Rating: 
Summary: Cheese Monkeys Elusive but Rewarding
Review: Most importantly, this book is incredibly readable. Little effort is needed to breeze through the carefully styled pages of Chip Kidd's first writing attempt. That being said, however, you get out of it what you put into it; 'The Cheese Monkeys' is not a destination to some great revelation but instead a fantastic, extravagant journey that ends on schedule without regard to recent developments.One can feel empathy for the nameless narrator from the very beginning; his experiences entering the world of higher education are not unique but are also not what is expected, and Kidd invites us to gently pity him when he doesn't know his Magritte and Bauhaus. He is confused, and his world is confusing. There maybe are no solutions for his dilemmas, but by the book's end, which comes quickly and abruptly, answers are maybe not what's needed in his crazy world. Kidd's prose is generally clever and rarely heavy-handed, with few blatant misses and no drilling of any sort of "message" into the reader's head. Characters are held at a distance, keeping them just out of the gate of archetypes but not cultivated into the cliches they could become. For the easy read that 'The Cheese Monkeys' is, it delivers, and very satisfactorily.
Rating: 
Summary: Blech -- this is not a good book.
Review: The book begins well, but by the 2nd semester I was ready to drop out. At that point he had telegraphed the entire novel and the pages dragged by while I anticpated what would happen next. At some points I felt like I was reading a poorly re-worked version of Chabon's very fine Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Skip it.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much cheese.
Review: Just because this is one of the few fiction books set in the realm of graphic design doesn't mean it automagically gets a recommendation. I was very disappointed in the story and characters - straight out of clicheville 101. It seems Chip Kidd is better seen than read.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth it?
Review: If you pick up The Cheese Monkeys, and expect a literary masterpiece with an engrossing story and convincing, fully formed characters, you'll probably be disappointed. Don't get me wrong; the story isn't horrible. It's just not going to blow your socks off. If, however, you pick it up expecting an interesting look into the world of Graphic Design, by virtue of form and content, you're in business. The strangest thing about this book, in my mind, is that I was never overwhelmingly impressed by it, but I don't regret buying and reading it. I say give it a spin....
Rating: 
Summary: A novel for graphic designers
Review: I don't know if you would "get" this if you weren't interested in graphic design in some way. It's a novel of ideas, about graphic design. Perhaps the story comes off second best here, but it's engaging enough. The teacher is the main character, and it's the chapters that deal with his teaching that make this novel worth reading. Anyone who's been in higher education will thrill at the challenges he sets his students and the ways they overcome them. Those chapters are superb, the sort of writing that you rip through in no time, the sort of writing that keeps you up till the early hours of the morning if you're not careful. Delicious in places.
Get the hardback edition and you can spend a happy half hour just looking at it too.
Well worth accepting the minor limitations of this novel for the pleasure it gives.
Rating:
Summary: Cheese Bomb
Review: The Cheese Monkeys is a crack at writing a very personal manifesto using the framework of a freshman at a state art school. At his best, Kidd provokes mild enthusiasm for design and design sensabilities. Placing the story in the context of the 1950's serves to avoid him any criticism of contemporary design issues. I believe Kidd consciously did this to avoid alienating any of his contemporaries and to avoid issues of the current oversaturation of design both visually and market-wise. On one hand, it seems like a cop out; on the other, it provides him the opportunity to critique historic graphic design figures. His devices fail though when he actually has to flesh out his characters. The pacing and development over the course of the first half of the book almost makes it almost impossible to keep reading. Highly amateur, esoteric writing that lacks both wit and charm and the pretense that it is all a thoroughly designed package make the Cheese Monkeys a mediocre first novel.
Rating:
Summary: Now that's something for me.
Review: Having graduated very recently as a Graphic Design major, I was immediately drawn to this book because of the superb design applied to it. It's hard not "judging a book by its cover" when your passion dictates that you do. However, as I started reading through it, my interest grew from mere curiosity to immediate satisfaction. Very witty, as I was immediately drawn from the first pages to the last. It was very thrilling actually imagining the art school settings and finding myself actually being able to relate to them. A major hoot, being able to understand his train of thought. And what a ride that was. Take it from somebody who could have also thought of the term "Cheese Monkeys" if only Kidd didn't beat me to it.
Rating:
Summary: It must have been fate
Review: The way i came about this book is kind of strange, i was in my college book store and and I saw the book. The version I have shows a picture of cheese and three monkeys but just say "the." So i originally thought it was called "the" but I found out the actuall title and bought it without really looking at it just because of the title. I don't usually do that. Later I showed it to a friend and they noticed the side of it had writing on it and after further study we found all the neat little graphic design tricks on the book. As others have said it is a wonderfully funny book but the end is a bit crazy, well really crazy. I loved it to death and would read it again if it wasn't being passed around my entire group of friends. In fact i cried when I finished it because I knew that my lovely book was over and I would never find anything else like it. At any rate it was an expeiriance to read and the kind of book you buy not just check out from the library. If you had an odd group of friends in school the main characters may just remind you of them. Any who great book, buy it, love it, cry when it's over and you realize there is no more. :(
Rating:
Summary: An absolute scream!
Review: A highly enjoyable first book, which had me laughing out loud on more than one occasion. Not easy to put down, and readable in one sitting. If you're in the mood for the type of cruel humor one would expect to see in an indie film, then The Cheese Monkeys is definitely worth a read. Several prior reviewers make good points esp. w.r.t. character development and the ending (clever but odd), but these shortcomings really don't take away from what is certainly a funny and highly original work.
Rating:
Summary: Better than the college course....
Review: A couple months ago, I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Chip Kidd talk about his novel, THE CHEESE MONKEYS, and provide a little insight into the world of Graphic Design. The novel itself goes a step further with the advice, by allowing us to take a peek into Chip's bag of tricks. The hero, from Smalltown USA, enrolls at the ubiquitous State University, where Art is about as high on the scale of importance as mulching the grounds. Thankfully, we have a cast of great characters to add some edge to the bell curve. Himillsey Dodd, artist/sadist/guerilla, takes the hero under her wing while frequently torturing him; it's easy to see why he likes her, but she has a boyfriend, not to mention a few problems of her own. The sexual tension between them is a great theme, but the character of Winter Sorbeck, the kind of professor we all yearn for and fear, is memorable, to say the least. Check out the sexual tension there too! A little twisted, but the events these characters go through could arguable be tame compared to some real college horror stories. My only problem with the novel, as many others I noticed had also, was the ending. It just seemed messy and abrupt. The pacing of the story is indeed fast but not that fast. It was kind of a let down, despite the neat textual effect. Chip Kidd may be revolutionary and a clever boy, but in the end, the cleverness isn't as big of a payback as one would hope. Yes, the design is fantastic. I urge you also to read Mark Z. Danielewski's HOUSE OF LEAVES if you want to see another marvel of design, although taken to the extreme. I have no doubt Chip Kidd will astound us yet again in the future with his jacket art, but I hope his next writing effort is no less amazing.
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