still one of my favs (true for everyone in this house).

P.S. I learned about this book from Flannery's wonderful review, which I strongly recommend (along with the book!).

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 07, 2008

Laura rated it:

I laughed, cried and loved this book! Told completely in letters, IM transcripts, emails and memos, My Most Excellent Year is a story of magic, love and still more magic. And it all takes place in Boston! I loved all the characters even down to the minor characters of Mom, Dad, Pop and Lori. T.C. and Augie are best friends and even brothers since age 7, the year after T.C.'s mom died of cancer. Ale is new in town and is somehow immune to T.C.'s charms (but not for long). Hucky, a 6 year old deaf More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 14, 2008

Heather rated it:

WHY ISN'T EVERYONE READING THIS BOOK? It was great! First of all, there are three characters who are well written, well developed, and not too angsty. They are mostly happy, with adults involved in their lives (adults who think their kids are cool and smart), and it is an INTERESTING storyline, complete with Julie Andrews.
On a side note, I am interested in the people who qualify this as a "LGBT" YA book, instead of just a great YA book. I have read goodreads readers who sa More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 07, 2010

Marianne rated it:

This is an incredible book about life and how magic can come true. There is really no other book like it: it is really somoething special.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 13, 2008

Lauren rated it:

My Most Excellent Year tells the story of three students- now seniors-most excellent year (their freshman year) and how their lives all changed for the better. First, there’s T.C.( Anthony), who’s obsessed with all things related to baseball, his best friend Augie, and Alejeandra, the girl he’s in love with, but who doesn’t return his feelings. Augie loves all things that have to do with Broadway and his best friend T.C. Also, everyone knows Augie‘s gay, but he just hasn‘t realized his true feel More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 10, 2012

Mimi rated it:

I give the rating of two stars in its truest sense of "it's okay." This was a difficult novel to rate. I thought the writing was really good, and it was funny. But the main characters were all so incredible. They were all wealthy (or at least not poor), they all were really smart/got good grades, they were all really talented in different ways, they were all very attractive, etc. And I guess it is quite possible that three people like them would all be friends, so I don't know why I'm More...

0 comments like

Feb 03, 2012

Tiffany rated it:

This book is magic. I'm serious. Publishers try to sell it off as a alternating-perspective book about three friends and "their most excellent year," but we should all know better than that. My Most Excellent Year is the best bits of every romantic comedy I've ever witnessed with a whole lot of other glittery mix-ins that I couldn't find anywhere else.

Usually swapping perspectives in a book results in a train wreck. Not in this book. My belief is that Steve Kluger is magi More...

0 comments like

Jan 10, 2012

Nick rated it:

I very rarely give a book five stars. While starting a tiny bit slowly, this book built into something truly marvelous over the course of the story.
The book's structure is that it is alternating chapters from three different school reports, one by each of the three main characters. While this makes the shifting viewpoints more natural, the framing story is not important after the first few pages. The letters back and forth between the other characters are both great comic relief and strong More...

0 comments like

Dec 10, 2011

Ella rated it:

This is my comfort book. I first got it from my public library, and read it four times end-to-end. Then, I recently bought it on Amazon, and did the same thing. Steve Kluger makes all of his characters so real, and there were several times in the book where I wanted to reach in and hug them, or hold their hand, or laugh with them, or just walk down a snowy street with them.

Alè is exactly the kind of person I want to be. I want her life, minus the famous parents and all that. I want the More...

0 comments like

Nov 22, 2011

K rated it:

THIS is the definition of a feel good book.

TC, Augie, and Ale are juniors writing about their Most Excellent Year, which happens to be their freshman year for all three. That was the year TC fell in love and had his world changed by a six-year-old, Augie fell in love and surprised himself (but no one else) when it turned out to be with a boy, and Ale went from being a world-traveler diplomat’s daughter with a Secret Service agent best friend to being the seemingly-snooty new girl wi More...

0 comments like

Feb 01, 2011

Gaabriel rated it:

Took me a while to get to this book. My boyfriend got it for me for December Gift Giving. The person in the Rose Room at Powells recomended it to him because he told her I was a Nerdfighter and ~~like~~ love John Green. I can see why the recommendation was in place having also recently read Will Grayson, Will Grayson.

This is the interestingly interwoven tale of the T.C., Ale and Augie's Freshman year of High School. TC Felt like the main character because his narrative was the strongest. More...

0 comments like

Jan 26, 2011

Debbie rated it:

This is a book to read when you're feeling down or sad or generally hopeless about the state of humanity. It will cheer you up, make you laugh and restore your faith in the goodness of people. I liked all of the characters in this book, the three leads and their supporting cast. And Mary Poppins/Julie Andrews gives a moving performance in a guest role.

The story is told from the perspectives of TC, a boy whose family has been in Boston since they came over with the Red Sox (his words); More...

0 comments like

Dec 28, 2010

Corinne rated it:

Our cast of characters:

TC: a Red Sox loving baseball fanatic with a penchant for social activism

Augie: a fan of female stars from classic movies, doesn't know he's gay yet, best friend of TC

Ale: recently moved to Boston from DC, daughter of a former ambassador, has hidden musical theater skills and tries her darnedest to avoid the advances of the darling TC

I don't want to tell you whole lot more than that - I want you to discover it on your own. Through ho More...

0 comments like

May 18, 2010

Bianca rated it:

UM. I believe this book is now going on my 'favorite books of all time list!' It was just that wicked good. I feel as if this book could've have been written for me. I swear. There is not a thing that I didn't like about this book, except, of course, I wished it could have been longer.

In a school english project, the three main characters tell their stories through letters, emails, instant messaging, and regular format. I loved the three POVs! T.C. Keller, born Anthony Conigliaro Ke More...

0 comments like

Nov 23, 2009

Lori rated it:

What a great book! I enjoyed the way the book was laid out as a journal assignment, but the entries went much deeper than for a school assignment. Though the characters were not completely believable, well at least I don't personally know anybody who create change the way these characters do, it was a general fun book that did talk about issues related to what students are going through today. For example, going against the life your parents have laid out for you and doing what you really lov More...

0 comments like

Nov 08, 2009

Beth rated it:

Three juniors assigned to write about their "most excellent" year all choose the freshman year they became friends in this coming out/coming of age story that blends baseball, theatre, international politics, activism and Japanese interment. Told in a round robin style, motherless Anthony (a.k.a. Tick) is the lynchpin of the story - he and best friend Augie, a musical theatre fan, consider themselves to be non-biological brothers. Augie directs the Freshman Follies and falls hard for More...

0 comments like

Oct 30, 2009

Pam rated it:

If you don't get the mystique of Boston - the cult of the Red Sox (Rico Petrocelli, Fred Lynn, Nomar Garciaparra, etc.), Boston intellectualism (think Matt Damon's portrayal in Good Will Hunting), Boston's accents ("I sway-ah"), the T, the Boston Globe (being the only newspaper that could be quirky enough to combine political activism with its theater reviews), and how High School Musical done with a Boston twist could be genuine - then this book won't be magical. However, for someone More...

3 comments like

Oct 17, 2009

Michael rated it:

Really really boring. The only reason that I didn't give it one star was because of Alejandra and Hucky, who were the only characters in the book that I actually liked. So let's start talking about what was wrong with this book.

1) You can't write a book in emails, English assignments, and letters! It's juvenile and really detracts from the book. Not to mention that the POV is changing every few minutes and it's almost impossible to keep track of who is narrating.

2) Th More...

0 comments like

Jul 13, 2009

jess rated it:

I read this book several weeks ago, and somehow never got around to writing my review. I guess that speaks for itself. This is YAF about a group of kids navigating their adolescence in Boston. There's TC, who loves baseball, lives with his dad, has a dead mom, and is very cute. Augie is TC's best friend, in the process of coming out as gay, loves the old grand divas of hollywood & musical theater. Ale is the daughter of a Mexican ambassador or something. She's smart, stuck-up and secretly a tale More...

2 comments like