I didn't get it.

This is the third book I've read by Meg Rosoff, fourth if you count my failed attempt to start Just in Case. What I've discovered to be most true about Rosoff's novels is that reading and liking one is far from a guarantee that you will enjoy the rest - or, in fact, any of the others - so I cannot offer words like: "if you enjoyed How I Live Now (etc.) this will be your kind of book". This novel is a million miles away from anything Meg Rosoff has previously written, and general More...

2.5/5
who is god?

is god a man? or a woman? or a fish? or a goat? is god old or young? fat or thin? [..] is god invisible? out to lunch? listening carefully? or just a very silly idea?

does god live in heaven? on a cloud? somewhere in outer space? in our heads? in the bible? or no place at all?

maybe god is a toad. or a crow. or a dream. or a tree. or an idea someone thought up ten thousand years ago. or all those things. or none of them. why not? no one can really tell us who or what god is, or ev More...

Bob is 19, a lazy, undisciplined kid, but he has enough sense to want to escape his reckless mother Mona, who most recently has gambled away his pet Eck in a poker game. On top of that, Bob's job is way over his head and his appointed helper Mr. B has come to resent picking up after him. Then Bob meets Lucy, a lovely young woman working at the zoo, and though Mona and Mr. B and everyone else can tell no good will come of it, Bob decides he's fallen in love with her.

Standard YA rom-com. Except Bo More...

Kurzbeschreibung:
Stellen Sie sich vor, Gott heißt Bob, ist ein 19-jähriger Schnösel, der ein paar Straßen weiter wohnt und den halben Tag verschläft. Vor einigen Jahrmillionen hatte er seine kreativen sechs Tage, aber seitdem hat er am Schicksal der Menschheit das Interesse verloren. Vielmehr interessiert er sich für die hübsche Lucy. Mit ihr will er zusammensein, koste es, was es wolle. Doch wenn Bob sich verliebt, versinkt die Welt im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes im Chaos.

Zur Autorin:
Bevor sie an More...

This is definitely NOT a typical Meg Rosoff book. I've read a few, and this one is completely different from any of her other novels. That being said, this was not a bad book. Just don't go into it expecting something as beautiful as How I Live Now or The Bride's Farewell. Rosoff is making some kind of statement here, I think, although didn't figure out what that was, but it was highly entertaining. And, I want an eck!

this was a really weird book. bob (aka god) had the personality of a 5-year-old boy and a 19-year-old boy mixed together. he was sulky and lazy and hungry and arrogant just like a teenager, but he was so extremely self-centered and threw a lot of tantrums and he was so dependent on others. he reminded me of steven in drums, girls, and dangerous pie since he was so melodramatic, he wanted to be with lucy "forever" and he loves her "with all his heart" and wants to "ask for her hand in marriage" ( More...

There is No Dog but there is a God... and he's a selfish, egotistical brat whose colossal mistakes have been mounting up over the millennia while he takes an extended break and hatches plot after plot to get human girls to sleep with him. Rosoff's God (spoilt, sex-obsessed teenager Bob) doesn't really care for his job - he lets his unhappy co-worker Mr. B answer prayers and stop worldwide catastrophes and all that stuff. Bob has bigger concerns: like making sure his alcoholic mother doesn't gamb More...

There Is No Dog is a strange little book, and I found it to be an enjoyable one. The book mainly revolves around the god of planet Earth, who happens to be a teenage boy named Bob. Bob is a lazy and apathetic god, who has recently become smitten with a human girl named Lucy. As Bob develops a misguided relationship with the girl, and as problems arise with Bob's mother and with an adorable little penguin-like creature called an Eck, the world plunges into a more and more chaotic state. The futur More...

Well, that was oddacious. That's right, both odd and audacious. In a good way, I think.

"I think," because it's too soon after finishing the book to say for sure and at this point I don't want to think about it too hard, analyze all the analogies and metaphors and hidden meanings like a literature professor, but would rather let it percolate in my associative brain for a while. So, for now, I feel it was good and I enjoyed it. There is philosophy and theology here under the humorous surface, very More...

Meh? It's hard to rate this because I already knew this wasn't my thing after reading the book flap description. Let's take the Wacky Premise that God is actually a slovenly, slothly teenage boy named Bob! Har har har. I will say it was generally well-executed after that, for what it's worth.

So slacker Bob falls in love with a human young lady and all sorts of disasters happen as a result. Fortunately, he has a something of a chief operating officer who is able to cobble together some solutions More...

There Is No Dog is the story of God, or dog if you're dyslexic as he apparently is, a.k.a Bob, portrayed as a petulant young man who is ruled by only his very visceral desires and whims. Consequently the world is in a very sorry state of being. He is assisted by Mr. B who attends to the prayers and attempts to clean up after Bob's negligence and destructive moods. Rosoff pokes a stick at many religious conventions by posing the difficult, unanswerable questions about the meaning and futility of More...

There are certain authors who you know are a safe pair of hands ahead of reading their books. You know that the quality of their previous output is almost a guarantee that their latest book will be a good read. Meg Rosoff is one such author. She hasn't looked back since bursting on to the scene with her jaw droppingly outstanding debut How I Live Now (soon to be adapted for the big screen). For those of you not familiar with her prolific output, I strongly suggest you track it down. She writes w More...

Originally posted on my blog: http://libraryladyhylary.blogspot.com ! Check it out for more reviews!

In the beginning, God created the Earth in seven days, but only because he was lazy and didn’t want to spend the time really thinking things through. This is what Mr. B has had to deal with for millennia: a nineteen-year-old named Bob who was only appointed as God of the small, insignificant planet called Earth because his mother won him the job in a poker game. Now, after thousands of years of tr More...

Bob's mother won Earth in a poker game, and gave it to Bob to get him out of her hair. He's a terrible God, lazy and selfish and foolish, but he does have flashes of brilliance. Luckily for Earth, he also has an assistant, Mr. B, who is as responsible, far-seeing and wise (if a bit stodgy) as Bob is not. Between the two of them, Earth mostly manages to putter along.

But then Bob falls in love with a human girl (again--you'd think he'd remember what happened the last few times he tried this) and E More...

Love the concept, babe. God is a horny teenage boy? Run with it. Oh yeah, and his love interest has a name that means "light" and his pet is a weird one-of-a-kind penguinish elphant thing that Bob (God) ignores until Emoto Hed (yes, God is not the ruler of Everything) wins him in a poker game and decides to eat him.

Well, of course. The whole Christian Church is based on eating God, so why not eat his pet? And then give him a name like Eck. No, not Dennis Eckersley, the great relief pitcher for t More...

I love books that have existential questions in them, and this one does not disappoint. Arising naturally from the narrative are such topics as the purpose of God, the level of his involvement with mankind, and what people expect from Him. It includes characters of all levels of belief, and Gods of all levels of goodness and maturity. I think it is fascinating to see how the idea of God has evolved since ancient civilization and compare that to the immortal characters in this book. I also think More...

This book won't be for everyone, partly because it's so different, and partly because the main character, Bob, is so hard to like. Self-absorbed, lazy, and intent on bedding as many females as he possibly can, Bob is an adolescent boy who also happens to be the god of this planet, an assignment he got after his goddess mother won the position in a poker game. There are Biblical references about the creation of the heavens and the earth interspersed with the storyline, which involves the indolent More...

OK folks. There's some good news and some bad news. The good news is: God exists. The bad news? God is an arrogant, insolent, lustful, forgetful teenaged boy named Bob. Bob's mother won our corner of the universe in a poker game and pawned it off on her underage son. Bob had some fun creating our world, but grew bored rather quickly and let things get tremendously out of control. The only thing really holding it all together is Bob's personal assistant, Mr. B. Mr. B is sick of dealing with Bob a More...

I ordered this book of the internet because I was interested about the overall storyline behind it.

[There are no spoilers in here, so don't worry :)]

When I first started reading it, it was a rather good book... It had humour, a forbidden love story and as far as I could tell, decent characters.

However, the further I got into the book, the more bored I became of reading it... The main character had little depth to him and the guy you knew at the end of the book was exactly the same as the one at More...

~Amazon Description~
What if God were a teenaged boy?

In the beginning, Bob created the heavens and the earth and the beasts of the field and the creatures of the sea, and twenty-five million other species (including lots of cute girls). But mostly he prefers eating junk food and leaving his dirty clothes in a heap at the side of his bed.

Every time he falls in love, Earth erupts in natural disasters, and it's usually Bob's beleaguered assistant, Mr. B., who is left cleaning up the mess. So humanki More...

Dio è un ragazzo diciannovenne egoista e superficiale che pensa solo al sesso. Bob, questo il suo nome, è diventato dio della terra attraverso la madre, che ha vinto il ruolo ad una partita a carte. A Bob è stato affiancato il Signor B, che da sempre si occupa di prendere in considerazione le preghiere rivolte a dio e di risolvere i guai di quest'ultimo... Un giorno Bob si innamora di una mortale e tutto diviene complicato...

In seguito alla pubblicazione di questo libro Meg Rosoff è stata accusa More...

I did enjoy this book for the most part, but did not find it to be amazing. It has a few humorous moments, but was not laugh out loud funny. One book review I read of it suggested giving it to fans of Neil Gaiman's & Terry Prachet's "Good Omens." That book leaves this one in the dust. I'm not sure you can do a satrical religious fantasy that takes things to ridiculous extremes while still being appropriate for teen readers. The good kind of "sick & wrong" that is required for a story lik More...

The premise is simply “What if God were a teenage boy?” This almost sounds like a great plot for a silly comedy like Jim Carrey’s Bruce Almighty. However, Meg Rosoff uses this premise and surprisingly presents us with an amazing and delightful treat.

Forest Gump once said, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you’ll never know what you’re gonna get”. And that is the pleasure of picking up a Meg Rosoff novel. You never really know what kind of story is in between the pages. With a title like There i More...

What if God were really a hormonal 19 year old? What if instead of worrying about all the creatures on Earth including humans, he really only wanted to seduce a young zookeeper named Lucy? This is the basic storyline of There is No Dog by British author Meg Rosoff. Since this book is listed as young adult I would have to say that this is not for young teens because it really is about Bob (God) who is a spoiled, churlish, self-centered, lazy teen with no social skills who really just wants everyt More...

Maybe the world is in such bad shape because God is really an eternal, hormonal, eighteen year old boy. That's the premise of this quite fun and beguiling book. And, hey, if you didn't notice, there is only one god, who spends his time lying around sleeping and eating and playing video games, or else lusting after some nubile young human female, at which time all hell breaks loose as he appears as a swan or bull or whatever seems appropriate. Bob (god's name) does have help, but it's not angels. More...

Richie's Picks: THERE IS NO DOG by Meg Rosoff, Putnam, January 2012, 272p., ISBN: 978-0-399-25764-3

"What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home"
--Eric Bazillian, "One of Us"

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
"Only it wasn't as simple as that. The preferred candidate for God withdrew at the last minute saying he wanted to spend more time with his family, though privately everyone suspected he was having second thoug More...

Hmmm. This eagerly anticipated (by me!) book left me scratching my head a bit. It is a fantastic flight of imagination, to be sure. God aka Bob, is a hormonal adolescent boy who loves to create but isn't so great at following up on the problems left in the wake of creation. That job falls to his assistant/secretary, Mr. B. Mr B. tries, but fails, to get Bob interested in the problems of Earth. Bob, however, is quite interested in a lovely young lady that he has just discovered, and like the sex- More...

What a fun book! I was luck to receive an advanced copy of it, and I can honestly say, it was one of the funniest books I’ve read in a while.
The writing is a joy. It is so fresh and witty that it makes the reader smile pretty much every few paragraphs. There is a huge amount of creativity in this novel. The characters alone are fascinatingly over the top, with Bob, a teenager who also happens to be Earth’s creator and God as the ring leader. It is impossible not to laugh at his antics. Mr. B., B More...

What kind of God would make a world like this? It's the question we ask when we start testing our theological chop in our teenage years: a world of wars and rape and environmental disaster, of pimples erupting just before the school dance and turning up to the ball and seeing your arch-enemy in the same dress as you (but a size smaller).

Meg Rosoff's answer? A negligent, floppy-haired teenage boy god - irritable, distractable, sex-mad and short-tempered, yet also rather luscious and prone to the More...