Review // The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

by Stephen Chbosky

I guess that the best way to describe this book would be to say that it is a conglomeration of every life-changing thing that could ever potentially happen to someone in high school. It's an epistolary (ha, vocab word) novel written from sixteen-year-old Charlie's perspective to an unknown friend.

The book doesn't have problem/solution/beginning/middle/end plot, but it's not like it's supposed to. The story follows the path of the school year. Charlie recounts what happens to him on a day to day basis as he tries not to be a wallflower. "Participate" is the word Patrick always tells him.

Charlie's a really naïve fifteen-year-old, to the extent that at some points he seemed more like a sixth grader than a high school freshman. But at the same time that I say I can't believe all freshman are that innocent, there's something about Craig that makes you like him a lot. Like a Holden Caulfield or a John Green protagonist, Charlie is acutely observant and has thoughts that are well beyond his years and the way that he observes things just a little bit differently than everyone else does is what makes him such a great character. Something that makes me love any character is the way he or she notices tiny details about the world and people that others might miss. Despite Charlie's nerdy, somewhat socially awkward self, he's a very lovable guy, although the amount of crying he did over the course of one school year was pretty ridiculous.

Also lovable are his two best friends: stepbrother and stepsister team, Sam and Patrick. Sam and Patrick are like Janice and Damien from Mean Girls. In other words, "the greatest people you will ever meet." They cuddle Charlie under their motherly wing and teach him life lessons and stuff. I like that they're brother and sister, I thought that was pretty unique, and I loved their quirkiness. Where some secondary characters sometimes blend into the background and are just there for the sake of being there, Sam and Patrick are developed superbly and are as much a part of Charlie's life as Charlie is himself.

I had very mixed feelings about the end. It was extremely abrupt, and the denouement of the end of the school year happened, I thought, before the climax, which I'm not going to spoil. The climax was extremely shocking, and it fit with the story and explained why Charlie acted the way he did and why he thought in some of the ways that he thought. It explained a lot about his personality. But I hated the way they portrayed Sam.

-spoilers start here-

And this next part will be really spoilery, so scat if you've not read, but I really didn't want Sam and Charlie to be anything more than friends who just kissed the one time. And that's something that I don't like about stories: how a guy and a girl can never just be friends, they always have to like-like each other. I understood Sam's whole speech pre-kissing, but mleurghle, I just didn't like that scene. But minus the Sam + Charlie + Kissing + More scene,

-spoilers end here-

I thought the book was very energetic. It was able to deal with such a wide variety of topics, some subtle ones and some that were very outright (pg. 2, suicide), yet it didn't read like a soap opera or a reality TV show. And I loved it, and I recommend you pick it up. If you hate it, it's only 200 pages of your life wasted, and if you like it, there's a movie coming out later this year in which Emma Watson plays Sam. Eep!

❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ ❀ - 5/5

Review // The Name of the Star

The Name of the Star

by Maureen Johnson

So, in the book, there's this girl and her name is Rory. She's from Louisiana, but she's moving to London to go to boarding school there and also because studies show that the masses love English boarding schools (did you not read Harry Potter?). And, like, when she gets there she finds that a series of murders have occurred across the country, much the same way they did in 1888, when Jack the Ripper was around. Soon everyone is seized with fear and no answers and Rory finds herself in the spotlight when she is the only one that seems to have seen the person who police believe was the culprit. Oh, and there are ghosts.

As good as this book looked in the bookstore, I didn't actually find myself loving its innards. I don't want to cast Maureen Johnson off as one of those writers whose books I will never pick up again, but I tend to feel indifferent after reading her stuff.

It's not that there's anything wrong with The Name of the Star. The plot was good. The boarding school was good. The characters were good. I never feel particularly attached to Maureen Johnson's characters, and I don't feel like she really develops them to their fullest, but they were fine. I didn't like Jerome, who was set up to be such a cool guy and then ended up just being obsessed with the Ripper the whole time. But good is one of those throw away adjectives that means nothing.

The book was not scary. I don't read a ton of paranormal young adult books*, so I don't know if they're usually scary or not, but this wasn't at all.

I think that it's often really easy to only focus on the things I didn't like about the book, but there were things I loved about it, too. I don't want to make it sound like I thought this book was terrible, which it wasn't. For example, I love the way Maureen Johnson can set up a scene. When Rory first arrives to the boarding school and is taking in everything, I could really see the things that she described. I also love the little details she injects into her writing, like how Rory notices how her friend Jazza uses "who" and "whom" correctly. I also enjoyed Maureen's take on the ghost, twisting it beyond a Casper and into something that was realistic.

I liked the book, didn't love it, probably wouldn't be the first thing I'd recommend to you. I feel like this was a terribly generic review. Oh well.

✶ ✶ ✶ - 3/5

*Let me tell you, my local Barnes and Noble has an entire two shelves devoted to "Teen Paranormal Romance." Why, when there are only eight shelves of young adult in general, are two of them consumed with "Teen Paranormal Romance"? It aggravates me.

An Open Letter To Inventors

Dearest Inventors,

Let's play a game. It's called the annual weekly bathroom cleaning shindig. I'm no stranger when it comes to bathroom washing. Remove all empty bottles, put everything else on a shelf or in a cabinet, pour some Pine Sol in the toilet, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, flush, OXYCLEAN the bathtub, get suffocated because the smell of OXYCLEAN is as strong as Billy Mays's voice is exuberant, get out some Clorox disinfecting wipes, scrub, scrub, scrub, take out the trash, on the way inside from taking out the trash grab mop, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub, slip on newly scrubbed floor, wipe off mirror, put fresh towels in bathroom, and relax. And I can finish my annual weekly bathroom cleaning shindig in fewer than twenty minutes (unless an OXYCLEAN-induced coughing fit overcomes me).

Every week, I get so frustrated when I find that the stupid little Clorox disinfecting wipes do not comma EVER comma clean up my hair. Being a girl with not long but long enough hair means that if I lose any hair at all, it will end up in one of two places: the bathroom sink or the shower. It really hinders my ability to clean, especially when Clorox wipes don't do their job of wiping up my hairs.

The proposal: a little brush, a spray, or a wipe that I can brush/spray/wipe before I disinfect that will remove my hair from the bathroom sink/shower. I know this is a worldwide problem, not just my own, and I think that the product could be a bestseller (just like the As Seen on TV meatloaf pan). That is all.

In hopes that future bathrooms will be hair free,
Sammie, Girl with Hair

Review // It's Kind of a Funny Story

It's Kind of a Funny Story

by Ned Vizzini

This is hands down my favorite read about depression, suicide, and an adult psychiatric ward that I've ever encountered. But in all honesty, how often do I read books about psychiatric wards? Answer: not often.

Craig is a fifteen-year-old boy who is accepted into Executive Pre-Professional High School, a high school for the most gifted students in New York. That's the way life works, right? You need to go to the best high school to get into the best college to get the best job so that you can have the money to get married and have kids and live the cookie cutter American Dream. Craig, however, finds himself crumbling under the pressure of how much work school his, and he works hard to crank out 93 percents in all of his classes as his friends glide their way through AP classes, volunteer work, extra credit, and honor rolls. The pressure to be a school robot who cranks out A++'s like nobody's business quickly overwhelms Craig, and one night he nearly commits suicide. He finds himself in an adult psychiatric ward at Argenon Hospital. 6th North. Five days minimum.

This story is outside of the box. I love out-of-the-box stories. Every single thing that happens during the duration of the book is unique and obscure. Every single thing in the story absolutely leaks with humor and poignancy. It's kind of a crazy book about slightly crazy people (aren't we all) told from the perspective of the relatively normal-seeming Craig.

Craig is a stressed teenager. Though the things that happen to him, like making it into New York's most competitive high school, being suicidal, and spending a week on an adult psychiatric floor at his hospital aren't things that happen to every teenager, the things that he thinks about are. A lot of the worries he had I think are really common worries among teenagers. A job, money, grades, getting into college, getting a boy or girlfriend, and school top this list. I find his character to be incredibly believable.

One of the things that makes this novel so satisfying is that Ned Vizzini himself was hospitalized for depression a few years ago. Immediately following his release he wrote this novel. The other thing is that it's not an IN-YOUR-FACE book. It's not trying too hard to be the best novel about teenage depression or the deepest novel about teenage depression. A lot of depression-related books are so darn depressing, which is pretty counterproductive if you think about it. This book is not at all depressing. I liked its spirit.

Delving into spoiler territory—in other words scat if you have not read yet—I particularly enjoyed the end. I read a review someone wrote that said they thought Craig was unreasonably happy one he got out of the hospital, but I don't think his happiness was unreasonable at all. He knows, and makes a point of saying, that he is by no means cured, but he is better, and suicide to him is now a possibility, not a probability. I thought that was great.

I really liked the movie as well. It was just as crazy as the book. I can't believe I haven't seen it before. Actually I normally don't see movies until years after they're released because I refuse to pay twelve dollars to see them in the movie theater and then I forget about it.

★★★★★ - 5/5

*Gosh, that is one word I will need to add to my "words I can't spell" list. The + rap + ist.

Flower Power: Twilight-y Book Covers

Whilst browsing among the young adult section at my local Barnes and Noble, I frequently come across Twilight-ish covers. You know the ones, fancy print, black background, flower on the cover. Dark and brooding. And as hideously irrelevant as this particular flowery cover is, I have to say this is a great marketing ploy. Giving teenagers classics wrapped in pretty flowers and phrases like "Bella and Edward's Favorite Book" is a great way to get people to read out of their vampire-werewolf comfort zone.

So yes, you could (melodramatically) argue that "TWILIGHT IS RUINING MY JANE EYRE! DIE, BELLA, DIE!" but if more people are reading it because it was stamped with a pretty pink having-nothing-to-do-with-the-story flower, then isn't that a good thing? Plus, a cover like this one is way better than a movie poster cover, which just—bleurck—ruins half the fun of reading, making up in your mind what the characters look like.

Classics covered in Twilight-y book covers and stuck on the young adult shelves get my stamp of approval (not that that holds any weight anywhere). And if you still hate the covers but love the innards, there's always the library or eBay. Remember what your local librarian always tells you, "don't judge a book by it's cover, kiddies" and "it's what's on the inside that counts" and "never fly a kite near a power line."