Must-Read Guest Post By Libba Bray

Alright, so I'm catching up on my Dashboard reading, and I see a guest post by Libba Bray on the Young Adult (& Kids) Book Central Blog (whew! mouthful). I read the Gemma Doyle trilogy (A Great & Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, The Sweet Far Thing) and had heard some interesting things about her new book, Going Bovine, so I figured I'd check it out.

Now, the Gemma Doyle books (set in the late 1800s) are, in a nutshell, about a 16-year-old girl who attends a finishing school where otherworldly things start happening.

Going Bovine is about a modern-day 16-year-old boy named Cameron who learns he has the human version of Mad Cow Disease (which basically makes you get dementia and hallucinate before it kills you) and embarks on a cross-country journey for a cure with "Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit, ... a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome."

I have to admit, I had my doubts. They are very, very different books and I had no idea how Libba would fare in absurdist dark comedy.

Then I read her guest post.
In which she writes sentences like: "But it’s already too late. The rabbit’s here. A smiling rabbit in a pale-blue leisure suit and an Elvis pompadour. He blows me a kiss and wiggles his butt."

Oh. My. God. (Butt-wiggling rabbits!) Basically, she talked about letting insanity into her writing. In the funniest way possible. I have now upped Going Bovine to the tippy top of my TBR pile.

Then I found this promotional interview video thing she did for it. And if it was possible, my respect for her increased by like a bazillion percent. And I snorted out loud a few times.

Then I stalked a few other stops on her blog tour and read that she admires the far-ranging career path of Johnny Depp. And it all made sense.