AUDIO Read by Mike ChamberlainFor: Young Adult !!
Book Pub: 2007
Audio Pub: 2008 Listening Lib.
6 hrs. 35 min.
304 pgs.
Rating: 5/5
Finished: Aug. 13, 2008
I loved this book. Publisher's Weekly's starred review says: "Bold and bawdy ... exceptionally funny and smart." First and foremost, it's laugh-out-loud funny. It's told in the first person by Shakespeare Shapiro, an angst-ridden high school senior. Voice! Unbellievable voice. Whether we're listening to Shakespeare's current woes or reading the memoir essays he's written about various embarrassing times in the past seventeen years of his life, it's all a riot. And yes, it's bawdy, to say the least. He focuses on the things that I imagine most 17-year-old boys focus on....sex and girls and parents and school, with a few observations about drugs and alcohol thrown in. This book is not for prudes, and I wouldn't recommend it to my middle-schoolers for a few more years, but I am definitely going to recommend it to friends from high school age on up.
Mike Chamberlain does a superb job with the reading. We can hear and see Shakespeare in his wonderful rendering of the story. The cover is cute but misleading. This is NOT a story about the bard. It's the story of a wonderful writer, a thoughtful, endearing, very funny young man who I would sure love to meet.
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