Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

, #1

Hardcover, 368 pages

English language

Published Feb. 21, 2012 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

ISBN:
978-1-4424-0892-0
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4 stars (51 reviews)

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

2 editions

Review of 'Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

What a cute book! I really enjoyed not reading about two white boys in New Year coming of age and realising they like boys. This was a really nice and well told story that was not about pure happiness but actually discovering yourself and the anger and fear you can bottle up inside.

Causing Existensial Crises and Making you feel like life is beautiful, A+ would read again

5 stars

From the first time I read this, a review that never made it onto anything but Riffle:

'Bring a commonplace book or BuJo/BulletJournal, whatever you use to write down quotes. There are a lot of good ones. I'm not saying your typical YA writer is a bad writer, but this guy has got some really good prose, and stuff that can stand out on it's own. Like you look at that, and go "wow, that's profound, I'm writing that down, and I'm gonna stew on it."

I read it in one night, and it caused an existential crisis that night. I just wanted to read a gay romance. Put -that- on the back of the book!'

Now, the second time I read this:

I love this book so much. I'm sure someone could argue little happens, or how it feels very episodic, but that's sort of the point: 1. It's …

Review of 'Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I do not like surprises of any kind, be it birthday surprises or surprises in books and movies. I always read the plot of the book or movie before starting it.
Knowing the plot never affected me, I laughed, cried, loved, got scared, felt sick, felt excited and lived through the narrative never the less. I guess the way the story is written appealed to me more than the plot. I have never regretted being this way until yesterday when I picked this book, of course after reading the plot on Wikipedia. (Damn even the wiki plot was beautiful)
This book was beautiful in my most favourite kind of way, by being simple.

And for the first time, I felt maybe if I had not known the plot I might have experienced this book differently, but I guess I will never know.

Anyways, this is an extremely simple, beautiful and …

Review of 'Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Eh. I had heard a lot of great things about this book, so I may have come into it with too-high expectations.

There were some parts that I loved, most specifically the descriptions of healthy family relationships, including those that were still in progress. The writing and narration were also good.

However, my one-sentence synopsis would be: moody teenager spends 98% of the book being moody, and then ✨the magic of love✨ magically fixes his entire life.

Not my thing. I can't really figure out the critical acclaim, and have to wonder if it would be as widely praised if the main relationship was heterosexual.

To be clear, my gripe is not with the gender(s) of the main characters or their relationship in the abstract, just the magical-fixing. I suspect if we were talking about a girl getting a boyfriend who was perfect and suddenly made everything perfect and fixed …

Review of 'Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

It's cute, sehr cute, und ich mochte dass hier mal n junger Protagonist ist, der sich sehr viele Fragen stellt, gerade auch zu Männlichkeit und wie er zu anderen Männern steht
Was für mich nicht geklappt hat, war was die Handlung vorantreiben sollte: einmal war die Hauptperson krank, kurz danach im Krankenhaus wegen einem Unfall, am Ende dann war sein bester Freund im Krankenhaus. Das war ein bisschen merkwürdig und fühlte sich sehr gezwungen an.
Auch war mir der Erzähler doch zu schwermütig-philosophisch, zu abgeklärt-altklug, das hätte klappen können, aber manchmal hab ich schon gemerkt, da sind Sätze, die hat ein Erwachsener ihm in den Mund gelegt, das sind nicht seine eigenen.
Dass (nicht in der Handlung des Buches selber, sondern zeitlich davor) eine trans Frau getötet wird, die dann im Buch als Typ genannt wurde, ist vermutlich dem zeitlichen Rahmen angemessen, trotzdem fand ich das schwierig. Niemand hat sich …

Review of 'Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Aristotle and Dante is a book that I have been hearing about for a long time but just finally listened to. This is a coming of age story of two Mexican-American boys set in El Paso Texas in the 1980s.

Ari is a loner with many questions about his family. He has a much older brother who went to jail when Ari was four. He doesn't know why and his family refuses to talk about it. Ari's father is a Vietnam veteran struggling with PTSD who is having difficulty communicating with his family.

Dante is the extroverted only child of expressive and loving parents. He loves poetry. He offers to teach Ari to swim when they meet at a public pool. Over the summer they become friends and then very gradually start to realize that they may be falling in love.

This is the story of Ari and Dante's lives …

Review of 'Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Este libro lo debería leer todo el mundo ya que te enseña muchos valores importantes y el vocabulario es muy sencillo (así que animaos a leerlo en ingles). Pero lo que más me ha gustado es la relación que hay en la historia... Muy bien construida y muy bien desarrollada. Omitamos el hecho de que he acabado el libro hace una hora y todavía sigo llorando.

Se ha convertido en uno de mis libros favoritos por varias razones personales. Gracias, Benjamin Alire Sáenz

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Subjects

  • Mexican-Americans
  • Coming of age
  • Homosexuality
  • Families
  • Friendship
  • Fiction

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