Friends Like These

by Danny Wallace

Book Overview

Danny Wallace is about to turn thirty and his life has become a clich . Recently married and living in a smart new area of town, he's swapped pints down the pub for lattes and brunch. For the first time in his life, he's feeling, well ... grown-up.

But something's not right. Something's missing. Until he finds an old address book containing just twelve names. His best mates as a kid. Where are they now? Who are they...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0091896770
• ISBN13: 9780091896775
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Ebury
• Length: 407 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Friends Like Danny

I can relate to Danny Wallace. How often have we wondered about the kids we knew in elementary school, the kid who moved away in fourth grade, the friendships that came and went as we changed and grew up? I love the concept of this book, and I especially appreciate the author's engaging, friendly style. He brings you along on his wacky journey and keeps you laughing every step (or mile) of the way. Yes, it would be weird to have a classmate from fifth grade show up at your door 20+ years after the fact, but it would be pretty cool too. I give two thumbs up for Danny and Friends Like These.

This book had me laughing out loud!

Daniel Wallace writes an entertaining tale about how he discovered his old grade school address book in a box of old memories that his mum sends him and goes to work looking up all of his old friends. It's a simple enough story about tracking all 12 of them down and reconnecting but Daniel's writing style had me laughing to myself as I read through some of his sometimes outrageous adventures as he goes around the world finding every last one of them. (Well almost everyone.) It's all in the details and his writing style was very humorous and appealing. I thought that I was the only one who could lollygag away a whole afternoon doing things other than the tasks I had set out to do in the morning, but Wallace seems to have refined it to a fine art. His excuses and rationalizations were even better than mine. Needless to say, I found this very enjoyable to read, realizing there are others out there who procrastinate as well as I do. If you like down-to-earth good humor, I think you'll enjoy this book. It's a story I think most of us can relate to. I'm going to go look up his other books based on having read this one.

Delightful Fun Read

"Friends Like These" is an absolute must read. But, only if you like to smile and grin for hours on end. Danny Wallace realizes he's about to turn thirty soon and is showing signs of being a real adult. Oh, oh. He has this "ah ha moment" when he finds himself taking a dirty mug to the sink within two days of finishing the tea that mug held - and nobody told him to do it. There are display pillows on the couch and he's bought coasters so there won't be rings left by the glasses placed on the furniture. Does this happen to everyone? He sees the signs of adulthood taking over his current friends. Then Danny finds an old address book with twelve of his childhood best friends' names, addresses and phone numbers. What about the these old friends? Do they have display pillows on their couches too? Danny Wallace decides to track down his old friends to see what has become of them. He travels the world having a most delightful journey tracking down his old chums and discovering just what it is, exactly, they are up to and how entering the real grownup world has affected them. It was wonderful to see how we really can be friends forever with our old pals; no matter how long it's been since we last saw each other. Danny Wallace has inspired me to try and track down some of my old pals. Danny Wallace has a wonderful, lyrical writing style that kept interested enough to take the bus instead of driving so I could keep reading. And to have dinner alone instead of with a friend so I could keep reading. And to stay up way past my usual "hit the sack" time so I could keep reading. By the time I had finished the book, I felt like Danny was one of my pals too.

This book will make you laugh out loud...

This book is hilarious! The author pokes fun of his job...he's a quiz show host. He pokes a lot of fun at himself all throughout the book. When he's nearly 30, he has a midlife crisis. He has only been married for about a year and his very patient wife gives him permission to scout out his old friends from his childhood. For her permission though he must earn some man points by doing things around the house, like fixing faucets, staining furniture, etc. The author is so naive that he doesn't realize he has now been hooked into working to earn these man points the rest of his married life! His 2 best friends at the moment are out of London, one on a world tour as a musician and the other has moved to a town too far for them to pub around together all summer. His wife has taken a job on a reality show that takes all her time. Hence he is alone a lot and thinking of the old days when he had at least 12 friends in his address book that he would like to look up now. Some he finds fairly easily, some are harder and far away but he persists (since it is more fun that staying home alone and thinking about growing up and not being able to sit on the display cushions). Every sentence seems to make you laugh out loud. He has a great sense of humor and you just want the book to go on forever. The reason I even started reading it was because I had a childhood friend look me up recently. We hadn't seen each other in 30 years. We had a lot of fun and decided we would definitely attend our next school reunion because we were still looking pretty good compared to some of our old classmates. First we were still alive, 2nd we still had our hair (albeit dyed hair), 3rd we still have our teeth, and 4th we married younger men (versus most of our classmates marrying men they went to school with and whom now look pretty old compared to our men). So, of course, I was wondering if the author's experiences were good or bad. Read the book...you'll love it!

A Lot More Normal a Challenge for Danny Than His Previous Books

If there were more authors who wrote books like these which Danny Wallace writes, the world would be a much better and funnier place. With Friends Like These, Danny takes on the quest of something a little bit more normal than his previous novels. Such as where he along with his flatmate and fellow leading writer in this genre Dave Gorman set out to find and meet 54 other people with the exact same name as Dave Gorman (Are You Dave Gorman?). Join Me!, the story of how Danny started his own cult by accident with a simple experiment of placing an advertisement in a newspaper asking for people to join him by sending a photo and seeing what happened). Yes Man where Danny takes a vow to say yes to any request for the rest of the year no matter what is asked of him. Plus his contribution to Quick Reads (short stories sold at train stations and other places to encourage people to read books rather than just magazines, graphic novels, newspapers and the like) which was called Danny Wallace and the Centre of the Universe where Danny travels to and explores the Idaho town of Wallace, which claims to be the centre of the universe. So what adventure is Friends Like These about? Well Danny is about to turn 30, an age where he knows society will now expect him to be a man. Although happily married and everything, his house amongst other things now contains display cushions (not for sitting on) and he is just not ready to leave behind his life of playing online computer games against twelve year olds and drinking with his mates down the pub. But those mates are moving away and when his parents are clearing out their clutter and send him a box of stuff from his childhood he wonders what his childhood friends are doing now. Have they embraced display cushions and turning 30 are they like him, not ready to move on just yet? When a friend he barely knows invites him to his 30th where that friend has remained in contact with his friends from school to today, Danny realises his parents constant moving him around the world for his father's career and losing touch with friends at each stage, means he has missed out on something. Danny decides he will track down his first 12 great friends and update an old address box he found in the box his parents posted him. Danny adventure will take him back to his childhood haunts of Scotland and Berlin, plus being Danny was friends with a Japanese exchange student, and Fijian boy he knows he will have to travel as well. He knows what happened with his ex girlfriend Hane when he undertook his in her words "stupid boy games". He is currently supposed to be fixing up his house and has a builder who seems to be taking advantage of his laid back nature. Will his wife Lizzie understand and support his quest to track down and hang out with his childhood friends one last time before he turns 30? This book has a lot less travelling than Danny's previous ones so in turn has a bit less humour than those adventures. But there's s