The Best Moments In Reading Are When You Come Across Something- A Thought, A Feeling, A Way At Looking At Things- Which You Had Thought Special And Particular To You. And Now, Here It Is, Set Down By Someone Else, A Person You Have Never Met, Someone Who Is Even Long Dead. And It Is As If A Hand Has Come Out, And Taken Yours.

Alan Bennett

The History Boys

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Going Bovine

Going BovineTitle: Going Bovine
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell
Publication Date: October 1st, 2010
Genre: YA/Fiction/Comedy/Satire
Length: 480 pages

All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It’s not a lot to ask. But that’s before he’s given some bad news: he’s sick and he’s going to die. Which totally sucks. Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure—if he’s willing to go in search of it. With the help of a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America into the heart of what matters most.

What do I have to say about this book? You know how sometimes you finish reading a very good book and this warm funny feeling spreads throughout your entire body? I love reading about worlds different than ours, mainly if the worlds captured by the author are funny, light, thought-through, and satirical, in a way that doesn’t come off as arrogant, yet captures an interesting aspect of a genre or idea. That is this book in a nutshell, I’m a devoted Libba Bray fan after reading only two of the books and I’m proud of it. So far, everything this author has to say provides an amazing and engaging commentary on our morals, our beliefs, and actions that instead of making me get a little upset or angry at, make me chuckle. Everything from her characters to the storyline, and all the little plot twists and turns make me loathe myself since I have such a hard time putting down her book.

I know a lot of people have said this book is incredibly average, yet I don’t see how. Libba Bray is incredible at making characters come to life, and writes her books in such a way that they manage to be thought provoking while still relatable, which I honestly think can be extremely difficult sometimes. I feel that it’s one of those books that you either love or hate. No in-betweens. Personally, I like reading strange and weird books that get their point across and if do as well, this book is perfect.

The things I did not like: The repetition of key points throughout the book. The book itself was a little bit too long and therefore some of the parts seemed stretched out in a sense. the beginning didn’t pull you in as good books tend to. It was obvious Bray was trying to make her characters sound funny and sarcastic, occasionally it got to the point where it was annoying. What I like about Cameron is that he’s a very average teen with a not so average problem which gets him into weird situations. Since he’s an average teen and not a super being, he comes off as relatable and thanks to his not so average fatal Cow-Disease his adventures are intriguing and anything but normal. It’s a funny contrast, and I think Bray pulls it off incredibly well.

So to sum up the key points:

Positives:

  • Characters come to life.
  • Great idea, as well as though provoking satire.
  • Off the chars weird while enjoyable.
  • The package includes: Disney Land, an Angel with punk combat boots and wings that change pattern, an average teenager that has an incredibly rare fatal disease, a ginormous road trip with the weirdest characters, and a kickass talking garden gnome and dwarf. I mean…
  • Captures interesting aspects of our morals and beliefs.
  • Is incredibly well written if we’re talking about the vivid description of places.
  • The jokes in the book are sometimes so random and just plain strange, that at one point it feels like you have these inside jokes with the characters.
  • The dialogues sounds real, and the characters’ personalities come off great in them.

Negatives:

  • Tends to get a little repetitive, and you will see the ending coming as soon as you pick up the novel.
  • A little bit too long.
  • Doesn’t exactly grip you from the beginning.
  • The tone that Libba Bray uses can sometimes come off as though she’s trying to hard to make her characters sound funny and sarcastic can get annoying at times.
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