Books I Resisted Reading And Everyone Was Right and I Was Wrong #1

So, for a while now people whose opinion I occasionally respect have been telling me to read Don Calame's Swim the Fly.

In case you have rose-tinted Children's Librarian glasses like myself, those are boobs in the goggles. Took me a week to notice.

"It's so funny! It's hilarious! It's like a Judd Apatow movie but without sex and the ladies aren't all shrews!"

"But it's about three teenage boys who made a summer goal to see a naked lady."

"Yes but it also features a lovesick grandpa and adventures with makeup and hijinks and true teenage love. And swimming. Lots of accurate facts about how butterfly is the dumbest stroke invented."

"But poo."

"Weeeeeeell, yeah. There is some poo. And a lot of masturbation jokes but it is a surprising sweet book about realistic teenage boys."

"But poo."

And so for quite a while, I resisted reading Swim the Fly. But this week after finished the grim, grim, grim Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone, I needed something a little bit more upbeat and less "you'll never feel hope again"-ish. So I picked it up.

And for the record:

Everyone was totally right and I was utterly wrong and it is hilarious.

Despite the poo.