Seize Your Copy Going Bovine By Libba Bray Released As Publication

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 occaisional viking gnome,

Take all that and multiply it by an infinite amount of quality quality that could outshine the cosmos and the small world in which we so live.


A refreshing depature for Bray, who commonly writes on matters most femme Victorian, It is a novel that will stay with you forever, guarenteed, The plot that surrounds Cameron Smith, Dulcie and Gonzo is one that many people would require years, if not decades to perfect because of it's intricacy and sheer ecclecticism.
Rarely does a story come along that is so refreshing, so beautiful, If you ever need to take a story with you to college just to read over and over again, take this along with a bit of Twain, Ballard, Bradbury and Satrapi.
You will never be alone, I really thought that I would love this book, It sounded like it was going to be funny, and sweet, and warm, and all kinds of great, But I think this is a rare case of just Too Much Shit, I could only get to pagesomething before I started skimming to the end, which was, well, not to my liking.
It seems like the ending kind of negates all the crazy stuff that happens in the book, All of it! What's the point, then, of having all the crazy in there

I don't know, Too much, too soon, and for me, it got old real quick,

AND THE TERM 'RENTS IS USED, That is my least favorite slang word of all time, 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 it slowing down the plot that I didn't want to stop reading even though I didn't care about Cameron who was a total loser.
He's going nowhere at school, Gets fired from his job with good reason, Hates his family and they aren't too fond of his slackerness either, His only hobby seems to be to listen to music he hates so he can mock it, He's high at least once a week, Shows no hope, no responsibility, and elicits zero sympathy from me, But Bray managed to keep me interested in his story and smiling at her wit despite the fword coming out in every sentence.
Isn't it against some social norm to say the fword when you're talking about Disneyland

Just as I was getting turned off with the too modern feel references to WTF, 'rents, things like that in a story that didn't seem to go anywhere, Cameron develops madcow disease and starts his mental decline.
That's when he heads out on a mission to save himself and the world, On his travels, he takes a hypochondriac dwarf, picks up a talking garden gnome, and heads toward the happiest place on earth following clues of the seemingly random with help from a punkrock angel.
Yeah, it's that whacked.

I laughed and smiled through all his misadventures that were really the adventure in disguise, The way Bray weaved everything in his life from snow globes to cartoons into this adventure so that it was not only important but part of some grander metaphor for his life was utter genius.
I am in awe of Bray's creative power, Through his whole crazy adventure, you can laugh at this story for the slapstick humor or find that deep meaningful awareness of pot talk not that I've ever been there.


You know that feeling when you finish a book or a movie and you feel like something monumental has happened, but nothing's happened to you.
All you did was watch a movie or read a book, That's how I felt when I closed this book, which is pretty amazing that Bray made me experience the book on its terms.
But this book isn't for everyone, Just like you have to be in the right mood or the right person to appreciate Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz, you have to be there to appreciate this.
For all my disdain at the swearing and my initial turnoff to the character which ended up being necessary, for what the book accomplishes, I have to to say, "Wow.
That's a palindrome. " It's in the book.

Minor Spoilers in my symbolismhappy analysis:
Let's start with some of that social satire.
Bray criticizes the brainwashing of religious cults, consumerism, and a society of instant gratification in one swoop with CESSNAB I kept thinking this must be a mingled acronym for something else, but can't find anything in those letters.
I think this was my favorite detour, The criticism was pretty selfexplanatory, especially library girl's speech about censorship,

Bray also takes on our obsession with celebrities and extreme reality TV with the YA! Party House in a section that reeks of spring break on MTV.
She shows what people will do for a little screen time of under the pressure of a cheering crowd, I loved her bits about the travel gnomes and Vikings, not that Vikings are commentary about society but it was sure amusing and Balder's quest proves foreshadowing of Cameron's quest.


I found parallels to the government's fear and oversight after/with the United Snow Globe Wholesalers, especially their FBI wardrobe and speech about terrorists.
And Bray manages to criticize tacky knickknack souvenirs in the process, Plus, she takes on tabloid news and how much news gives rise to panic instead of information, I loved the employee stuff too, how impersonal corporate America has become, A lot of social satire packed into every storyline,

There's commentary on celebrity fundraisers that nobody knows what for with the Big Benefit Concert for Peace but Against NonPeace and People Generally Being Not Nice.
I loved the Copenhagen International sections, What is the real meaning of "The Seven Ways to Say Snow" or any of those seemingly deep lyrics to big bands that everyone loves and sings along to without getting.
I loved how the band tied into the quantum physics with "Dr, X had a theory that certain musical frequencies could open up portals in the fabric of time and space, Something about the vibrations. He believed that music was in fact its own dimension, " Music also gives another underlying theme, which ironically comes from the music he loves to mock: "To live is to love, to love is to live.
"

Some of my favorite moments had to do with humor about physics, "Quantum physics has a problem of major gravity" and "The Theory of Everything Plus a Little Bit More" Stephen Hawking humor.
I love how Bray uses bathroom pot talk to unveil an underlying theme in the book with Shroeder's cat without looking in the box, one cannot know if the cat is dead or alive and therefore both possibilities exist.
And even how she used the Road Runner cartoon to show the concept of alternative universes, that behind every door is a different possibility and who's to say which one is real

There's a whole lot of symbolism in the book dressed up in that meaningless adventure.
My favorite one is the Disney World eticket keeping him alive, The book starts with this line: "The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World.
" Isn't that one of the best lines ever It is that memory, all of his memories, and his capability to think that keep him alive and give him existence.
Besides, how could a book of social satire in America not be pivoted around the happiest place on earth that is real to children but not real

There's a whole lot with Dr.
X too. did anyone catch that Dr, Specialist's name was Dr. Xavier When I read that he was searching for Dr, X, I couldn't help thinking about Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where they're looking for the X and low and behold they're standing on it.
That the X that marks the spot Cameron's mission is with him the entire time, He just had to find it within himself,

Then there's the Wizard of Reckoning, You can go into the whole "there's nothing to fear but fear itself" and how the only people we have to reckon with in the end is ourselves.
I found it interesting that he was dressed as a combination of a knight and a space age astronaut, a redressing of Don Quixote as a modern telling I did find it disrespectful to talk down the great Don Quixote with some of her slang and the f word.
The only class Bray takes the time to go into detail about is the discussion of that book "Is Don Quixote mad or is the world that embraces these ideals.
. . mad. " More foreshadowing of an underlying theme of the book,

Everything in the beginning seems random, but it all ties together in Cameron's mission because there is no seemingly random.
Things like Phantasos on the Mardi Gras parade: "We are weary travelers trying to find our way home on a road that never ends.
Am I part of your dream Or are you but a part of mine" The Wishing Tree that grants the essence of a wish.
The Star Fighter movies that every kid memorizes because he wants to be the hero of a great adventure, The snow globes where the only way to have a perfect, unaltered life is not to live but be trapped in a glass cage.
The Road Runner cartoons with the coyote always chasing something he cannot reach and the episode with the doors of endless possibilities.
Balder on a quest to find something that isn't there, Gonzo so afraid to get sick and die that he doesn't experience anything, The old

lady across the hall who wants beauty when she dies, And Dulcie who represents the message she can't tell Cameron because he has to find out for himself and when he does that meaning she as the message is his reward.


I am in most awe that Bray breaks a cardinal rule of YA fiction, especially firstperson YA, and it works.
Just in case you clicked on the spoiler tag but still haven't read the book, I won't say what it is, but if you've read it, you should know what about talking about with the ending.
It works because you don't like premadcow Cameron, but on this journey he discovers himself and becomes a likable person so you're rooting for that Cameron.
I like the Cameron that meets Dulcie and decides to live instead of sneer at life, I loved how the ending brought his world around full circle back to Disney World and gave life to that existential moment of his youth when he realized life is all a charade.
The symbolism amazed me.

Favorite quotes:
The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World.

Scoring well on tests is the sort of happy thing that gets the school district the greenbacks they crave.
Understanding and appreciating the material are secondary,
I've never done acid, finding it hard to go willingly to a place that could be frightening, hellish, and totally beyond my control.
A place much like high school,
For the record, our friend Chet King has read exactly three books in his life, but I'm not sure that sitting through The Happy Bunny Easy Reader twice should count.

Crosspollination of our educational experience,
Chet nods at me in that agesold macho greeting: I have acknowledge your existence, peon, Do not ask for more,
"You coming to the game, bro" "Can't, It's against my religion Apathy. "
Jena's ubergirl lair. No doubt any serial killer would take one look at the lavender walls covered with sensitive girl songwriter posters and dive out the window anyway.

All hail the suburban action hero,
Resigned, I trudge over to the register, wondering if girls can smell your total fear, like wolves or very experienced serial killers.

I've been poked and prodded in places I'd always prided myself on keeping untouched for that one special doctor who gives me a ring and a promise someday.

As a coping tool, denial is severely underrated,
He's decked out in full protective gear, . . like a giant medical paranoia snowman or some eccentric pop star addicted to bizarre fashion choices,
Had they eaten each other in a druginduced, hatefueled orgy of excessthe dark side of celebrity,
There are several Dr, Aholes who come in here every day to scribble on my chart and poke with sharp objects so they can collect points for their Sadistic Scout Badges, but so far, no Dr.
X.
The waitress takes note of his Little Person status, It's like it stalls out for a minute and she needs to reboot, but the forced smile comes back,
Gonzo shakes his head like I'm giving him Bubonic Plague in jewelry form,
Gonzo's revving as hard as an engine, like he doesn't know whether to be more freaked out about getting in the van with a bunch of possible serial killers or to take his chances alone on the side of a road in Godonlyknowswhere, Mississippi.

You're guaranteed the same experience every single time, And you're having the same experience as everybody else, It cuts down on things like dissatisfaction, envy, competitiveness, longing, regret, All that bad stuff.
I am special special people do not die,
I want to help you find what I've found, Here, have a key chain,
They say it might take twentyfour hours to fix the smoothie machine:, That's like a lifetime!
I think about dying every day, because I can't stop thinking about living,
Tara looks at him like he's just said all babies should be euthanized,
As a kind, 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, deathobsessed 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.

The world's most bada Viking yard gnome is on the counter by the cash register using a dinner plates as a shield and a steak knife as a sword.

I thought I was having an existential crisis, but it was nothing,
Please don't tailgate: body in trunk,
The air smells like it's just been born,
Here. Now This. This is it, cowboy. The whole ride. Pay attention.
It's got enough megawatts lighting to give a space station lightbulb envy,
It's the whole damn unfairness of it all, Like I'm just starting to understand how amazing this whole crazy ride is going to be and now it's coming to an end.

When it comes, her kiss is like something not so much felt as found,
Vikings. Not great with subtlety.
I realize I'm really tired, But a good tired, like I've spent all day at the beach,
Who but the mad would choose to keep on living In the end, aren't we all just a little crazy.