Book Review: The Perks Of Being A Wallflower

I have just read “The Perks Of Being A Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky.

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower – by Stephen Chbosky

I have meant to read it for ages and only just got around to it because i happened to see the trailer for the film adaptation and thought it sounded interesting.

The blurb reads:

“Charlie is a freshman. And while he’s not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it. Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But Charlie can’t stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a deeply affecting coming-of-age story that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller-coaster days known as growing up.”

The style of writing takes a little while to get used to, and especially as it is composed of many letters written in a diary entry format, but it is engrossing and full of detail. It keeps you hooked all the way through.

Charlie is the youngest in his family and maybe feels more pressure with an older brother and sister, but he doesn’t seem to realise just how intelligent he is, even when his English teacher keeps getting him to read extra books and setting him essays to write about what he’s read. Not many people would happily and unquestioningly do extra essays! However, the weird thing is that he asks about a million questions about everything else!

Charlie has spent a lot of his life watching others and trying to work out how best to do things, but he never really does anything. He sees things, he listens, he thinks a lot about things, and somehow he manages to get things wrong and make mistakes. He is a very emotional boy, crying quite often about all sorts of things. This seems odd when it is a 15/16 year old teenager. He talks a lot about his family, especially his deceased aunt Helen, who seems to be at the centre of his problems. He gets very sad on his birthday which is the same day his aunt died and seems to blame himself for her death even though it wasn’t his fault. His sudden mood dips show that he suffers from depression, which is often common in shy people and especially more so in those who think too much about things.

When he meets Sam and Patrick, he find two great people who understand him a bit more than most people and help him to figure out himself and others more easily. They become his best friends, even though they are a bit older than him, and they are a mixture of being a good influence and a bad influence on him. He starts smoking, kisses boys and girls, has sexual experiences, fights and defends people, but also he learns to relax a bit more and live his life, even while keeping his grades at a high level. Sam and Patrick introduce him to a whole different world, which has it’s ups and downs, but even his family starts to change as they all get older and he starts to understand how they feel as well.

I loved this book and so i’m giving it 10/10 because it felt familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, and i remembered feeling and thinking the same things as Charlie at points in my life. The depression and confusion underneath everything is just part of being shy and trying to work out who you are and why you are different, and really shows the reader how difficult it is growing up and having so many issues to work through. I felt quite emotional reading it as well! Worth a read if you haven’t tried it, i wish i had read it sooner!

Book Review: One Summer In France

I have just finished reading “One Summer In France” by Bev Spicer, a memoir. This is the prequel to “Bunny On A Bike”, and follows Bev and her friend Carol as they embark on three months in France during their summer holiday from university.

“One Summer In France” by Bev Spicer

Bev and Carol are a force to be reckoned with, with maybe a quite romantic notion of what their summer will be like. They have all sorts of adventures, such as crossing the border to Spain and coming home with massive bottles of port, food poisoning from eating food from dodgy vans, and reading a wide range of books.

The summer romances and almost-romances are great to read about, especially as there are misunderstandings about men who are actually married, and then trying to decide whether men are being genuinely friendly or just pervy because they are confronted with two bikini-clad girls!

I love how Bev and Carol have some genuinely deep and loving moments, and then start mouthing off at each other, which really keeps the story going and brings about some truly amusing moments!

I give it 8/10 because it’s just such a fun, summery read, and it made me giggle! It also made me want to go travelling and have my own adventures. Worth reading, especially if you’ve already read “Bunny On A Bike”!

Book Review: Moranthology

I have just finished reading “Moranthology” by Caitlin Moran.

Moranthology – Caitlin Moran (via Amazon)

This is a book composed of Caitlin Moran’s columns from newspapers over her career with added notes on each article. It covers a range of subjects, from celebrities, television, and feminism, as well as amusing late-night conversations in bed with her husband.

I particularly like how she describes David Cameron as being a robot made of ham, and how she got her trademark hair! As well as the funny bits, there are a few serious bits which make it a well-rounded book.

If you are an avid follower of Caitlin, then you’ve probably already read all these columns, but as i have only really discovered her in the last year or so, i really liked having all these columns in one book! She tells stories really well, and is really funny!

I preferred her first book “How to be a Woman” as that was more of a proper book, but this book is good because you can dip in and out of it, so a good book when you just have a few minutes here and there to read.

I give it 7/10 because it is full of interesting stories and opinions, and i enjoyed it!

Book Review: The Etymologicon

I have just finished reading “The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through The Hidden Connections Of The English Language” by Mark Forsyth.

“What is the actual connection between disgruntled and gruntled? What links organs to organised crime, California to the Caliphate, or brackets to codpieces? The Etymologicon springs from Mark Forsyth’s Inky Fool blog on the strange connections between words. It’s an occasionally ribald, frequently witty and unerringly erudite guided tour of the secret labyrinth that lurks beneath the English language, taking in monks and monkeys, film buffs and buffaloes, and explaining precisely what the Rolling Stones have to do with gardening.” (Blurb from the back of the book)

I love learning about the English Language, having studied it at university, and this book is an excellent source of information about where words come from! I love how everything links together and leads on to another word and yet another story about how that word came to exist.

It’s a fresh and easy to read book, unlike other language books which can sometimes be a bit laborious to read. This book starts at a random point in the circle of meaning, and follows the links until it returns back to the beginning of the book, which i think is very clever and shows, quite rightly, how interconnected the words of the English Language really are.

It goes from words of which i already know the origins, such as England coming from the Angles moving to Britain, to more obscure meanings, such as gormless. Gormless which came from gorm, a Scandinavian word for “sense”, and gome, a dialect word from Yorkshire, and which Emily Brontë used in “Wuthering Heights”, meaning “senseless”. Really fascinating stuff, if you like this sort of thing!

I liked this book so much that i went and bought the next book “The Horologicon: A day’s Jaunt Through The Lost Words Of The English Language” as well! But more about that book later!

I give it 9/10 because it is fascinating and really informative. It might not be useful or interesting to all people, but for me it is a great source of word origins and i learnt a lot of things i didn’t know!

Book Review: Five Children and It

I have just finished reading “Five Children and It” by E. Nesbit. 

I haven’t read this since i was a child but as i read it, the story came back to me and i remembered how silly it is! Not in a bad way, of course!

It’s really random how the children discover the Psammead in a gravel pit and ask it for wishes everyday. The Psammead is a bit of grumpy creature and warns them about the wishes bringing trouble but they still manage to make trouble for themselves!

Thankfully the wishes only last until sunset, which helps them out of a few sticky situations but still has repercussions, some good and some bad.

My favourite is when they wish for wings and end up stuck on top of a church tower at sunset when their wings disappear. Thankfully they manage to convince people to help them and the happy outcome of this is that the children’s family servant, Martha, ends up meeting her future husband.

I like how this book covers the idea of being able to wish for anything you want and the problems with having this freedom. It’s no surprise that the children wish to be beautiful and to have lots of money, but they soon find that these traits has unfortunate consequences. The moral of the story is that having everything you want isn’t as simple or as desirable as you would think!

I give it 8/10 because it is a classic children’s story which is a fun read!

Book Review: Herland

I have recently re-read “Herland” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Herland – Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Via Amazon)

I read it, when i was at university, as one of my research texts for my dissertation on Utopia. I’m really fascinated by the ideas created around Utopia and this is one of the more interesting texts exploring the subject.

Herland, as it is dubbed by three male explorers, is a hidden country where a series of unfortunate events rendered the country devoid of men. The women and girls struggled to keep themselves alive and worried about having children without men. However, a miracle occurred which meant a woman could have a baby through a virgin birth.

The male explorers find it difficult to believe that Parthenogenesis exists within this human population but are forced to admit that it must be true after learning more about the country and its history.

The men learn all about the country, and in return try to teach the women of Herland about the world outside. It is interesting to see how each side is challenged in their beliefs and morals and so when confronted with such a different way of life.

The men are fairly different characters: Terry is the typical man’s man, is tough and likes his women feminine and submissive; Jeff is possibly the most accepting of the men and is convinced by the wonderful life the women has created for themselves; and Van is the narrator who seems to have a good connection with the women, being more popular because he seems to understand them more. Terry’s behaviour becomes more unacceptable as time goes on because he believes that all women like to be “mastered” sexually, but the women of Herland are having none of it. The other two men have no problems with the women, only that they feel ashamed to admit how awful their world is in comparison to Herland.

I give this book 9/10 because it is original, fascinating and descriptive. The book is brilliantly written, and the struggles to communicate and teach each other about their worlds is totally believable. The ideas surrounding this utopia are well-explored, yet there are always more questions to ask about this country. It makes you question a lot of things which we take for granted in life. Worth reading!

Book Review: I Capture The Castle

I have recently re-read “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith, which is one of my favourites from when i was younger and is still a favourite of mine.

I Capture The Castle – Dodie Smith

The novel is the journal of Cassandra, who narrates her thoughts and the goings-on in her life in an old castle where she lives with her family.

Her family is fairly eccentric: her strange father, who wrote a unique novel several years earlier but has failed to produce anything else since; her stepmother, who is an artist who communes with nature; and her older sister Rose, who is vain and bored with living in poverty. Then there is her younger brother who goes to school, and then there’s Stephen, the handsome lad who lives with them and is in love with Cassandra.

Cassandra decides to keep a diary and write down everything properly in her bid to become a better writer. Soon, things take a turn for the better and their lives all change forever.

The rich owners of the local manor come into town and by sheer accident end up on the castle’s doorstep. The two men become friends of the family and start providing more entertainment and income for the family. Rose does her best to attract one of the men and soon is engaged to Simon, the richer brother. This union causes all sorts of new problems for the family, but also creates solutions to existing problems, and it’s fascinating to see how the plot develops.

Cassandra struggles with her developing feelings for Simon, knowing her sister just agreed to marry him as an escape from poverty, all the while trying to do what is right with Stephen’s love and devotion to her, which she doesn’t return.

The ups and downs of Cassandra and her family are really interesting to read about, and it’s still a great read even after all these years of loving it!

I give it 10/10 because i love the characters, i love the plot, and i love that it still feels fresh with each read! Worth reading!

2012 Reading List Review

As 2012 draws to a close, i have been looking over all the books i read during the year!

I used Goodreads to keep track of the books i’ve read, and set myself a challenge to read 80 books in 2012. I only realised just before Christmas that i wouldn’t be able to meet the target in time, so i reduced it to 70, which is still a reasonable target!

The good news is that i miscounted and actually read 71 books in 2012!

There has been a wide range of genres which i have covered over the year, and i have tried to review the books when i finished them (the only exceptions are Harry Potter and Twilight and a few others).

To see the full list, check out My 2012 Reading List

My favourite books i’ve read this year include ”The Hunger Games” trilogy

The Hunger Games (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Starcrossed” and “Starcrossed: Dreamless” by Josephine Angelini

I read a few classics which i’ve never read before now (or read properly), and my favourite of these was “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens! (see my book-review)

It was nice to read a lot of the classics outside of an academic environment, which i think made it a more enjoyable reading experience!

I’ve also re-read a few favourites from when i was younger, from Beatrix Potter’s Tales, through “I Capture The Castle” by Dodie Smith, to Grimm’s Fairy Stories”.

Books which i was either disappointed with or thought were awful include “Fifty Shades of Grey” (which i only read the first book of and got annoyed with), and “The Nightlife: New York (The Nightlife Series)” by Travis Luedke (too much sex, and has put me off reading the Vampire genre for a while!)

I have also read 8 translated fiction titles this year! For the full list, complete with links to my reviews, see my Translated Fiction page!

Hopefully, in 2013 i can beat the target 0f 70 books and hopefully get above 80!

I hope you’ve had a good year of reading, and that my list inspires you to read more of these excellent books!