A book hasn't given me this much trouble since Waldo went to that barber pole factory.

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

The Story:
The narrator is a dog named Enzo, who tells the story of his owners and the story of his own life.

The Review:
I don't like dogs. Actually, the truth (which as a 30 year old, I can finally admit) is I'm afraid of dogs. It's just like being afraid of spiders or snakes. It's not something that is controllable.

So I was really prepared to not like this book at all.

And yet I did.

Because really, how do you not like a narrator like this:
"My two favorite actors are, in this order: Steve McQueen and Al Pacino. Bobby Deerfield is a very underappreciated film, as is Pacino's performance in it. My third favorite actor is Paul Newman, for his excellent car-handling skills in the film Winning, and because he is a fantastic racer in his own right and owns a Champ Car racing team, and finally, because he purchases his palm fruit oil from renewable sources in Colombia and thereby discourages the decimation of vast tracts of rain forest in Borneo and Sumatra. George Clooney is my fourth favorite actor because he's exceptionally clever at helping cure children of diseases on reruns of ER, and because he looks a little like me around the eyes."

The story is a little sad, but still had moments that surprised me into laughing out loud. It was a super fast read. And a good light and fluffy story to stick between some rather heavy stuff.

Oh, and if you saw the dog on the cover and thought "Ew, Marley and Me" (which I will proudly state I never read or watched), allow me just to say this is a very different kind of dog.