The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

I read this book a year ago on a recommendation from a good friend. I did not know what I was getting into.  It has 213 pages and measures about 7 x 5, which makes for a nice, compact book. It is an epistolary novel, in the form of letters from a person that we’ll call Charlie to a person that we’ll call the reader for lack of a better name, and the narrative fits the story quite well.

If you’re the type of person who likes to watch the movie after reading the book… The Perks of Being a Wallflower film stars Logan Lerman as Charlie and Emma Watson as Sam and will be  released in September of 2012. I will admit I’m excited to see it, because my favorite minor character, Bill, is being played by Paul Rudd, who is one of my favorite actors.

The story focuses on Charlie, a boy of 15 who is going to be in high school soon, which causes him anxiety. He doesn’t have a lot of friends, partly because his best friend recently committed suicide, and the girl that hung out with them has changed a lot to fit into the high school ‘scene.’

Charlie does manage to make a few new friends… Sam and Patrick and a few people they hang out or party with. Charlie is introduced to drinking, drugs, sex, and lots of great music through these friends. He also connects with his AP English teacher, Bill, who recommends many books that help set the tone of the novel, the most obvious being Catcher in the Rye, which I think heavily influenced Perks.

There is so much in this book that feels personal to me that it is a little difficult to review. I thought that perhaps on the second reading, in light of what is revealed in the epilogue, I wouldn’t like the book as much. It surprised me then that I enjoyed it even more than the first time. I find Charlie and the typical teen angst and self-pity he experiences relatable. This is a quiet book, though Charlie learns a lot and manages to grow throughout. It is a great story about going through high school freshman year as a wallflower, which I know I can relate to.

The epistolary style helps break up the novel, and makes the ‘average every day’ high school life seem less routine. It’s a relatively quick read, only in page number though, because the emotional roller coaster I feel when I read this book make it seem so much longer, so much larger a narrative. I only have one problem with the novel, and I can’t really share it because it would be a pretty big spoiler. Overall, though, the story and characters work really well and I would absolutely recommend it. However, note that you should be in the right mind set when you read it… Charlie is truly a self-pity machine, a wallflower, an inactive soul. If you can’t empathize, you might have trouble enjoying his character.

I find that The Perks of Being a Wallflower is really quotable because Charlie has profound thoughts and Chbosky writes them brilliantly simple. While I could throw in dozens of my favorite quotes from the book, I will leave you with just one:

“It’s kind of like when you look at yourself in the mirror and you say your name. And it gets to a point where none of it seems real. Well, sometimes, I can do that, but I don’t need an hour in front of a mirror. It happens very fast, and things start to slip away. And I just open my eyes, and I see nothing. And then I start to breathe really hard trying to see something, but I can’t.” – Charlie

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I’ve had this on my reading list for  a while, but decided to move it up both because I enjoyed my last murder mystery so much and so I could finally watch and compare the Swedish and English versions of the film. I haven’t watched them yet, but I may do a comparison review once I do. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a 590 page mystery novel.

I really enjoyed the way this book started out — with the mystery of receiving a pressed and framed flower every year on the receiver’s birthday. Was it a taunt? Was it a hint or secret? I couldn’t tell, and so it was a great way to get me interested in the mystery.

I felt like there were two simultaneous plots going on in this book. The first and most (?) important was that of the mystery of Harriet Vanger and Henrik Vanger’s searching for her. The Vangers live on an island and were having a reunion of sorts one day when suddenly people start noticing that Harriet has been missing all day, and no one knows where she has gone. Due to a convenient accident on the only bridge leading off the island, many are led to believe she has been murdered and the body hidden.

The second main plot is that of Mikael Blomkvist and his vendetta through the Millenium (his paper) against Erik Wennerström. In the beginning of the novel, he publishes a piece accusing Wennerström of financial misdealings, and is slapped with a libel suit and loses. So his acceptance of taking on the Harriet Vanger case rides heavily on his need to get away from the paper for a while.

After everything to do with the mystery is solved or tidied up or has at least of semblance of being so, they finally take care of Blomkvist’s Wennerström problems. The last 90 pages of the book were probably my favorite. Although the murder mystery was interesting, I did not feel like I could have solved it (though my vague guesses in the beginning weren’t too far off the mark). So the parts dealing with Wennerström, who was a frustrating character, were really satisfying.

One thing I don’t really understand is why most of the ‘strong’ female characters want to have sex with Blomkvist. I really just don’t get it. They are all really frank and open about their sexuality, which is great, but I didn’t see it as very plausible. Or maybe I just wanted one strong female character who was satisfied by someone else or by other interests. This isn’t a major issue, but I feel it’s worth mentioning.

Although I did enjoy most of the characters and felt the narrative really fit their personalities, the story moved a little slowly for my tastes. It was by no means a hassle to try to finish the book, but I was also not riveted into staying up all night to finish it.  Overall, this was a solid book, and I can definitely see why it was adapted into multiple films. It was interesting, and I will probably end up reading the rest of the trilogy at some point, but I’m not so invested in the characters that I feel I have to read them any time soon. If you’re a big fan of mysteries, I would feel comfortable recommending this to you… but then you’ve probably already read it, eh?

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

I read this book on a suggestion from a good review from Adam over at Reviews and Ramblings and borrowed it from Liz over at mylivereads. I don’t read mysteries often, and it has been years since I’ve read an Agatha Christie book, though I can’t remember one that I didn’t enjoy.

The basic premise of this novel is that ten strangers (well, eight strangers and one married couple) are invited for various reasons to come to the infamous Indian Island. The island’s owner, U.N. Owen has sent personal letters to these people asking them to arrive on the same date. Once the ten guests get to the island, they find that their host is absent and they have to entertain themselves. Early on in the story, a gramophone is played, and the voice on it announces that each person on the island is guilty of murder.

Even though each character got a little unique description in the beginning, and their murders are described through interesting internal monologue, I had a hard time keeping them straight. Lucky for me, they started dying off pretty quickly. After it got down to seven people alive, everyone had pretty well-developed personalities, and I started trying to figure out who the killer was. Agatha Christie is a master of suspense in this novel. She heaps suspicion on everyone, so even though I picked one person who I thought was the culprit, I was always suspicious of at least three other people at the same time.

I never thought I would claim a book to be a fast-paced murder mystery, but this novel definitely fits that description. It only took me a couple days to read because the mystery was set up extremely well, so I was always kept guessing. I feel comfortable saying that I did NOT guess the murderer’s identity correctly. Once the number of guests dwindled, I got to learn more about each guests personality, which was fun and added a strong human element to the story, and also made it that much more difficult to guess who the killer was. If you enjoy murder mysteries (and really, even if you don’t), I highly recommend reading this novel.

In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki

In Praise of Shadows is an essay written in 1933-4 by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. He covers quite a few topics, almost all comparing Oriental values with those of the Westerners. I think the main point he tries to convey is that while Westerners favor sunlight, brightness, cleanliness, and shine, in his own words, people from Japan and China “prefer a pensive luster to a shallow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone or an artifact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity.”

The most enjoyable topic Tanizaki covers, in my opinion, is that of restaurants and food in China and Japan. He reminisces about when everything was lit by candles and the food and lacquered dining utensils made eating a much more enjoyable experience. The way he describes food makes you grow an appetite — you don’t even need to see the food.

Perhaps the ‘funniest’ thing he discusses is the comparison of Japanese and Western toilets. While we illuminate the bathroom,  shine light on everything in it, and remove all grime, the Japanese have outdoor toilets made from wood — not harsh, white linoleum — where one can enjoy nature, and think on life. He suspects that many great haiku poems have come from reflection time in Japanese toilets.

Of course, the largest theme in this essay is that of shadows and how to use them for beauty. While Westerners strive to brighten every corner and destroy shadows, the Orientals find beauty in them and structure architecture to ensure that not too much light ever enters a room. The way he describes a shadowy alcove with a perfectly picked scroll is enticing — I would love to experience the Japan he knew at that time just to see such a thing.

Even though I had to read this essay for a class (Asian cultures through literature and film), I enjoyed it quite a bit. I have always been fascinated with how different Asian culture is from our own, and wished that I had had the luck to have been brought up with those values, if not the luck to have been born there. Tanizaki does a wonderful job of highlighting (oh, how I’m going to start noticing our desire to enlighten, to bring to light, etc. — our obsession with light) the huge contrasts between even his early life of enjoying Kabuki theater in shadows and the harsh lighting it faces today. If you are interested in Asian culture, I definitely recommend this essay — it is a short, enjoyable 42 pages of cultural contrasts.

The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

Following the excellent book, The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man’s Fear picks up in the inn the Kvothe tends in the present, telling his story to Chronicler and Bast. In his telling, he’s still at the University. This novel was a 994-page behemoth, and I can honestly say I wish it was longer, because I don’t want to have to wait for the next one, The Doors of Stone, expected in May of 2013.

Just like the first novel in the Kingkiller Chronicles, I loved this book. I had heard negative things about the second half of the novel, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I really can’t believe I doubted Rothfuss… I remember reading the blurb about the first book and learning that Kvothe eventually leaves the University. I was anxious about that, because I wanted to learn the inner workings of the school, and I thought he was going to leave early on. By the time I hit the halfway mark in The Wise Man’s Fear, I was ready to move on from the school and learn more about the world Rothfuss created. Luckily, he was on a similar brainwave.

For the first half of the novel, we follow similar characters that were in the last book: Kvothe, Denna, Wil and Sim, Fela, Ambrose, and a few others. We also get a host of new characters in the second half. The first part of the book is pretty similar in many ways to the last book, so I’m not going to bother reviewing it past saying that it was an enjoyable revamp of The Name of the Wind, with a few wonderful additions (including a man who LIVES in the library. I would love to live in a library…). There is also, of course, more music. Kvothe has made me want to pick up the lute more than once.

The SECOND half of the book was amazing. I loved that Kvothe finally got out in the world, somewhere out of the Commonwealth. He visits many new places with fun and weird new customs.  Kvothe spends time in some strange places. I don’t think it’s a secret that he spends time with Felurian and leaves, and is literally the only person who doesn’t go mad when he leaves her. He also learns a new language (or two) and learns a way of gesturing meaning/feelings, which I found interesting but not really necessary. He also picks up a bit of fighting technique that I really enjoyed learning about. Through his travels, he doesn’t forget about his one true goal… learning about the Chandrian. By now, I’m also curious as to their back story, and am eagerly awaiting more knowledge about them from the third novel.

I’m trying not to give too much away to those who plan to read the book, so I’ll stop with the summary. I enjoyed The Wise Man’s Fear possibly even more than The Name of the Wind. Because it took so long to get to the part where he left the University, it has a similar feel to it as the first novel. I can’t promise you will like the second half, but I loved it. I’m hoping the third and final novel will include more travelling. These books definitely merit a rereading before The Doors of Stone come out.  Rothfuss has beautiful prose, and I found it hard to not write every other sentence down as something worth quoting. I will include two quotes that were irresistibly good:

“It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That’s as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.”

“This is the nature of love. [...] To attempt to describe it will drive a woman mad. That is what keeps poets scribbling endlessly away. If one could pin it to the paper all complete, the others would lay down their pens. But it cannot be done.”

“I played the song that hides in the center of me. That wordless music that moves through the secret places in my heart. I played it carefully, strumming it slow and low into the dark stillness of the night. I would like to say it is a happy song, that it is sweet and bright, but it is not.”