Doing It

by Melvin Burgess

Book Overview

The award-winning author Melvin Burgess's ribald and insightful account of contemporary teenage life chronicles the ups and downs of doing it. The controversial book on which the cult favorite ABC... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805075658
• ISBN13: 9780805075656
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 326 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 16 to 18 years
• Grade Range: Grade 11 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Did it for me -- fantastic book about teens, sex, and love

Three teen boys - Dino, Ben, and Jonathan - are obsessed, as the title says, with "doing it." Told from multiple viewpoints, including the girls the hook up with, break up with, and get it on with, this is a funny excruciatingly honest peek into the teenage boy's soul, which revolves around his knob (Britspeak for penis). For older boys and the girls who would try to understand them, this book really does it properly. I'm looking forward to seeing what else Melvin Burgess has written. A groun-breaking book.

Teenage angst stripped bare

It is beyond me what all the controversy over this book is all about. It is explicit, granted, about a few boys and their views on sex and girls but actually, all the boys are actually quite nice. The worst a guy does to a girl is two time her. There isn't even one in the bunch who shags/gets off with a girl and ignores her the next day, quite a common experience while I was a teenager and doubtless still true today. And Anne Fine in the Guardian criticizes this book for giving girls a negative view of blokes. Well, to me it was thoroughly realistic, even the bit about Ben and his teacher. I thought it was brilliant, even though I am not the target audience (I am 30+).

the best ever

This is the best book ive ever read he author is a genius how he gets into teenage minds i am 14 and could not put the book down i am reading it constantly and i think everybody should read it if you only read one book in your lifetime this should be it i can not express how good it is so read it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Richies Picks: DOING IT

Last year many of us got to read the highly publicized and highly charged essay in The Guardian by British author Anne Fine about the new Melvin Burgess novel DOING IT. (If you haven't read the essay, Google "Guardian Anne Fine Doing It" and you'll find a link.) To put it mildly, Anne Fine was unable to find the appeal in DOING IT. Reading Fine's attack, along with statements by other writers about Burgess's proported attempts to "push the envelope" by having the male, high school characters so candidly discussing issues of male sexuality, left me somewhat squeemish about the prospect of reading the book. I'd heard lots of "Wows," but not any "Really great story!" DOING IT is, in fact, a really great story about three male high school friends and their obsessions about and relationships with females. It is well-written and compelling, fun and honest and occasionally heartwarming. Those three high school boys are a self conscious, vulnerable, and sensitive lot. And while I cannot necessarily see myself as any one of those three characters, I had friends in high school who were dead ringers. To argue that normal high school boys don't spend a lot of time thinking about girls and girls' bodies would make my high school experience abnormal. (It could be argued that Richie's Picks began in the late 1960s when I kept a secret, hidden list, updated weekly, of the ten girls at school I'd most like to be with.) To argue that boys aren't fearful about their adequacy, that they don't worry about whether their bodies are normal, or that they don't say truly gross stuff on a regular basis is, of course, ridiculous. And to argue that boys won't go crazy over this book is something that even Ms. Fine didn't even have the...um...nerve to claim. My point is this: DOING IT is a primo Growing Up Male book. High school and public YA librarians absolutely need to forget about Anne Fine's fears of DOING IT. Instead they need to read DOING IT and need to buy it for their collections whether or not it is their cup of T (as in testosterone). I'm recommending this book for all high school and public library YA collections.