Also, before I forget again:

On the sidebar, you may have spotted an odd audiobook title. The Cheese Monkeys.

I LOVED THIS BOOK. It's about college art kids in the late '50s. Despite the lack of computers, I completely recognized the world of the book - I have used those same drawing studios and had the same bizarre professors and seen the same self-indulgent artwork (only I was oh-so-fortunate! to have been subjected to FISH instead of kittens. sigh.)...

Also, the main characters were snarky and skeptical of everything, just like Tom (and a little like me).

Toward the end, the humor gives way to somewhat weird drama, and the one sexual bit is written so waffle-y that I was unsure what had entirely even happened until later - and even then, what the main character thought about the whole thing was totally left unexplained. Authors need to learn to go all or nothin' with this stuff. You can't describe male bits and then decide to get squeamish about the content of a photo.

But apart from that single gripe, I enjoyed the hell out of this book. And the audio version added a LOT to the feel of the thing - I would never have given the female lead such a lofty high-class-snob tone in my head, but that's exactly what she ought to have. I was actually giggling aloud while listening, which is unusual for me.

Sadly, it was very short (only six hours). Happily, there is a follow-up book, which I'm a little skeptical of (because I don't think the female mc should even appear in the "grown-up" world), but I enjoyed this enough to give it a shot. :)

Labels: books, product whoring