The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower  by Stephen Chbosky                   Audio Book:  6 hrs., 3 0 mins       Hardback Book: 224 pages         

What a great story.   I love the way it is told in the first person by a young man coming of age, who has dealt with a lot of emotional baggage of his own that has damaged him slightly but he is so brilliant that a group of older radical outliers themselves bring him into their fold and treat him as a peer whereas kids his age think he is weird and hassle him.    He has such a joie de vivre ( joy in living)   whether it be learning how to kiss, finding his own happy ending (read between the lines) he has such an innocence and yet a sage wisdom too.   What a likeable character.   And    all of the older set have their own Breakfast Club vibe only on a far more cerebral scale.    Thee are lots of clandestine activities and conversations and this story is just a delight.    The film is good too, but, I am so glad to read the book, it goes so much deeper into the main characters’ psyche.    Excellent story.   I recommend this one to young and old there are so many aspects of life and family personas that everyone will find a touchstone here.     I liken the main character to Ponyboy in the Outsiders.    Well written book so much more behind everything here.     

 - Shirley J

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman by Anne Helen Petersen.    304 pages.

"You know the type: the woman who won't shut up, who's too brazen, too opinionated, too much. She's the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of unruliness to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today."  (per Goodreads)

I admit it: I don't know who all of the women are that Petersen references.  However, that didn't stop me from finding this an interesting and thought-provoking book.  Several times, I felt like turning to someone and saying, "Yeah, how about this.  Or that. What's up with that?"  Petersen makes some good points about how women are perceived in society, but also how they are compared, picked apart, analyzed and seemingly always found to be at fault in some way.  Definitely a book that I'd recommend to readers who enjoy reading Lindy West.

Time and Tide

Time and Tide, By Weare and Tyne: Twenty-Five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work by John Ruskin, 195 pages

In this collection of his correspondence with a working class admirer, Ruskin summarizes and continues the social teaching he previously expounded in Munera Pulveris and Sesame and Lilies, while pulling in ideas he developed in works such as The Stones of Venice.  A large part of Ruskin's appeal lies in precisely this comprehensive consistency, uniting ethics, economics, and aesthetics.  Time and Tide calls for a comprehensive reform of society, beginning at the bottom.  As always, Ruskin's central concern is to guard against the emergence of a mass society, and he is equally opposed to mass production and mass democracy.

There is much in Time and Tide that is rationally prescriptive and therefore entirely inorganic and ultimately impractical - Ruskin himself concedes it is "too large to receive at present any deliberate execution" and denies that he maintains "any idea of its appearing, to our present public mind, practicable even at a remote period."  Taken at a slight distance, however, in the same light as Plato's Republic, there is a great deal of value in Ruskin's criticisms.  The epistolary nature of the book allows the author to range freely over a wide variety of topics but also results in him changing subjects haphazardly.  The end product is sometimes frustrating, often charming, and frequently insightful.

No Place

No Place by Todd Strasser, 262 pages

Dan’s a star pitcher for his school’s baseball team.  He’s got a couple of good friends and a girlfriend.  Dan seems like he’s got it all together, but his parents have both lost their jobs and now they’re about to lose their house.  The plan is to move in with his uncle’s family but when that doesn’t work out so well, Dan’s family moves to the tent city in the park, Dignityville.  Although it is being sanctioned by the town to help the growing population of homeless people, Dan is embarrassed to be there and several people in town don’t like the tents there either.  Until this happened, Dan never thought much about homeless people, but now that he is homeless, he has started thinking about the problem and possible solutions.  This is a good book for teens who like stories about “issues”.