Tag Archives: Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Book Review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

Leave a reply

Woo-hoo, I got to read at the beach. This always makes me happy. Anyhow, I picked The Perks of Being a Wallflower (by Stephen Chbosky) out of my Little Free Library. Thank you to whichever neighbor left it. I hope you grabbed a book you liked in exchange.

Description from Goodreads:
The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a story about what it’s like to travel that strange course through the uncharted territory of high school. The world of first dates, family dramas, and new friends. Of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.

Review:
This book has gotten a lot of attention. It won awards, was made into a major motion picture (which I haven’t seen), been included in the American Library Association’s “10 Most Frequently Challenged Books” at least five times. It is worth engaging in and I can totally see why it has garnered the attention it has.

It includes some triggery topics and addresses them in plain, sometime blunt language. It presents young American teenagers of a certain generation doing all the things honest adults of that generation admit were happening when they were young teenagers, even if they weren’t themselves participating, but that the general establishment likes to pretend young teens don’t do (because not all adults are honest): have sex (even gay sex), drink, do drugs, engage in self-destructive behaviors, abuse and pressure one another, etc. It refuses to adhere to the myth of innocent pre-adulthood.

In fact, I think this is the books primary strengths. Americans are very dependent on social narratives about certain things and we struggle to break away from them. Only teens of a certain demographic do drugs or have sex or get into fights. Only certain evil, easily identifiable people pressure others into sex or rape or molest. The problem with these narratives is that they are always oversimplified, artificially dichotomous and often simply wrong, leading to innumerable ways in which the subject of these narratives are open to victimization, injury or scorn.

[This paragraph may be a spoiler.] One of the issues the book addresses that I think is worth special mention is sexual abuse. It pops up in a number of ways throughout the book, some subtle and some not. Most notably Charlie is a survivor of sexual molestation. Our American narrative around such abuse often reads that only evil people would molest a child and that person can’t be anything other than the evil that molests. Now, I’m not apologizing for or excusing child sexual abuse. But that simple abuse-equals-evil-person narrative doesn’t leave room for cycles of abuse in which the abuser was themselves a victim of abuse, or that the perpetrator can also hold other meaningful positions in people’s lives (making the victim feel guilty for their affection). I liked that Chbosky condemned the action, of course, (though it was a bit trivialized) but also allowed for layers and complexity around the issue that is too often missing in stories of abuse.

Having said all that, because there is a lot of appreciate, in the end, I liked but didn’t love the book. I had a hard time engaging in Charlie’s narrative. I didn’t much enjoy the diary/letter writing format, and it’s never stated that Charlie is on the Aspergers/Autism spectrum anywhere, but he must be. Otherwise the naivety of a lot of his observations don’t make a lot of sense to me. They are often salient, but they’re things most people wouldn’t think to comment on or would have observed a lot sooner than their early teens.

All in all The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of those books people should read to have read them, even if there is no love affair to follow.

The Oddly Satisfying Exercise in Futility Challenge

Renamed: The Oddly Satisfying Exercise in Futility Challenge

Leave a reply

Every now and again, out of boredom or necessity or pure whimsy, I set myself odd little reading challenges. That’s part of the joy of having a book blog; I can do that. And I’ve done it again.

I have a book-hoarding problem. I just do. Usually, I can limit it to ebooks so that it’s not too disruptive. But at the moment, my physical bookshelves are stacked two deep and literally overflowing. My office is becoming a bit of a death trap. So, I have to read some of them.

The problem is that my Kindle is so easy to schlep around. Plus, I’ve promised myself that once a book is read, I won’t keep it unless it is signed or an absolute favorite. So, though I always want to read, I sometimes don’t want to do the thing that means I have to give the book away afterward. I know, it’s weird. But I keep bringing books into the house, so now I have to set some free.

I mean, that was part of the point of building a Little Free Library in my front yard. Well, that and it’s just cool. I have no excuse not to fill it with finished books.

This brings me to my challenge. I went through and pulled out all the itty-bitty books. I don’t usually pick up novellas, but I have several. And I know reading them won’t clear as much space as reading some bigger books. But I figure each of them should only take a couple of hours to read, so it’s a good way to do a bit of a clear-out without committing weeks to the task. (Nope, I’m not rationalizing this at all.)

There are 18 little books there. Most, though not all, I won, and it’s a pretty diverse pile. There’s some Bizzaro in there, as well as some inspirational stuff, a memoir, some non-fiction, humor, short story collections, horror, poetry, lit fic, political satire, and even a freakin’ play. I figure I can finish one a day for the next few weeks, along with my normal reading, and feel like I’ve accomplished something significant. (Hush, that’s what I’m going with.)

In case you can’t read all the titles, the stack includes:

Anyhow, between these, the book bundle I’m currently reading (Carole Cumming’s Wolf’s-Own), the bundle I’m listening to (Sarah Noffke’s Vagabond Circus), and the Netgalley books I’ve committed to for the next couple of months, not to mention I need to read review request book, I ought to be kept busy in the near future.

I think I’ll start with B. R. Sanders’s book because I’ve loved everything I’ve read by them so far. But beyond that, I’m open to suggestions on what I should move up or down the pile.

Not pictured, but added to the challenge after the fact (because I keep getting more books):

Edit May 5, 2018: I set this challenge, and then it quickly fell off my radar. If anything, the stack has grown, as I’ve added to it. (See the 8 unpictured books.) So, I’m starting again, recommitting to finishing it. Below is the new stack (what’s left of the first and what I’ve added to it since, but not read before the second picture). The vertical ones, I’ve pulled out because it turns out that they’re all poetry.

I won’t re-list anything above, and the few that I read before taking this second picture will have to do without visual evidence of their existence. But here are the additions.

Edit July 22, 2019: Don’t laugh, but in a marked departure from what I’d intended to do (and, in fact, have been doing), I’m updating this again. Several books I’ve bought or won, read, and reviewed recently (such as Take a Chance on Me, Kill Me Now,  The 5th Gender, Silver Moon, Persepolis, Spring, The Nose from Jupiter, The Long Walk to Water, and Diamond Fire) would have fit this challenge, and I could have added them. But after the third edit, I told myself I wasn’t allowed to add to the stack anymore, or it really would never ever get done. However, I ordered new bookshelves, which will be delivered today. 

This means that I’ll finally have more room for my books. The shelves, most of which are double-lined, will finally be reduced to a single row. I’ll actually be able to see what I own. So, in preparation for the larger task of reorganizing my books (I have wanted to do this for SO LONG), I’ve started pulling and categorizing books. And in and amongst all of this, I decided I might as well grab all the new smallish books out and add them to the existing small-book stack (which may become a small-book shelf. (I mean, giving this challenge up might be easier, but I’m a stubborn cow when I want to be.)

So, here’s the new list of small books. The left-hand pile is the carryover, the middle is poetry, and the right-hand stack is what I just added.

As mentioned above, I won’t re-list anything that already is, and I can’t guarantee that once I really get into the meat of moving books, I won’t add more. But as of right now, this is it. 

Several of these are actually sequels in series. So, I imagine I’ll have to find and read the first books before I get to them. But, as has been the case for about two years now, these are the lists of books I intend to read. If you remember, I initially set them aside because I thought I could get them read quickly. That had turned out to be a joke. But I’m committed now. Wish me luck