School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Ted Burger's friends Mark and Nikki counsel the protagonist to step outside his usual pattern of cautious behavior as they consume their usual after-school fare at a Manhattan diner. Suddenly, a recently fired fry cook bursts in and threatens mayhem-with what turns out to be a water pistol. Mark takes quick and effective control of the situation while Burger watches and feels himself getting physically sick. No sooner does he get home than he is told that the crazed cook has poisoned him and he has just 24 hours to live. Rather than seeking medical attention, he decides to tackle the list of adventures his friends have devised for him, including liberal doses of alcohol and sex, taking on a bully from his past, and partying with the punk-rock band he worships. As the hours pass, and his nausea waxes and wanes, Burger begins to make plans of his own-an escape from the city to Africa. Instead, he wakes up in a Brooklyn hospital, diagnosed as suffering from panic disorder, rather than food poisoning. While all of the characters are engaging and likable, Ehrenhaft's plotting feels erratic. The buildup to the poisoning is long in coming while Burger's numerous escapades all get packed into about eight hours. The moral and ethical issues come fast and furious-the old bully is now in a wheelchair and saintly, the punk rockers are bored with themselves, Burger's shallow parents ultimately seek depth in their son. There are several great scenarios here, but the stitches needed to gather them into one story don't bear up to even casual scrutiny.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
Believing he's been poisoned and has just hours to live, sixteen-year-old Ted tries to complete all the items on his ""to do"" list, which include losing his virginity and jamming with his favorite band. Most of Ted's plans go awry in one way or another in this unfocused and overfrantic novel that's too much like a slick teen movie. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Ted Burger, 16 and with "Brillo pad hair," has always played it safe, choosing to experience the wilder sides of teenage-boydom vicariously through his bonkers best friend, Mark. But when he discovers he's been poisoned by a lunatic diner chef and has only 24 hours to live, he enlists the help of Mark and his girlfriend Nikki to dash off a list of brilliantly hair-brained activities he must accomplish before he dies. The trio then embarks on a dizzying New York City roller-coaster ride of booze, rock-and-roll concerts, drunken taxi rides, and a credit-card-stealing prostitute. Believable? Not exactly. Fun? Totally. Ehrenhaft's keen characterizations and teen-speak dialogues ring true, and with so many fabulously taboo plot twists, one would think this could be his one-two punch to Quick Pick stardom. But somehow he caps this shameless and entertaining whirlwind race against time with a syrupy, half-baked, and predictable ending guaranteed to piss off and/or disappoint every teen reader who for 200 pages succumbed to and believed in Ted's full-throttle quest for complete spontaneity. (Fiction. YA) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 8-12. It's the first day of spring break, and bright, nerdy 16-year-old Ted Burger is hanging out with his best friends at a New York City diner. Ted's friends are constructing a to do list for him, the first item of which is lose virginity. Then Ted discovers a disgruntled employee has poisoned the fries he has just eaten, and he'll be dead in 24 hours. Suddenly the to do list takes on new meaning. The novel, which is broken into cleverly titled snippets, takes a while to gather speed, but the premise is fun, and Ehrenhaft employs many different literary devices, including lists, screenplays, and delightfully bad puns. Urban teens will enjoy the lighthearted romance and its unlikely hero. --Debbie Carton Copyright 2004 Booklist
Excerpts
Prologue: The Story of My Death My name is Ted Burger. I am sixteen years old. I am an only child. I live in New York City. I will not live to see seventeen. What else? Let's see. . . . My voice is pretty deep but it squeaks sometimes, like an old rusty bicycle. I have curly brown hair. "Brillo pad hair," in my best friend Mark's words. I am tall and skinny. My fingers are, too. They look like twigs. "Musician's fingers," says my guitar teacher, Mr. Puccini. (Translation: "Girlie fingers.") I'm good at blowing stuff off. I have a hard time admitting certain things to myself. According to my parents, I have a "nutty, Borscht Belt sense of humor!" (I include the exclamation point because they tend to speak at a high-pitched volume.) What they mean is that I'm a third-rate clown, but they aren't really ones to talk. This is the story of my death. It starts the way all my stories do, as a bad joke whose tragic punch line somehow ends up signifying my whole life. Or death, in this case. Ha! Ha . . . ha . . . okay, maybe my parents are right. Maybe I am a clown. I don't have the greatest comic timing. I rarely instigate-bad things simply happen to me. Pie-in-the-face sorts of things. But don't just take my word for it. Consider the fortune I received on my sixteenth birthday (ironically, my last birthday ever, although I didn't know it at the time) when my parents took me to the Hong Phat Noodle House-and I swear I am not making this up: You will never have much of a future if you look for it in a cookie at a Chinese Restaurant. J My mom's fortune promised a lifetime of infinite happiness. My dad's, a lifetime of wealth and fulfillment. When I complained to the waiter about mine, he told me that I should be pleased. "It's true, young man," he said with a smile. "One should never look for one's destiny in a dessert item. One should look for it in experience." I agreed, sure-but deep down, I still felt sort of gypped. I asked for another one. He refused. Hong Phat policy is one fortune cookie per customer, period. The real punch line is that I don't even like Chinese food all that much. I like french fries. But my parents forced me to go there because they said that I needed to learn how to use chopsticks. "It's a skill that will make you part of an important demographic, dear!" Mom insisted. That's a direct quote. To this day, I have no idea what she means. (I never learned how to use chopsticks, either.) My parents work together at the same advertising firm, so they talk a lot about stuff like "important demographics!" It's pretty much all they talk about. Maybe one day I will understand their baffling pronouncements. I would if I weren't doomed to an early grave, that is. Speaking of which, the story of my death also starts at a restaurant. It starts at the Circle Eat Diner with Mark and his girlfriend, Nikki. I can't imagine it starting any other way. Everything starts at the Circle Eat Diner with Mark and Nikki, at least everything that matters . . . everything that happens during those sublime, BS-filled hours when the three of us laugh and rant and eat, the hours just after school and before I have to run back home to Mom and Dad. Okay, that's an exaggeration. I rarely have to run home to Mom and Dad. They aren't around very often. They take a lot of business trips. All of which is a long way of saying that I spend more time hanging out at the Circle Eat Diner with Mark and Nikki than I probably should. Much more. You'll see what I mean shortly. The story of my death has a very dramatic, pie-in-the-face beginning. A Very Active Inner Life Spring break has just started. No classes for a whole week! Woo-hoo! It's one of those rare gorgeous afternoons in Manhattan when the sky is swimming-pool blue and the breeze is crisp. There's no humidity at all. Freedom! the day seems to shout. Rock and roll! Well, the day might seem to shout that if I were outside. Inside the Circle Eat Diner, the day doesn't seem to shout anything. It stinks of grease. The three of us are huddled over the remnants of a burger, fries, and pickle. We pretty much order the same meal every time: Circle Eat #5, the Burger/Fries Combo. I eat the fries. Mark eats the burger. Nikki eats the pickle. The way Mark and Nikki are slouched across from me in the booth, they look more like a pair of models than a real-life couple-rail thin, dark, unblemished . . . poster children for the wonders of the #5 diet. Mark's brown hair is a mess. His ratty T-shirt bears the logo give this dawg a bone. His brown eyes are wild. They're always wild. This stems from a belief he's had since he was a little kid that something bizarre and miraculous could occur at any moment-a giant-squid attack, the Rapture-and when it does, it will require his personal involvement in some way. So he's perpetually on guard. I envy him for this. I always have. He's never bored. Nikki is hardly ever bored, either, but for less delusional reasons. She's got a very active inner life. This I can relate to. She's constantly turning everything over in her mind-every event and conversation, no matter how trivial-and milking it for its hidden wisdom. You can tell from the way she listens, from the way she looks you in the eye . . . you can even tell from how she dresses: mostly in black. With Nikki, blackness doesn't have an agenda. She isn't trying to play the role of a misunderstood hipster or a sullen goth. She isn't trying to fit in with any crowd, either. (To be honest, the three of us don't really belong to any crowd. Not unless you include the other people who hang out in the Circle Eat Diner all the time, like Old Meatloaf Lady and Guy with Crumbs in His Beard.) Nikki just doesn't put a whole lot of thought into her wardrobe. She's got too much else going on inside. Once she told me that the only reason she dresses in black is so her clothes will match her hair. I loved that. Her eyes are what really tell the story, though. They're like onyx, calm to the point of being alien: the eyes of the extra-terrestrials you see in UFO documentaries. They radiate that same mysterious, hypnotic "we-come-in-peace" vibe, even when she's joking around or scheming. Funny: I probably think more than Nikki does about the way she looks. Ha! Not that I'd ever admit that to her. I definitely wouldn't admit it to Mark. I have a hard enough time admitting it to myself. Excerpted from 10 Things to Do Before I Die by Daniel Ehrenhaft All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
