Re: [LM_NET] YA: Richie's Picks: GOING BOVINE

[Christine Rayl <cjrayl@YAHOO.COM>]

I am currently reading this book, Going Bovine, and I just want to cry as I have 
fallen for this character. It is quite a profound book in many ways and it 
certianly grabs the reader.

Have you read The Roar yet or Maze Runner? Both are fairly good although I think 
the Maze Runner is far superior to The Roar.

Christine Rayl, Librarian
Bowie Elementary
Grand Prairie ISD, TX

Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable. 

Augustine Birrell


--- On Sun, 12/27/09, Richie Partington <BudNotBuddy@AOL.COM> wrote:

> From: Richie Partington <BudNotBuddy@AOL.COM>
> Subject: [LM_NET] YA: Richie's Picks: GOING BOVINE
> To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
> Date: Sunday, December 27, 2009, 8:09 AM
>  
> Richie's Picks: GOING BOVINE by Libba Bray, 
> Delacorte, September 2009, 
> 496p., ISBN: 978-0-385-73397-7  
> 
>  
> "...Remember then, that summer birds with wings of
> fire  flaying
> Come to witness springs new hope, born of leaves decaying.
> And as  new life will come from death,
> Love will come at leisure.
> Love of love,  love of life 
> and giving without measure,
> Gives in return a wondrous  yearn 
> For promise almost seen..."
> --Graeme Edge -- "The Dream"
> 
>  
>  
> "'You people slay me,' she  says with a laugh, and
> there's an edge to it.  
> 'Always worrying, "What will  happen?  What's
> next?"  Always everywhere but 
> where you actually  are.  You just don't get
> it.'
> "'Get what?'
> "'Here.  Now.  This.'  She gestures
> wide,  turns around.  'This is it, 
> cowboy.  The whole ride.  Pay  attention.'"
>  
> I am not going to pretend that I understand 
> everything I read over the 
> past four days and five hundred pages of GOING  BOVINE
> by Libba Bray.  No way.  
> But from the first page of this  profoundly funny and
> heartbreaking tale of 
> a teenager on a road trip to  save the world and his
> own life, I found 
> myself quite  content -- and extremely grateful for
> the opportunity -- to just  
> buckle myself in and enjoy the wild ride. 
>  
> "As a kid, I imagined lots  of different scenarios for
> my life.  I would be 
> an astronaut.  Maybe a  cartoonist.  A
> famous explorer or rock star.  Never 
> once did I see  myself standing under the window of a
> house belonging to 
> some druggie named  Carbine, waiting for his yard
> gnome to steal his stash so 
> I could get a cab back  to a cheap motel where my
> friend, a neurotic, 
> death-obsessed dwarf, was waiting  for me so we could
> get on the road to an 
> undefined place and a mysterious Dr. X,  who would
> cure me of mad cow disease and 
> stop a band of dark energy from  destroying the
> universe."
>   
> Sixteen year-old high school student Cameron Smith is
> a  float-along stoner 
> living in the shadow of his smart and popular twin 
> sister.  He experiences 
> a series of strange, psychotic-like episodes  that
> have him wondering 
> whether he's been toking on some  seriously toxic
> weed.  Instead, it turns out 
> that he has  contracted Creutzzfeldt Jacob varient
> Bovine Spongiform 
> Encephalpathy --  the human form of Mad Cow Disease --
> and that his brain is in the 
> process  of disintegrating.  Meanwhile, he has
> been finding messages left on  
> feathers that are too big to be from any bird.  It
> turns out they are  
> coming from a punk rock angel with a sweet tooth
> named  Dulcie.  It is Dulcie 
> who sends the ailing Cameron on the quest that  will
> take him and Gonzo from 
> Texas to Florida.
>  
>  
> "THERE IS NO MAD TOFU DISEASE" 
> -- teeshirt sold by the peace and justice 
> organization, Syracuse Cultural 
> Workers
> 
>  
> GOING BOVINE is the second book I've read in the past 
> month that alludes 
> to Don Quixote.  Unfortunately, it was the 
> Spanish language version of 
> Cervantes that I read thirty-seven years  ago (as part
> of a high school total 
> immersion program), and I  didn't grasp much of the
> reading or discussions 
> (also  in Spanish) even back then when I actually had
> substantive  memories of 
> the experience.  On top of that, I studied Earth 
> science rather than physics 
> as a senior, so I also  don't really grasp much of the
> time and space stuff 
> going on  here.
>  
> But that just doesn't affect my enjoyment of
> Cameron's  story.  What I do 
> know is that when all those multitudes  of kids who
> have loved Percy Jackson 
> get into high school, a whole lot  of them are going
> to be absolutely blown 
> away by this complex,  heart-tugging
> coming...err..dying of age journey.  
>  
> Furthermore, with the manner in which Bray deftly 
> shreds the insipid genre 
> of reality television and other  contemporary 
> cultural targets, it also 
> reminds me of the slashing social  commentary of
> FEED.  Then there is plenty 
> on the ride  that has me recalling the anarchic
> zaniness and chaos of the  
> Firesign Theater.  And I have a small personal
> connection with  Cameron's 
> life-altering childhood experience at Disney World, being
> that at  the New York 
> World's Fair in 1964, I got to go on the original It's
> A  Small World After 
> All ride (after learning and singing the song at 
> school).  
>  
> Nor will I ever be able to look at a lawn gnome the
> same  way again after 
> getting to know and love the one that Cameron and 
> Gonzo rescue along the 
> way.  That gnome turns out to actually be  the
> Viking god Balder, who had been 
> cursed by the trickster Loki and  trapped for ages --
> as the butt of pranks 
> and target of male dogs  -- until Cameron comes
> along.
>  
> "Five minutes after I've helped him in, the gnome appears
> at  the window 
> again, a big wad of crumpled bills in his hand.  'I'm
> afraid I'm  a bit rusty 
> yet.  Grab my legs!' he whispered.  I pull him
> back to  safety and he 
> presses the bills into my hand.  'I took the whole of
> it,  three thousand dollars, 
> just to be sure.'
> "'Whoa.'  I can't stop staring at all that 
> green.
> "'Quickly,' Balder admonishes.
> "I shove the bills deep into my pockets.  'I feel kind
> of  bad taking this.'
> "'Don't,' the gnome says.  He wobbles on shaky
> legs  toward the yard.  'His 
> wealth is ill-gotten.  And once he dressed me  as
> a "Hootchie Mama" and 
> posted Internet pictures on a fetish site called 
> Naughty Gnomes.  I cannot 
> adequately convey the trauma of  it.'"
>  
> "Now you know that you are real..."
> -- Mike Pinder
>  
> GOING BOVINE is one heck of a long, strange trip that
> I  am so happy I 
> undertook.  There is just so much here about
> love  and life and what is real; I 
> look forward to going back for a reread; it  would be
> great fun to have 
> someone with whom to share the  experience. 
>    
> 
> Richie  Partington, MLIS
> Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/) 
> _http://www.librarything.com/profile/richiespicks_ 
> (http://www.librarything.com/profile/richiespicks) 
> BudNotBuddy@aol.com
> Moderator  _http://groups.yahoo.com/middle_school_lit/_ 
> (http://groups.yahoo.com/middle_school_lit/) 
> _http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks_ (http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks) 
> 
> FTC  NOTICE: Richie receives free books from lots of
> publishers who hope he 
>  will Pick their books.  You can figure that any
> review was written  after 
> reading and dog-earring a free copy received.  Richie
> retains these  review 
> copies for his rereading pleasure and for use in his 
> booktalks at schools 
> and  libraries.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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