Search advanced search
 
Books
Search:
x dismiss this message

Did you know you can edit this page?

Going Bovine
  • Rated 0 stars
Read Going Bovine

Going Bovine (2009) (edit title/settings)

by Libba Bray (Author) (edit contributors)

Share this book on:
see page history

Description edit see section history

Can Cameron find what he’s looking for? All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It’s not a lot to ask. But that’s before he’s given some bad news: he’s sick and he’s going to die. Which totally sucks. Hope arrives in the... read more

Summary edit see section history

Cameron is a “do what needs to be done to get by” sophomore with a dysfunctional family and recreational weed habit. His relationship with his twin sister has completely crumbled, his father is probably cheating on his mother, and he's working for minimun wage at a burger joint. He lacks... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Cameron is a “do what needs to be done to get by” sophomore with a dysfunctional family and recreational weed habit. His relationship with his twin sister has completely crumbled, his father is probably cheating on his mother, and he's working for minimun wage at a burger joint. He lacks motivation in life and doesn’t care about anything past borrowing the family car. Recently, though, he's started to hallucinate. His body is no longer his own and sees fire giants. After a trip to the doctor, he's diagnosed with mad cow disease and told he is going to die. Cameron is sent to the hospital and loses consciousness for a few days. Finally, hope arrives as a punk angel named Dulcie. She gives him a mission and the possibility of a cure. With the help of Gonzo, a little person with a hypochondriac mother, and a Norse-man yard gnome who just might be a Viking god, Cameron is about to embark on the journey of a lifetime, the mother of all road trips, to save the world from the Wizard of Reckoning, and learn to live before it’s too late. They must travel through time and space, meeting people and seeing things beyond their wildest dreams.

Characters/People edit see section history

Show all 66 characters
Popular Covers

Loading covers…

Choose your book’s cover

Quotes edit see section history

  • “Shit not again”
    Copenhagen Interpretation
  • “In a house by the sea, it will end, and I will slip form this life as if it were no more than a sweater grown too large and threadbare with years, something no longer needed. That is how it should be. Not here. Never here. I don't think you should die before you're ready. Until you've wrung out every last bit of living you can.”
    Mrs. Morae
  • “<...> if there's anything I'm starting to learn about people it's (a) that they are fundamentally suspicious and afraid of anyone who is "different," and (b) that fear makes them do and say asinine things.”
  • “I am Morpheus, king of dreams. We *all* walk in a land of dreams. For what are we but atoms and hope, a handful of stardust and sinew. We are weary travelers trying to find our way home on a road that never ends. Am I a part of your dream? Or are you a part of mine? Welcome my brother, Phantasos, for this is surely a phantasmagoria, a fantasy world, and we are all players.”
  • “I saw things there, such things. Things a man never hopes to see. When I got back, I spent a year in the VA hospital. Nerves, you understand? Not right in the head. I didn't play a note for three years. Just couldn't. Some part of me was lying out there on those fields with my friends, dead. Then one day, I picked up my horn, and when I started playing, the sound was all different. Blood on the notes. Heart. Soul. Every bit of me coming out this horn. I didn't hold nothin' back. And that was that. <...> I learned how to live changed.”
    Junior Webster
  • “Ain't that a sight? With all the things we know and learn, we still ain't touched the big mysteries--where we come from, where we go next, why we even here. And when something truly miraculous happens, we run and hide in our caves. We deny.”
    Junior Webster
  • “Only one thing comes out of a black hole, and that my friend, is *sound*. Music. As things get pulled right on in to it"--he lowers his voice to a whisper--"that black hole *sings*. Do you feel me? It sings in an octave no human being could ever hear, but it does sing.”
    Junior Webster
  • “People always think they know other people, but they don't. Not really. I mean, maybe they know things about them, like they won't eat doughnuts or they like action movies or whatever. But they don't know what their friends do in their rooms alone at night or what happened to them when they were kids or if they feel fucked up and sad for no reason at all.”
    Pablo Ignacio González, a.k.a. Gonzo
  • “Don't overthink it -- too much thinking will kill you on the SPEW test."”
    Mrs. Rector
  • “Mom's crying a little bit, quietly, the way she always does. She never utters a sound even when she's crying, and that makes me a little sad. Doesn't seem right. When you cry, people should hear you. The world should stop. I squeeze Mom's hand and she squeezes back. I don't say anything, but at least she knows I've heard her.”
    Cameron
  • “Cam, dude, I don't think we should get in the van. We don't know these guys. They could be serial killers." "They're not serial killers. They have matching shirts.”
    Gonzo and Cameron
  • “The dark does not weep for itself because there is no light. Rather, it accepts that it is the dark. It is said that even the gods must die. But not without one hell of a fight.”
    Balder
  • “He sighs and picks some lint off his shiny pants, and I make a vow that if I live through this, I will never wear pants like that.”
    Cameron
  • “I wonder who decided this was supposed to be the okay male greeting. Hi, good to see you. Let me show you how glad I am by beating the crap out of you”
  • “I'm just saying it's not all sand castles and ninjas.”
    Gonzo
  • “So, what? People write out their hopes and dreams and place them on the tree and the tree says, 'Poof! There you go. A big steaming plate of All Yours. Enjoy!'”
    Cameron
  • “"If yew don't put yo' hand out, you ain't gonna find out, is yeh?" He doesn't sound angry or impatient, just matter-of-fact, like it's the simplest choice in the world: you either go for it or you don't.”
    Pops the Impaler
  • “"You're avoinding the question." "No, I'm avoiding the answer."”
    Cameron and Dulcie
  • “I looked upon your face and knew happiness.”
  • “We've left the moment. It's gone. We're somewhere else now, and that's okay. We've still go that other moment with us somewhere, deep in our memory, seeping into our DNA. And when our cells get scattered, whenever that happens, this moment will still exist in them. Those cells might be the building block of something new. A planet or a star or a sunflower, a baby. Maybe even a cockroach. Who knows? Whatever it is, it'll be a part of us, this thing right here and now, and we'll be a part of it.And if it's a cockroach? Well, that will be the happiest f***ing cockroach on the planet. I can tell you that”
    Cameron
  • “Jeez, someone needs to push the reset button on this planet.”
    Cameron
Show all 21 quotes from this book

Setting & Locations edit see section history

First Sentence edit see section history

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

Table of Contents edit see section history

1. In Which I Introduce Myself
2. Wherein the Cruelties of High School Are Recounted, and the Stoner Dudes of the Fourth-Floor Bathroom Offer Me Subpar Weed and a Physics Lesson
3. Which Treats of the Particulars of High School Hallway Etiquette and the Fact that Staci Johnson Is Evil; Also Unfairly Hot
4. In Which a Brief Sanctuary is Found, I fail to Comprehend Jazz, and I Am Forced to Have a Conversation with My Asshole Father
5. Wherein I Have a Very Strange Encounter While Stoned and Employ a Fraying Pan in My Defense
6. Wherein My Part-time Gainful Employment Proves to Be a Hell Beyond All Imagining and I make a Most Curious-Okay, Really Weird- Sighting
7. In Which I Am Subjected to the Slings and Arrows of Dinner with My Family
8. Two Weeks Later-- Of What Happens When I Punch Chet King in the Stomach and Not Even Intentionally
9. Wherein I Am Subjected to Visits with Two Therapists and an Epic Fail with an Ergo-Chair
10. Of What Happens When I Find Myself on a Dark Country Road and the Sky Rains Fire
11. In Which I Recount the Untold Joys of MRIs and Open-Backed Hospital Gowns
12. Wherein, Now That I'm Officially Screwed, a Pep Rally Is Celebrated on My Behalf, and Staci Johnson Gives Me the Time of Day
13. In Which I Check into the Hospital and Have an Encounter with an Angel and Other Strange Annoying Things
14. In Which I Wake Up
15. Of What Happens When I Am Assigned a Mission of Crazy Importance or Just Plain Craziness. Because Sometimes It's Hard to Know the Difference
16. Wherein I try to Convince the Dwarf to Leave Behind the Comforts of Recycled Toilet Paper in Order to Accompany Me on a Mission to Possibly Maybe Save the World
17. Which Treats of Our Daring Escape from St. Jude's and Our Talk with a Stinky Dude in a Tinfoil Hat
18. In Which We Make a Stop in New Orleans and Gonzo Refuses to Eat Fish, Annoying the Crap out of Me and Our Waitress
19. Wherein We Have and Encounter with a Drag Queen and the Most Famous Jazzman Alice or Dead
20. In Which We Visit a Cemetery and I Receive a Message. Sort of. I hope.
21. In Which Junior Webster's Cryptic Message Does Not Become Any More Uncryptic, and the Worst Pictures Ever Taken of Us Are Circulated
22. Wherein the Angel Discusses the Wonders of Microwave Popcorn and Gonzo Gets Our Asses Stranded in the Middle of Nowhere
23. Wherein We Take a Van Ride with Possible Serial Killers
24. Of What Happens When I Bowl a Perfect Strike and Learn Not to Hurt My Happiness
25. About What Happens When I Learn the Secret of Perfect Bowling and the Revolution Goes Down Big-Time
26. In Which Some People's Happiness Gets Its Butt Kicked and Gonzo and I Make Our Escape
27. Wherein We Crash at the Mister Motel and I Learn Some Stuff About the Ayatollah of Harsh
28. Which Treats of My Visit to a Keg Party and of My Chance Encounter With the World's Grumpiest Yard Gnome
29. In Which I Learn That Two Very Small People Can Add up to a Major Pain in the Ass and We Nearly Bite It at the Konstant Kettle
30. In Which We Buy a Car and the Gnome Gets a New Outfit
31. Wherein We Make Up Bumper Stickers and I Introduce the Joy of the Great Tremolo
32. Of What Happens When We Take a Detour Through Hope (Georgia)
33. In Which I Pick Up a Necessary Part
34. Which Treats of What Happens When There Is a Bounty on Our Heads and We Visit Putopia
35. Of What Happens When I Take a Little Trip Through Time and Space. Calabi Yaul
36. Of What Happens When We Pick Up There Hitchhikers and Free the Snow Globes
37. In Which Dulcie Makes an Accidental Confession
38. Wherein We Discover What Assholes These Mortals Be
39. In Which Gonzo and I Make and Unscheduled Visit to the Party House
40. Of What Happens When I Take My Chances on TV
41. In Which Gonzo Makes a Life-or-Gard-Gnome Decision
42. Wherein I Have a Conversation with My Sister and the Fates Throw Me a Bone
43. In Which I Discover Eleven Dimensions All in One Person
44. Of What Happens to Gonzo When We Aren't Looking
45. Which the World's Most Famous Band Plays the Most Important Comeback Concert Ever
46. Of What Happens When Balder Has His Day at the Beach
47. In Which We Are Unprepared for the Unexpected
48. In Which the Coyote and the Roadrunner Go Again
49. Of What Happens When We Hit Fantasyland
50. Wherein I Visit Tomorrowland
51. In Which Coyote and Roadrunner Meet One Last Time
52. Wherein...

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in 2011-2012 Iowa High School Battle of the Books. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Libba Bray (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Random House
Country: United States
Publication Date: 2009
ISBN: 0385733976
Page Count: 496

Classification edit see section history

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

Strong language, sexuality and some drug use.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • Don Quixote

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

   
  • The Catcher in the Rye

We’re hiding the errata, movie connections, books influenced by this book, books that cite this book and books cited by this book sections. If you would like to add content to them, you must first make them visible.

© 2006-2013 Shelfari | Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy | Copyright Policy

Close