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    Spanking Shakespeare
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    Spanking Shakespeare
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    Spanking Shakespeare
    Audiobook6 hours

    Spanking Shakespeare

    Written by Jake Wizner

    Narrated by Mike Chamberlain

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    SHAKESPEARE SHAPIRO HAS ALWAYS hated his name. His parents bestowed it on him as some kind of sick joke when he was born, and his life has gone downhill from there, one embarrassing incident after another. Entering his senior year of high school, Shakespeare has never had a girlfriend, his younger brother is cooler than he is, and his best friend’s favorite topic of conversation is his bowel movements.

    But Shakespeare will have the last laugh. He is chronicling every mortifying detail in his memoir, the writing project each senior at Shakespeare’s high school must complete. And he is doing it brilliantly. And, just maybe, a prize-winning memoir will bring him respect, admiration, and a girlfriend . . . or at least a prom date.

    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateFeb 12, 2008
    ISBN9780739363249
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Spanking Shakespeare

    4/5

    144 ratings21 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      An absolutely hilarious look at Shakespeare Shapiro’s life as a senior in high school. A great YA fiction novel written by an 8th grade teacher. If you don’t laugh out loud, there is something wrong…
    • 4/5
      A great coming of age story!
    • 3/5
      This YA book was one my daughter was reading, and accidentally left behind at Thanksgiving - that, of course, mom had to pick up. No such thing as an abandoned book at my house. Shakespeare Shapiro hates the name his unusual parents have burdened him with and blames the name for many of the miseries he has faced in his life. We meet him in high school as he is writing his senior year assignment of writing a memoir of his life so far. His memoir is the book. It is charming, insightful and witty, containing just enough touching moments to make it real. I can certainly see the appeal of this book for an older teen, but I liked it very much as well.
    • 4/5
      There is a bit of potty and masturbation humor, but also some thoughtful insights into the teen/human condition in this engaging and funny novel.
    • 3/5
      Crass and tasteless and yet still funny.
    • 4/5
      I actually liked this one a lot more than Wizner's second book. It had the same sort of boy raunchy humor that I'm not really used to, but there is also a sort of...I don't know...sweetness about him. I guess it reminded me of Michael Cera in Superbad.

      Although, I don't know. Maybe I was a weird kid because I don't think I thought about sex, drugs and drinking as much as the kids do in both of his books. So that's still a little mystifying to me. Oh well.
    • 5/5
      An absolutely hilarious look at Shakespeare Shapiro?s life as a senior in high school. A great YA fiction novel written by an 8th grade teacher. If you don?t laugh out loud, there is something wrong?
    • 4/5
      Overall, it was very funny, but I would have liked it more had it stayed more witty and less crude.
    • 5/5
      Spanking Shakespeare is the hilarious narrative of Shakespeare Shapiro, a talented high school senior who feels like the world is against him. His parents are crazy, his younger brother is more popular and has made it to more bases than he has, and one best friend hates everyone and everything while the other is obsessed with his own bowl movements. Shakespeare is obsessed with wanting a girlfriend and ridding himself of his annoying virginity. When Celeste Keller shows an interest in him, Shakespeare thinks he may have found what he's been looking for. However, it's Charlotte White, the mysterious girl lurking in the shadows that helps Shakespeare realize that there's more to hope for in a relationship than sex.Loved, loved, loved this book! The only reason it took me two days to read it was because I had to go to sleep so I could teach the next day. Throughout the whole story I was guffawing, and if I wasn't guffawing I was giggling, and if I wasn't giggling I was smiling broadly. Shakespeare's neuroses and self-deprecating manner remind me of myself while I see connections between his family and mine. His plight of feeling like the last virgin in high school totally believable. His ability to describe his experiences and the people around him keep the reader hooked and constantly amused. Shakespeare's creative writing talent, and therefore the author Jake Wizner's, is best shown through Shakespeare's senior writing project. I particularly loved the re-telling of Noah and the ark. If you read nothing else, check that out. Highly recommended!This book would be best for 11th and 12th graders. Although it will appeal to younger and older audiences, the themes of sex and drugs coupled with the use of profanity makes it better suited to a more mature audience. High school boys and girls will find it equally amusing. Boys will enjoy the male perspective of high school and girls will appreciate the insight into the mind of high school boys.
    • 4/5
      Very funny book i would recomend to anyone
    • 5/5
      Shakespeare Shapiro has been unfortunate since the day he was born and his parent stuck him with the name "Shakespeare." His mom is ditsy. His dad's an alcoholic, who emotionally blackmails Shakespeare by threatening to revel details of his and his mom's sex life if Shakespeare misbehaves. His younger brother is more popular and has a girlfriend. And Shakespeare is starting his senior year with a best friend who likes to talk about bowel movements and no prospect of a girlfriend. It seems that Shakespeare's only hope is his hysterical, self-effacing senior memoir in which he describes his most humiliating moments. This memoir in fact may bring him the girlfriend he longs for and maybe an opportunity to see himself as something other than a victim.
    • 3/5
      This book is very, very funny. "Hysterical" is a better word for it. I found myself laughing out loud, and I rarely do that while reading. Some of the lines are just perfect, as they ring true for the high school experience. Other lines bordered on hyperbole, but that made it all the better.However, I started to speed read by the end of the book. I kind of got sick of the constant self-deprecation, and the self-pity. I understand it was necessary for the building of the main character, but it just got annoying. I commend Wizner for being able to create such a strong character, though. He is certainly a talented writer.Depending on your tolerance for vulgarity, you may or may not be offended by this book. Parts of it were certainly sacrilegious. There aren't any explicit sex scenes, mostly talk about potential sex.Overall, a very funny book that is worth reading (at least) once.
    • 4/5
      Humorous and with a distinctive voice, this book was a quick read that made me laugh out loud (and even read a few excerpts aloud to the people around me). I feel like the author kept hinting that the themes may take a turn for the deeper at some point, so I was kind of disappointed when it didn't go much beneath the surface, but overall a hilarious ride with a very likeable character.
    • 3/5
      Although I liked this book, I didn’t love it. It was entertaining, I laughed throughout it, but I think I suffered from private boy thought overload while reading it. I don’t flinch easily at candid talk about sex as I’ve been around enough guys in my life to have heard more than I probably need to know about them, but it was so concentrated here that it started to feel superfluous.Shakespeare tells the story of his senior year month by month, interposed with excerpts from his memoir. I think this arrangement worked for the book, as there was always some sort of introduction to the subject in the memoir in the preceding month’s happenings. It allowed me to move easily from the current action to an almost completely unrelated flashback.However, I couldn’t really get past the fact that the characters were uninteresting and clichéd. The only thing he ever says about his best friends is that Neil is obsessed with his bowel movements and Katie gets drunk a lot. His classmates are a bunch of caricatures of different “types” of high school students. Even Shakespeare himself comes across as just a geeky, sex-obsessed teenage boy. There’s got to be more to these characters, but I didn’t see it. I enjoyed Shakespeare’s interactions with Charlotte, the quiet girl with a secret, and the fact that with her he showed the ability to actually care about someone else, but even their friendship fell flat to me.In short, reading this book is a little like watching a movie like Clerks (which I’ve seen multiple times, by choice, so I’m not knocking the genre). It’s funny and entertaining, a good source for some laughs (if you don’t mind sexually-charged humor), but there’s not much heart.
    • 1/5
      Too crude and vulgar. Maybe if I was the teenage boy this book was intended for, I would have got something out of it.
    • 4/5
      Shakespeare Shapiro is fairly certain his life sucks. His senior year is not going to be anything spectacular, and the memoir he writes for his writing class proves just how the world conspires against him. This book is hilarious, sad, and memorable. Recommended for teen boys, or anyone who enjoys books that make you laugh.
    • 5/5
      I was looking for books in the nAtional Bookstore when i passed by this corner. There was a book entitled "Spanking Shakespeare". I was intrigued by the title itself and since the story is about a teenage boy who shares his ups and downs during his teenage life, i can say that i can relate on it. His name is really awesome that maybe thats the reason why his been into some troubles and luck in some ways.
    • 2/5
      When I saw the title of this book, I immediately let loose with one of those Beavis and Butthead snort-laughs. Then I saw the words "lewd," "hilarious," and "vulgar" on the front and back cover and knew it had to be mine. If only I had ended my relationship with this book there because the funniest thing about the novel is the title.The novel was, as promised, crude. However, it failed to deliver on the hilarious part. When one is dealing with bathroom/sexual humor, there's a fine line between being funny (like American Pie) and just being disgusting (like Larry the Cable Guy). A willingness to talk about defecation and erections does not automatically humor make. Sure, there were a few amusing moments, but very few. Also, I didn't relate to the characters at all. They seemed flat and one dimensional, especially Shakespeare's friends. Shakespeare himself seems a stereotype--a self-pitying wannabe writer who is a senior in a high school the likes of which I cannot imagine existing (Hemingway High, where students are apparently allowed to write about their embarrassing encounters with sex and porn in the school newspaper and teachers are allowed to constant refer to their left testicle). In the end, I just didn't care about Shakespeare and his struggle with his hormones. Also, I had trouble buying that he was a talented writer as his writing assignments (scattered throughout the book) were mediocre at best. The nice thing about the book is that he does mature by the end and learns to care about someone other than himself. Too bad I never cared about him.
    • 4/5
      Rating: B-I picked this book up because I have a real thing for (in terms of loving to) reading books with male protagonists who are written by guys. I bought this book on Saturday afternoon and read it cover to cover in about two hours.The characters are all funny, and I found myself laughing out loud at a couple of points (especially when Shakespeare gets stoned, not something that I generally love to read about, but he's so funny and Shakespeare decides against ever doing it again because of what happens during his high).My only real drawback in terms of Wizner's literary debut was the lack of contractions. I know it seems like a little thing, a weird thing, but Americans speak with contractions and to read stilted prose that doesn't utilize any contractions is weird. [Don't believe me? I'll rewrite that previous sentence sans contractions and you can see for yourself. Americans speak with contractions and to read stilted prose that does not utilize any contractions is weird. See, only one contraction, changing "does not" to "doesn't" makes it more readable.]You might say that's Wizner's editor's problem, but he should have caught that in pre-review. As he was reading aloud (because that's a smart way to do your own self-editing), he should have realized the text wasn't flowing the way a teenager would talk. (And this is kind of a shame because he does a really good job with language choice... making it teenager-esque without sounding like an adult trying to sound like a teenager.)The book rated a B- because of the stiff language (as referenced above) and the plot was a little bit too textbook. I knew exactly what was going to happen by page 75. (Granted, the fact that I kept reading it even though I knew where it was going should be a feather in Wizner's cap.)
    • 4/5
      Your fairly standard growing up, knowing thyself and getting the girl YA novel. It was amusing, especially Shakespeare's zany parents and his poop-obsessed best friend, but I think it's difficult to distinguish this book from all the other growing up, knowing thyself and getting the girl YA novels.
    • 4/5
      Hilarious description of Shakespeare Shapiro's senior year full of teen angst, sexual trials and errors and unique family dynamics. Not for the easily offended reader, but perfect for an underclass boy reader who likes quirky characters and potty humor. It made me laugh out loud.