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1D One Direction: Forever Young

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ive boys, five months, one incredible dream. It's crazy to think that five months ago we didn't know each other at all. We were just five guys from different corners of the country, who dreamed of being popstars. Now we've not only found the best friends we've ever had, but we've made it to the final of The X Factor and got a recording contract too! It's been such a wild ride that it's hard to believe it's real at all! We've had the absolute time of our lives, from messing around in the house and playing tricks on the others, to singing our hearts out every week. In Forever Young we tell our story in our own from how we got to Bootcamp to how it felt to become 'the most exciting boy band in the UK' in a matter of weeks. We'll tell you all about what it was really like backstage and in the house. It's for each and every one of our fans, everyone who believed in us, because we want you to know what really happened on our journey from five normal guys to who we are now. We could never have done it without you. You helped us make our dream come true! Packed full of personal snaps, unseen photographs shot especially for the book and backstage footage, this is the full and remarkable story of our time on The X Factor. Stunningly designed and candidly written, it is a must for all One Direction and X Factor fans. Book details Published 17/02/2011 Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Ltd ISBN 9780007432301

224 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2011

245 people are currently reading
6135 people want to read

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One Direction

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5 stars
2,421 (82%)
4 stars
215 (7%)
3 stars
189 (6%)
2 stars
60 (2%)
1 star
59 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 100 reviews
Profile Image for Line .
29 reviews
September 26, 2012
It's fun to read, I mean if you like One Direction of course! But there's a lot of pictures, and they are pretty young and it's kinda hilarious - but they're cute, so no harm done. I bought it when I had a huge crush on Harry Styles, and I didn't have the time to finish it, but now I'm done, and as i said they are really sweet, and you get to know the story behind 1D.
Profile Image for Lauren.
22 reviews
August 11, 2011
I have read this book loads of times as it is factual, you can find information from it easily and it is so captivating, you find yourself wanting to find out more and more about each of the boys in One Direction. This is the book on my bookshelf that is most picked up. I love just laying down and picking up where I would like to read. You don't have to read it in any particular order, you can just find out facts and enjoy a bit of their life whenever you feel like doing so.
It helps you appreciate how young they actually are, how much they have achieved already in life, and how much further they have to go. I am really looking forward to reading the book that is going to follow this, 'dare to dream: Life as one direction'. This tells the next chapter of their everchanging life as popstars! It is a must-read for all One Direction fans!
Profile Image for Demetria.
10 reviews2 followers
March 7, 2013
Great book! It had the ONE THING which makes a book good!
description
It revealed alot about One Direction during the Xfactor.
I WILL NOT SAY ANYMORE!
description
Profile Image for Samantha.
283 reviews94 followers
July 1, 2019
I re-read this one for fun and it was nice to re-live One Direction’s journey on the X Factor. Also loved the nostalgia it made me feel from back in the day when I first read it and with how much love I had (or still have) for this band.
Profile Image for Rachel.
6 reviews
April 20, 2011
ITS MY LIFE!!!! LOVE THE BOYS TO MUCH!!

BEEN THERE FROM THE BEGINING AND TO INFINITY AND BEYOND TO THE END!!!!
16 reviews1 follower
September 24, 2012
I decided to read this because I love One Direction and really wanted to read about their time on The X-Factor in more detail.

On the bingo board this goes into "a dairy, autobiography or biography".

The book was amazing really, it had pictures, quotes from the boys, the whole journey and everything you could ever want to know about it. It really goes into their time at The X Factor, telling you all the details abut it and facts about the boys, I love how they can make you feel as if they are talking right to you directly and not just writing things down for people to read, it shows their personalities and is overall a brilliant book.

My favorite quote from the book is
"I always defend the people I love, even though Im about as terrifying as a baby penguin" Niall Horan. Because the fact that they can write things like this down shows they are you typical teenage boys who are just doing what they love and have fun while doing it, it also shows they stay grounded.

I learnt lots of new things from this book, like not to give up on your dreams; Liam Payne auditioned for The X Factor in 2008, got to the judges houses and then got sent home, he tried again in 2010 and is now in the biggest boy band in the world.

A person in this book who is interesting to me is Niall Horan because I love learning things about him, he is just so interesting.

5/5 rating.
10 reviews4 followers
March 6, 2012
I just bought this book and started reading it. I really enjoy it, especially because they wrote once they just became famous and where getting used to all the fame. In this book they talk about there family, and there lives. I love this book and it is added to my One Direction book autobiographies with Dare To Dream.
Profile Image for Cher  Lloyd.
3 reviews14 followers
Want to read
June 27, 2012
I miss these guys! Haven't seen them since the good old days on x factor.
Profile Image for Ashley.
1,735 reviews33 followers
May 15, 2017
Sooo remember when I read New Kids on the Block: Five Brothers and a Million Sisters and in my review, I said "maybe because it's just in my blood to be a teenybopper (it's why I've never listened to One Direction, nobody wants to see a 30something year old obsessed with a teenage boyband.)"

Well, it's a month after that review, and I fell down the 1D hole. HARD. I blame Harry Styles. I always knew he was cute as heck, so when he released "Sign of the Times" OF COURSE I was curious and had to give it a listen. (Or fifty.) It's a good song. But that let out my damn inner teenybopper, and next thing I knew, I was buying "Made in the AM" and watching 7 year old episodes of UK X Factor. (PS, I NEVER watch these singing competition shows. This is what 1D does to me. Fave performances? "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Kids in America") My library doesn't even own this book, I had to get it special ordered from another city just so I could read it. So here we are: I'm a 30something year old obsessed with a teenage boyband. Sigh.

So this book was okay. It wasn't anything overly spectacular, it kind of felt like the writer put the guys in a room and showed them all the episodes of X Factor to remind them what had happened, or compiled what they had said from weekly interviews; a lot of the things mentioned were stuff that I had seen in the show, and they didn't really seem to go into any details. So it seemed more like a summary of the show vs. an actual behind the scenes account. The pictures were cool, though. I especially liked the backstage ones with some of the other X Factor finalists.

I mean, I'm not in the target demographic for this book at all, and lord knows I had a lot of unauthorized Hanson books that all told the same story over and over and over that I ate up. So I can't really find too much fault in this book. If anything, it got me to read the Goodreads reviews for it, and that was good for a laugh. ;)
Profile Image for Julie.
3 reviews
August 16, 2012
Never read the book is it good?
111 reviews
October 21, 2013
I sat down, just planning on reading the forward of this book to see what Simon had to say. I never meant to read it all. It really says something about how gripping it is that an hour and twenty minutes of straight reading later (sorry optometrist!), I had finished it all (even the acknowledgements).


I didn’t like how this book requires past knowledge to really understand the things that were going on. I was never introduced to the characters, and had to figure out for myself who matched which picture. I didn’t remember any of them, except for Harry, whom I remembered for his crazy hairstyle. It wouldn’t have been too hard for them to add onto one of the group photos the names of everyone, so I could refer to it and not be so confused. I tried (and failed) to orientate myself as to who had which background in the beginning by the order of writer. It took me a while to figure out that the order of narrators was changing all the time, so that did not help at all in lifting my veil of confusion.


Another thing that needed some past knowledge about was X-factor. Since I don’t watch X-Factor, I was pretty confused by the headings, like Week 1. I was thinking “Week one of what? What’s going on here?” Every time another week came up, I was thinking, “Surely this is the final. They can’t have that many weeks!” But no, when I got to it, the final had its own chapter name: “The Final”.

While reading this book I was convinced that it had at least three times as many pictures as words. Sometimes it took so long for me to get to the next page with writing on it that I would forget what was happening and need to go back a dozen pages to find the first half of a sentence.


I found a grammatical error in this book. “Then it would hits us” does not make any sense and I think that an editor should have picked it up.


I liked how they made it funny at times, like when Harry says, “Being cold does not give you a throat infection!” If it lacked these humorous times, I would have gotten bored quickly and read another book instead.


I think that this book improved my knowledge on One Direction and gave me an insight as to their actual characters. Before, I knew them only as “that new boy band that keeps popping up on the radio and didn’t win X-Factor”. Now, after reading about them, I know that they’re deeper than that and I realise that they’re real people with real lives.


I noticed that none of them mentioned a photographer following them around, when there must have been one to get all those photos that were in the book. I think that the photos were actually quite beneficial to the book. Without them it would have been much less interesting and far too short to be impressive-looking as a hard-cover.


Reading Forever Young has improved my view of (auto)biographies. Having just read the beginning of one and not liking the lack of action, I decided that biographies weren’t for me and never picked one up again. Now, I think that they are manageable as long as they are balanced out with lots of fiction books.


I just feel I need to mention that it is really obvious when they wear make-up. Lipstick reflects.
Profile Image for Suzie.
23 reviews3 followers
August 6, 2011
More of a glorified picture book than a searing insight into their time on the X Factor, but for what it is, it does it very well, and manages to present enough snippets that weren't covered by the press at the time to make it interesting. Entertaining and pretty (and I mean the book here...).
1 review
Read
August 16, 2012
I really want to read this book but how can you actually read it??
1 review
March 15, 2014
hey 1D Ilove so mutch I love you harry so mutch
1 review
Read
January 1, 2016
i love one derection and this boys are my life .the bok is very good
Profile Image for Kimberley.
438 reviews14 followers
July 10, 2017
So a little backstory here...I used to be a huge One Direction fan. I mean I was one of those girls stood outside the studio with banners and screaming to get a photo. Yeah it was a different time back then! However it meant that every Christmas I would get their new book (one came out every year because of course we had to capitalise on their story because they knew people would buy it). Then I grew out of them but still kept the book because it was brand new and I thought I'd get round to reading it...and like what 5 years later I finally got around to reading it. 

If you don't know who One Direction are then 1. you've probably been living under a rock and 2. you probably won't like this book. They are/were a pop band with numerous number ones made famous from the British TV show X factor (which I now think is actually a competition in more countries). 

Although I am no longer a fan of One Direction obviously the book is at a disadvantage because why read a book about a band if you don't like the band? Therefore I'm reviewing this for someone who does like the band and is wondering whether or not to pick this up, not as someone who is going to complain because I don't really care about their backstory anymore. 

So I think this is the first book that One Direction released as a band, it covers their story from before the X Factor up to just after the final show when they came third in the competition. In this book we read about what brought each member to the show and how they were feeling before they got to their first auditions. We then follow the story through auditions, bootcamp, Judges houses and finally the live shows. We get exclusive stories about what happened in the house and what it was like living in such close quarters with the other guys who you have only just met. 

Alongside the story we also get new pictures (well now old pictures) of the boys and some of the activities they got up to in their spare time when they weren't rehearsing for the show. We also get some photos from the show such as their first auditions and live shows. 

For me I felt like there were too many photos, there was a photograph on pretty much every page and it bulked the book out but in reality I think there was only probably about 50 pages with actual writing on. However thinking from a fan point of view it is really interesting to view the photos which have never been seen before. We can also see how much the boys have changed throughout the years from when they were first put together. 

The book only covers their X Factor story and you have to remember it is quite an old book now therefore don't expect any updates about what they are currently working on. In fact in this book they haven't even recorded their first single and have just been signed by Simon. However I think if fans are keen to know their backstory of how they got to the competition and how they felt throughout the process then this is definitely a must read. It really gives insight into their lives and how they did gel pretty quickly as a group and have become like brothers. Therefore I would recommend it to fans of the band however it's probably not for me but I definitely would have loved it if I had read it when I actually got it for Christmas!

Read more on my blog at: https://bookgeek2015.wordpress.com/
Profile Image for Kara.
12 reviews
December 2, 2024
I’ve had this book for a few years, but I guess I never sat down to fully read it or I forgot to update my Goodreads.

This book is a nice review of One Direction’s time on The X Factor, especially for fans that may not have followed them in real time on the show. It’s full of lots of photos of the boys (wow they really were so young) and has some fun anecdotes. Rating as 5 stars because it’s exactly what I expected.

It was written in 2011, and it’s a bit of a melancholic read in 2024, after being more aware of—to put it lightly—the negatives of fame and being in the band. Seeing how much hope for the future they had and how fresh and bright-eyed they were back then… It hits me in a similar way as to how I feel looking back at the younger, innocent teen I was when I fell in love with this band over 10 years ago. It is especially heartbreaking to read this book after Liam’s passing in October, which sadly also gives a heavier meaning to “forever young.”
On p. 163, the 1D boys talk about meeting Robbie Williams (formerly of band Take That, and who also struggled with mental health and substance issues) and Liam says, “He also told us to be nice to everyone we meet and to stay away from drugs!” … Gut-wretching. (Ps. Robbie's tribute to Liam feels so genuine and carries an important message.)
I was emotional at times getting through the book. It’s bittersweet to reminisce.

❤️💛🇮🇪💚💙
❯❯❯❯ 🖤🕊️

Random personal note: I bought a used copy of this book online in 2018 at the same time I bought a textbook for grad school. So my order was “One Direction: Forever Young” and “Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging” and that makes me laugh everytime I think about it.
Profile Image for Lara 𐙚⋆°..
82 reviews2 followers
March 25, 2023
An absolute banger of a re-read. God I haven’t picked up this book in years. I sat down last night after watching Louis’ Documentary and I’m like let’s take it back to where it all started.

I loved watching them grow as individuals and in the band - this gives us a sneak peek into what they got up to back in the x factor days.. a few tears were shed because I just love them way too much
Profile Image for Kim.
132 reviews3 followers
October 30, 2018
If you didn't get to watch One Direction's original journey on X Factor, here it is in book form! Large passages are just quotes from the episodes but full of photos sure to please any Directioner. Obviously written for fans, not readers.
Profile Image for ansharah ♡ *・°☆.
44 reviews
December 4, 2024
why did i tear up when i read zayn telling the others “i intend to remain friends with you for the rest of my life.” anyway he’s so me 4ever for being embarrassed by dancing and not wanting to get out of bed
Profile Image for Anika Ramisha.
4 reviews21 followers
May 22, 2019
The book is about pop band one direction. I love this band and have loved this book also.
Profile Image for Angelina Herondale.
10 reviews3 followers
March 12, 2020
Amo a los chicos :))
Me gusto bastante siento que le falta un poco su personalidad (?) en mi opinión ,claro que eso no quita q sea muy bueno
Profile Image for Lausbiana.
566 reviews6 followers
April 7, 2020
Me lo he encontrado limpiando el cuarto y ha sido la parada número 1 de mi maratón de One Direction
Profile Image for Gracie Braund.
4 reviews
January 22, 2023
A perfect book for a directioner or for someone wanting to start a singing career.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Displaying 1 - 30 of 100 reviews

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