Based on Janssen’s quick review of Jordan Sonnenblick’s Zen and the Art of Faking It, I knew I had to pick it up and listen to it.

This is the story of San Lee, who has been moved around the country because of his father. This time, though, dad’s out of the picture and it’s just he and his mother starting a new life in the middle of Pennsylvania. He’s in 8th grade, and after never being a real part of anything in his old schools, he is bound and determined to be known as something other than “the new kid.” When he meets Woody — a free-spirited, fun girl who he thinks is totally cute — he has to get to know her. And how does one impress a girl who spends her lunch periods playing her guitar and singing Woody Guthrie songs?

He becomes a Zen master.

It won’t be hard to fake it, being Asian and all. And because his old school in Houston had already had their world religions section in social studies, he was leaps and bounds ahead of the other kids. So, San will become the master.

Zen and the Art of Faking It was really funny. The entire first disc I spent laughing pretty endlessly, especially when San discovers the public library. Maybe it’s because his experiences are so stereotypical (or in some worlds, true), it was just a riot to hear him sneaking in to learn about Zen Buddhism. Oh, and there was NO respect for privacy here, either, making it doubly funny.

But here’s where things got tricky for me: I must have misheard something in the audio at the beginning, and the entirety of the story, I was under the impression that San Lee was 15. We hadn’t yet learned he was in 8th grade (a fact that I seemed to miss early on and caught in the last disc), so for the entirety of the book, I found myself having a very hard time believing San as a 15-year-old. He seemed much too young, too naive, too — willing to be embarrassed — to be 15.

Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of any audiobook, especially when you listen in the car, is that you cannot easily flip back and confirm or negate your suspicions. Since the age fact was a small one, buried at the beginning of the story (within a rather lengthy exposition unraveling a lot of San’s history), I couldn’t easily skip backwards. Instead, I let myself go with it the entire time and believe that San was 15. I thought to myself this would be a point I’d make sure to hit when I reviewed the book, writing in my head to note that while I enjoyed San as a character and felt he was quite well-done as an awkward and relatable teen boy, I thought his depiction at 15 was entirely inaccurate, as he read much more like a 12 or 13 year old. Instead, when I hit the note at the end regarding graduation from 8th grade, I wondered if I had made a huge mistake.

I confirmed with Janssen, who indeed informed me she thinks that Sonnenblick says he’s 13. I believe her, and I don’t believe my ears.

Sometimes, listening to the audiobook is a disservice. You can’t easily refer back to prior points, and if an author doesn’t dwell long on a point, it’s easy to let that point be a sticky one for you as a listener. We all know that because of how we’re educated in school, our listening literacy isn’t as high as our visual or reading literacy, so it’s easy to be tricked some times. Even though I’ve been listening for a while now, I still get tripped up. I get “new comers” syndrome.

In terms of the production of Sonnenblick’s book, there were some editing concerns, but not enough to get distracting. It was easy to figure out where new recording sessions were strung together and one or two times, I did have to adjust my volume because the sound quality shifted. But our reader, Mike Chamberlain, is an expert and does a great job of being a 13-year-old San. He captures the humor so well, as he himself acts unaware of how funny he is. That’s exactly what makes it work. Interestingly, he is also a reader on the next book I’m going to listen to, All Unquiet Things, and I’ve heard him before on In the Path of Falling Objects, a book where I couldn’t quite believe him as a reader. It’ll be interesting to see what the contrasts are again.

You can get a sneak listen right here. I *especially* love the part about learning about the second half of our country’s history — you know, what happens AFTER the Revolution (isn’t that the truth?):