This is a very very funny novel. It has a rapid fire style which never seems to run out of ammunition aimed at best-sellers self-servingly hyped by high profile literary wanna-bes. The narrator is a likable fellow who loves to read and needs work so logically gets himself a job at a bookstore. Sounds rational, sane? Ahh, but there the rub begins. He meets some kindred spirits at the store and begins to make choices that most would consider unwise. If the narrator and the author have anything in common besides a wicked sense of humour Redekop should be firmly locked in a padded cell next to his favourite shelf monkey...although I hope that is not the case as I look forward to reading more of Redekop`s original wacky work. ( )

I was very disappointed. It started terribly, got a bit interesting when some of the other characters made their first appearance, but then it felt like the author was flying blind. Given that this book is based on the author's efforts in the 3-day novel contest, that's hardly surprising. If the characters in the book had read Shelf Monkey, they probably would have torched it at one of their book burnings.

I really wanted to like this book and, to be fair, it does have some good moments, but your time is better spent elsewhere. ( )

Employees of a big-box bookstore band together to combat bad taste in books, and its avatar, one Monroe Purvis, a talk show host who uses his book club (and publishing company) to promote utterly vacuous books; hilarity ensues.

Shelf Monkey is both fun and funny. The fun is in Redekop's continual allusions and borrowings -- you will have to be fearsomely well read to spot them all, and I'm sure I missed many. and the funny, of course, is in his razor-sharp satire of an age where art is "content," to be sold as so much sausage filling.

It's tempting to see Monroe Purvis as a stab at Oprah Winfrey, but he's more than that. Oprah, as even Monroe Purvis points out, actually reads some good books; she's used her position to encourage people to read Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Carson McCullers, among others. Purvis is something else again. His publishing company churns out what you might call literary anti-matter, unredeemably vile books dripping with contempt not only for their readers, but for reading itself.

Shelf Monkey is a quick, light read, but not one that you'll easily forget.

For starters, I usually prefer not to read books about our time. We live it. We are inundated with it. The news coverage is already overwhelming. The worse it gets out there, the more I long to reread Buddenbrooks.

However...occasionally a book overlaps so closely with my actual life that I not only bother reading it, I really enjoy reading it. (Wow - does that ever sound egocentric!)

Shelf Monkey is, delightfully, one of those. Although the narrator, megabookstore-employee Thomas Friesen, is almost painfully manic, his tastes, his book dreams and his book frustrations are similar to mine. I am even a bit of a shelf monkey myself, volunteering in a school library once a week. (Is anything more pathetic than a librarian wanna-be? We even inhabit the same loser-land.)

The premise of the book - bookstore staff jointly working up their frustrations to the point where they snatch an opportunity to attack a talk-show host cum purveyor of trash-fiction - is the set-up for a disquisition on the culture of reading as I guess is experienced by...dare I say it?...most, if not all LibraryThingers. The tone is hard and smart and funny. The story is sufficient unto itself - no padding. Hate padding!

I have promised to lend my copy to a few friends, but I really want to keep it close to hand, to track down the references to books that I couldn't get or re-read the ones that seem like they might bear new fruit. The whole book is like a conversation about books with a smart-ass friend.

And thus, in conclusion, Shelf Monkey rox!

Fun fact: I discovered Corey Redekop here on LibraryThing because I saw that he connected two books I love through Recommendations, and I looked at his profile only to discover he is a writer himself! Go LibraryThing! ( )

Redekop has moments of real wit and he isn’t afraid to push his plot to entertainingly ludicrous extremes. If, ultimately, he winds up glossing over some finer philosophical points about censorship, elitism, taste, and judgement, he at least reminds us of the pleasure, joy, and even lunacy a true love of books can inspire.
See more here. ( )