Rating: 
Summary: Wackyness
Review: The Tetherballs of Bogainville is an odd book. To say the least! It is a so-called "genre-buster" in that it is one of a new class of novels that strive to be completely unclassifiable. Tetherballs does this fairly successfully. The protagonist of the novel is Mark, a thirteen-year-old highly precocious boy who strides around in leather pants and no shirt. The entire novel is told from his perspective and it seems to be one bizarre tangent after another! I can't even remember a fraction of them. The humor is sophisticated, but so absurdist that I have found myself breaking out into guffaws at many points! But because of it's ridiculous nature, tangents, etc., it is sometimes a bit hard to read - you start getting numb to the roller coaster ride that Leyner puts you on. So I have had to limit my exposure and put the book aside for a few days after reading each chapter or two. This book is not for the weak of stomach or the uptight. However, if you have a good sense of humor and like your humor dry yet absurd, with a ton of references thrown in from the historical to the scientific, and you don't mind mixing your reality with a good deal of fantasy, you will find Tetherballs a fascinating read!
Rating: 
Summary: Funny, yes....Great...well....no.
Review: This book is funny, I will give it that, but it can drag on and on and .... well, you get my point. I liked how the structure of the book changed from a story, to a screen play, to a movie review, and then back to the screen play, but the movie review was just too much for me. It's really not pertinent to the book at all (in my opinion), so if you get to that point and wonder if you should continue, I'd say no. Leyner could have shortened it up a bit to keep the reader more interested. There are plenty of authors out there that write in this style of writing and do it much better, which is why I only gave it 3 stars. It's not a terrible read, but it's not anything extraordinary either. If you're a fan of Leyner, then you'll probably like this one just as much as the others he's written. I'm all for quirky, but only when quirky is done right.
Rating: 
Summary: 2nd greatest book I've ever read, no...THE GREATEST
Review: This is one of those books that if you get it, you love it, but if you don't get it you're in for 300 pages of extreme pain. You need some sort of touch on the pulse of pop culture for one thing and you need some sort of touch on the pulse of what it's like to be a young teenage male. With those two tools you are ready for the greatest ride in all of literature. The jokes actually rarely fall flat, which is amazing considering there are like 25 on every page. The book is hysterical from start to finish, the ending of the book is absolutly perfect. And leyner definalty succeeded in making it seem like I was the main charector. Forget Holden Caufield, I was Mark Leyner.
Rating:
Summary: 2nd greatest book I've ever read, no...THE GREATEST
Review: This is one of those books that if you get it, you love it, but if you don't get it you're in for 300 pages of extreme pain. You need some sort of touch on the pulse of pop culture for one thing and you need some sort of touch on the pulse of what it's like to be a young teenage male. With those two tools you are ready for the greatest ride in all of literature. The jokes actually rarely fall flat, which is amazing considering there are like 25 on every page. The book is hysterical from start to finish, the ending of the book is absolutly perfect. And leyner definalty succeeded in making it seem like I was the main charector. Forget Holden Caufield, I was Mark Leyner.
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