Bray takes on the great Don Quixote and delivers more than a modern satire. She gives us a wild ride worthy of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz that is not only fun and hilarious but moving and exceptionally written. This novel is a monumental undertaking and somehow Bray accomplishes it.

In the beginning, I found Cameron wholly unrelatable, but Bray is so witty and has such a way with sarcastic metaphors and sneaking in description so you see and smell and hear and feel the book without More...

Sixteen year old Cameron Smith confidently states that the best day of his entire life was when he was a toddler and his family visited Disney Land. During that day he almost got himself killed in a freak drowning accident. Already it is evident of Cameron's mindset, or the teenage group he fits into: the lazy, jaded, underachievers that dwell within the restrooms of high school smoking pot. Things can't seem to get any worse until Cameron learns he has contracted Mad Cow Disease and that his de More...

me + this book = fail.

I made it to page 93 and still wasn't feeling it. I think it was just a touch too random and there were so many tangents from the main story-line that I wasn't engaged enough.

Also, the quirky anecdotes and asides just didn't do anything for me. Perhaps as an Aussie I just have a different sense of humour and found it too hard to relate?

Once I started doing the skimming thing (I was trying to zoom ahead and see if I could stumble across the plot, somewhere, hidden in there. More...

In 1995, Paramount Pictures released a movie called Clueless. I remember when the previews were out, and, honestly, there was nothing I wanted to see less. This was, after all, the same year that 3 Ninjas Knuckle Up, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and Mortal Kombat found their place on the big screen. Alicia Silverstone’s crowning glory was just not at the top of my eleven-year-old Big List o’ Shit.

A year later, I was chilling with my cousin, a bona fide teenage girl. Clueless was on HBO and she i More...

Okay, here's my review:

It started out good although very reminiscent of a modern-day Holden Caulfield.

Then it went really psychedelic.

Then I finished it and found something else to read.

Great concept - just kind of average execution.

Going Bovine is one of those really cool books that you didn't know existed till it's in your hands and your madly flipping the pages to find out what's going on. Now this is a book that has so much meaning, so much heart, so much soul, but with a twisted witty humor to entertain every page of this masterpiece.

This book was a really trip and a half! I didn't know where Cameron's hallucinations start and where his reality ended. The lines are very fuzzy, but the adventure getting there was amazin More...

There will be spoilers at the end of this review. Don't worry; I'll give you plenty of notice. I just hate clickin that little spoilers box, because if the rest of the world is like me, no one will read this review because of the energy it takes to open the page.

Cameron is just your average teen guy. He's lazy, aimless, and the highlight of his day is smoking pot in the school rest room. But then the unexpected happens: he get's mad cow disease, which is fatal in every single case. The only cha More...

I really loved the writing in "Going Bovine"; Libba Bray can write very well. I very much enjoyed the snarky dialogue but could have lived without the angst-y teenage BS. Cameron is not a lovable kid; he's miserable and transmits his misery page after page. His parents and sister are so unbelievably self-absorbed that I just could not connect with them or Cameron after wading through more than half of the book. I realy hate not finishing a book but I had to let this one go. However, since I real More...

Well....I enjoyed the first chapter.

In all, the book was quite slow paced (480 freaking pages of it) and entirely predictable. The tone drove me absolutely insane. It sounded as if Bray was trying too hard to make her character witty and sarcastic. So instead of using the "Less is more" technique, Bray succeeded in creating a character that thinks they are incredibly funny and witty, when in reality, was extremely irritating.

I will admit that the concept of the book was original. But, sadly, poo More...

NOTE: This review may have some spoilers in the part where I talk about the characters. Besides that, this review is spoiler free and FDA approved.

Going Bovine was possibly one of the best books I have ever read. No joke. I mean, I’ve used the term “best book ever” until it was worn out to my sister’s old pair of Converse that really should be mine now, but no, my parents just had to give it back to her.

Screw her feet that stopped growing after she hit the age of fourteen.

Anyways, Going Bovine More...

Yep, two stars. (Libba Bray fans are probably giving me the stink eye.) Don't get me wrong: I think Libba Bray is a good writer with fascinating takes on certain ideas and premises, but oftentimes her stories lose me because of the characters. I never really come away loving any of them, and that's a sad thing since other books have introduced me to flawed characters that I still end up loving. (Yes, it is essential that I have characters to latch onto in a story. If not, the book receives littl More...

Wow. This book is f*ing A-Ma-Zing! In fact, it's not a book. It is an HBO mini-series playing in your mind, if LotR met Dude Where's My Car, had a baby, that baby grew up and met every epic teen novel and movie from the last fifteen years and they all had one big literary orgy. Protection was used. Kinda.

Going Bovine is more than an unusual book; it is abnormal, bizarre, controversial, and extraordinary. I am a quick reader; you could say that I am a big fan of quickies. This book took me TWO WE More...

I could *not* make a dent in this. Every time I picked it up, I put it right back down again. I liked the Gemma Doyle books, and Libba Bray, from what I've gleaned through interviews and funny youtube videos co-starring Maureen Johnson and Scott Westerfeld, seems like a super-fun person. But this just isn't a book for me.

I think I'm finally learning to stop feeling guilty about doing the ditch. I will champion books and reading to the bitter end, but "every book, its reader" and vice versa. Stop More...

My favorite book of all time. Imagine Brian Lee O'Malley surrendering his masterpiece Scott Pilgrim series to Bob Dylan, Scott Adams and Jack Kerouac. The constraints are Scott Pilgrim is now a stoner who has mad cow disease, Ramona is a punk rock angel who flies in and out of Scott's life, and Wallace is a hypochondriac dwarf human. They all take a road trip through the dirty South and face many a task. New Orleans blues legends, smile cults, eskimo rock bands, evil snowglobes and the occaision More...

Wow! What a wild ride! Beautiful and sad.
Cameron is leading a boring teenage life; doesn't really fit in and doesn't really seem to care. He's mostly just going through the motions of life without really thinking about what matters to him or what his future holds.
Then, after having halucinations, he's diagnosed with Mad Cow Disease and that's when things get interesting. The pieces of his memories, random thoughts from his life are scrambled with physics and philosophy, reality and alternate un More...

This year compared to previous years, I've been having a hard time staying with books and not putting them down after I start them. I've put down more books this year than I have finished, I think. I almost did it with this book too. It was one of the strangest things I've read to date. I felt like I had to be high on certain points to really get into it. Not that I ever smoked weed and read a book at the same time, mind you. But nevertheless, I felt that I did need to be. And since I wasn't hig More...

It's not that I don't love this book because I really do. The narrative voice is just brilliant and the imagery alongside the story-line is a total trip BUT it deals with dementia (how I did not know this I have no idea) it is far too personal & painful to read about dementia therefore am passing onto the wonderful Beth to review for me.

Review by Beth

For a novel that I had never heard of from a writer I have never come across, I am absolutely thrilled to be able to give Going Bovine five sta More...

As I plow through this sludge, I'm reminded of a favorite quote, which I think is from Charles Ives, "Awards are the badges of mediocrity." I am becoming cynical and distrustful of any work, fiction or otherwise, that wins any award.

I don't read a metric tonne of YA, I like much of it, and this book looked interesting. The cover, title, and premise of this novel intrigued me; but since I insist on doing idiotic things, like reading forwards, after I return home from the library, I should have k More...

I'm trying to come up with a decent review that will explain how weird/great/different this book is. (And I have a couple of chapters to go!)I'M REALLY INTO IT!!!! Going Bovine is going to be impossible to explain so allow me my head start.

Pigeon holes...
Cameron:Stoner,Mad Cow Disease,Hallucinations
Dulcie: Punk rock angel
Gonzo: The hypochondriac dwarf
And Dr. X...'Nuf said

More? All righty... I'm told he eventually finds the meaning of life after but that's only after everything else that's crazy More...

I was listening to this unabridged audiobook on my drive to the airport for ALA Annual. I knew I was going to hear Libba Bray's acceptance speech for this book, and it was quite the treat! Do I think this is the best book ever? No way. But I think the Printz committee did a great job picking a winner. This book is different and showing where YA literature is going in the future. It's complex, yet simple. I laughed and got a little teary at the end. I wanted to befriend Cameron. And adopt him. Or More...

Going Bovine was one of the strangest books I have ever read. It was also one of the funniest books I’ve read. The premise in itself is amusing, though depressing – sixteen-year-old Cameron is an ordinary teenager dealing with the thrills and kills of high school until, that is, he is diagnosed with mad cow disease. Cameron begins to see visions that hover between hallucinations and reality. He is told by one of these hallucinations, a punk rock angel, that he must stop the band of dark energy More...

Believe it or not, this is NOT the weirdest book I've ever read. It's in the top ten, certainly, but even with a talking Norse God/lawn gnome and a punk angel that speaks in riddles, it is not the oddest story I have ever picked up.

That being said, I was fairly impressed with this book. Libba Bray took a complete one-eighty in writing this as a follow up to her series A Great and Terrible Beauty. Not only does this story have a completely different concept than its predecessors, but it also is d More...

What-the-heck. This book was off the charts weird. If you were something in the vein of her Gemma Doyle trilogy, step back now because it’s way, way, way different.

The first thing you notice is her writing style. It’s sarcastic, snarky, and light-hearted. Not to mention it’s got eccentric weaved in all over it. I’m not sure if I was fan of it because it felt overly forced and she tried, maybe, a bit too hard making it sound quirky. But then again her journal entries, interviews, and everything e More...

Update Jan 2010 - WHAT did I say back in October? Did I call this or what? The Printz people should hire me. LOL!! I'M A GENIUS!

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Oct 2009 -

I'm going to call it - This book will win the Printz award for 2009. It's an incredibly well written, honest, intriguing journey of a book.

However, I figured out the "big surprise" pretty early and I think it spoiled the Don Quixote-like road trip that took up the remaining 300 pages. That said - if I'm at More...

A teen filled with ennui is diagnosed with mad cow disease and given a short time to live - and his brain will eat itself until that time. So when a sugar-addicted punk angel appears and tells him how a road trip will help him save the world and find a cure for his disease, Cameron enlists the aid of a dwarf friend...and they're off to New Orleans.

Going Bovine is a very whimsical take on a serious subject, with whiffs of Tom Robbins. The characters are eccentric but there's also a heart at its c More...

Holy cow (pun intended), this book was really good in a weird way. In short, boy with mad cow disease meets dwarf, lawn gnome and punk rocker angel. 'Nough said. Read it. Absolutely not middle school appropriate.

Holy Cow! was all I could think after finishing this book. I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting, but I can tell you this wasn't it. Cameron has mad cow disease which is awful and kind of cool at the same time. Add a punk rock angel named Dulcie, fire giants, Dr X, the wizard of reckoning, a talking lawn gnome and a video game nerd, dwarf named Gonzo and put them all together and take them to New Orleans and Florida and you get an out of this world, funny, coming of age story.
This book won t More...

I'm biased, of course. Libba's not just my client, she's my wife. But this is one of the funniest books I've ever read, and will break your heart at the same time.

She wrote the first draft of this book in one month, for a workshop organized by Cynthia Leitich Smith. It just poured out of her, and I knew it was something special when she'd talk about it with this little gleam in her eye.

Fans of the Gemma books may not initially think this is for them, but I think the romance, the humor, the quir More...