The Perks of Being a Wallflower Review

This would probably have to be one of the better coming-of-age novels. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This isn’t a book with the typical plot of the loser suddenly becoming the “cool” kid, which makes this book so much better. It’s has a more realistic approach to the “teenage life”, and doesn’t provide false hopes and ideals of what they want you to think high school is like, happy endings included. Yes, in some sense Charlie becomes the “cool” kid but not that typical popular kid every other loser in book turn into.

Just to summarise the book, Charlie is our protagonist, and is an ousider/a wallflower. He gets bullied from his peers at school, and his family and he’s only 16. What he doesn’t know is that his life is going to change the minute he starts high school.
So, Charlies story is told through a series of letters to this anonymous person. He tells this person EVERYTHING: school, family, friends, deepest emotions and especially his thoughts upon himself.
Charlie himself is a mystery. He has a mental problem where he gets extremely angry, sees/imagines things that aren’t entirely true and then passes out. Charlie had such a rough life though. Before he started high school, his best friend shot himself, prior to this, his most favourite person in the world, his Aunt Helen, who is killed in a car crash. Imagine how difficult you’re life would be if you lost the two most important people in your life?
He then becomes friends with Patrick and Sam who are both outsiders. They introduce Charlie to “good” music, parties, alcohol, drugs, love and most importantly, friendship.

What I really love about this book is that it is real. You aren’t shown what you want to see, but instead you sees what is really happening in front of you. Stephen Chbosky has done a superb job at this.

I recently watched the movie and I liked it. It was able to capture and portray all the emotions seen in the book. Even though their were a few changes, which was expected, it didn’t go completely off-track. For once, the film AND the book were both great. Usually it’s only one or the other (except for Harry Potter).

This is definitely a book both teenagers and adults can read. As a teen, you are exposed to the reality of the world you are living in and what lies ahead. As an adult, you are sent back to your teenage years, reliving your life almost.

j.x

Life of Pi

Life of Pi is a truly inspiring novel. Reading this (and watching the movie) was just amazing.
Pi takes us through an unbelievable journey of survival and companionship, as well as restoring our faith in God.

When I read this book back in high school a few years ago, I thought it was the most amazing piece of literature ever written. I was so amazed by Yann Martel‘s imagination and creativity. He was able to create a scenario where a Bengal tiger and a human were trapped on a boat, yet they didn’t kill one another.  Then he was able to show us how you can be faithful to more than one God. This is what amazed me the most.
I grew as a Christian so I only believed in one God (obviously), but after reading this, I became more open-minded about religions. This book is able to show you how there could in fact be more than one true religion. Yes, I know this is fiction, but in a way it kind of makes sense. You can see that when Pi was struggling, God (whichever one was called upon at the time) heard his prayers and was able to help him-gave him flying fish when he was hungry.
Then I was amazed by his survival skills. He was able to create a whole new raft out of random junk left in the boat. I definitely wouldn’t be able to do any of that if I was in his boat-pardon the pun. And then on top of all of this, he was able to survive for 227 days with a Bengal tiger and not get eaten. Unbelievable.

Being the very gullible teenager that I was, a part of me wanted to believe that all of this was based on a true story. But reading it again last week, I realised how predictable and overly dramatic it is.
The minute Pi begins struggling with something, his problems are solved almost instantly. For example, the fish. The poor boy is almost dying of hunger, then suddenly there’s flying fish jumping into the boat. You could see this coming.  But I guess that the predictability plays a major part in the “religion” side of the novel.

I really loved the end of the book though, where Pi is telling the Japanese officials about his journey and then tells them a different version with the cook, a sailor, his mother and himself. He then asks the Japanese to choose the one they believe.
Naturally as humans, we would choose the second story but only because that seems like the more realistic answer, no matter how gruesome and inhumane in appears to be.
But I didn’t. I choose to believe the story with the animals because I’m the sort of person that doesn’t like to see humans portrayed through such a negative light. But, over the years my opinion could change.

The movie also did the film justice. This was my original intentions on re-reading the book. Familiarise myself with the story and falling in love with it all over again. The film was superb. Kudos to Ang Lee for such a brilliant job.

Overall, a wonderful story. Pi is an inspiring character of survival and faith.

j.x

Fifty Shades of Grey Review

Unfortunately, I gave in to the series. Curiosity got the better of me and I just had to read it. To be frank, I just can’t understand the big hype around Fifty Shades of Grey. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the book (who doesn’t love Christian Grey) but it just wasn’t as satisfying as I had imagined it to be.

For those who aren’t aware of the story, a college student, Anastasia, begins a relationship with a 27 year old (very successful, powerful, rich and gorgeous) businessman Christian Grey, after interviewing him for her friends’ newspaper article. Ana loses her virginity to Christian, and he wants her to sign a contract that keeps their relationship purely sexual and defines how their relationship as one of “dominance and submission” (BDSM).
That’s the short of it anyway.

I found that it took ages for the plot to actually get interesting. The sex scenes alone were interesting enough, but the actual story was going nowhere at all, until the very last chapter. That was where I suddenly became a “Fifty-Shades-Fan“. It was expected but you still didn’t expect it to actually happen. But it left you want more! It doesn’t have a real ending to the book so it means you have to read the next one to find out what happens.
I like how it ended. Had it ended like a normal book, I don’t think I would have read because I wasn’t very pleased with the plot to begin with.

I have to agree with all the other reviews on Fifty Shades of Grey though that this book is simply a “soft-porn” novel. A majority of the book was basically about sex. He wants it, she wants it…WE GET IT! YOU WANT TO HAVE MAD SEX WITH EACH OTHER! But hey, that’s the genre of the book so what more could we expect. The sex scenes were very intense and captivating though.

Oh, and Christian Grey’s got this weird obsession with making Anastasia eat. That’s not an attribute we see in many men these days. I know that it’s kind of strange, but I actually found it cute. It shows how he actually wants her to be healthy, instead of being stick thin (like most men want women to be) and it showed that he cared about her.

Aside from that, the book wasn’t a complete disaster, but it wasn’t the best book I’ve ever read. It’s clearly a book for middle-aged women who need to some “spice” in their lives. Mr. Grey is more than willing to provide that for them. I did enjoy the book. Not as much as I though I would have, but I did.
The songs mentioned are all GREAT songs-Sex on Fire–Kings of Leon, I’m on Fire–Bruce Springsteen, Witchcraft-Frank Sinatra (who doesn’t love Sinatra). They were all great choices that complimented the plot extremely well. Hi-five to E.L James!!! I even giggled when I saw that Toxic-Britney Spears was mentioned. That was absolutely perfect.

By the end of it, I wished I had a Christian Grey was real, for unexplainable reasons. Can’t wait to read the next one!! 🙂 🙂

Best Lines:

• “Because I’m fifty shades of fucked up”
• “Laters baby”
• “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince”
• “It’s very hard to grow up in a perfect family when you’re not perfect.”
• “We aim to please”