Book Vs. Movie: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Let's face it: most of the time, the movie sucks in comparison to the book. There are exceptions (Shawshank Redemption being the most often cited), but for book nerds like me, that's generally the rule. Imagine my surprise when I found a movie that was at just about the same level (not better or worse) than its book.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower came out when I was in high school, and it was immediately on my radar as something I wanted to read. Somehow, however, I never actually got around to reading it. This year, with the movie coming out, plus the fact that it's now such a staple of Young Adult literature, I finally made the plunge into reading it.

And I didn't love it. But I think that had more to do with me than the book itself. I'm more than a decade away from where I was when it was first released, and I'm decades more jaded than even that. I could appreciate the book for what it would mean to a teen, but I couldn't quite connect with it like I would have once. As a coming-of-age book, though, it's solid.

I saw the movie for Perks this past week with a friend, and I was surprised to find that I enjoyed it for completely different reasons than the book. Maybe because I was seeing it rather than reading it, I felt more attached to the emotions of the teens, and I thought the actors chosen were superb in their parts. I was also surprised to find that, while I enjoyed the movie as a whole more, I enjoyed the ending of the book far more. Maybe it was because I knew that little twist was coming, or maybe because Chbosky (who not only wrote the novel but also wrote and directed the film) meted out more hints to the twist throughout the film, or maybe because the reveal in the book lent itself to the style of the book (letters to an anonymous "you").

On the whole, I think I liked the movie a little better, but I found the book and the movie to be quite comparable. Can we have more authors adapt and direct their own books, please? I'll be curious to see what else Chbosky directs in the future.

Do you have any book/movie combos that you love equally?

Review: Meanwhile

I had heard about this amazing graphic novel Meanwhile by Jason Shiga a while ago, but had never bothered to track down a copy. And then, magically, during my first week at my new library job, I found it on the shelf! Clearly I was inheriting a cool collection from a really great librarian :)

I immediately picked it up and started in on the game. You see, Meanwhile is not like any other graphic novel, where you read from panel to panel, moving along the pages in some kind of order and getting a story out of it. No, this is a choose-your-own-adventure spiraling book of craziness.

It all starts with a simple question: chocolate or vanilla? Each choice you make (some as silly as chocolate or vanilla, some earth-shatteringly important) moves the story to another place. You move back and forth through the pages by following paths and flipping to different tabbed pages. You can see from the picture above that vanilla takes you to the light-teal page, while chocolate takes you to the dark-teal page.

The decisions you make quickly become more complicated, however. The page above shows a scene in which you need to enter the correct code on a machine to make it work. Each choice along the way can change the story, so you have to pay attention to what you're doing and where the path you choose actually goes.

There are 3856 story possibilities (so the cover states, at least). I barely got through a fraction of them. In fact, I found that there were whole pages that I was missing, so I did some tricky reverse-engineering to actually see how to get to them.

Is the story amazing? No; I mean, it's cute and fun, but the story is not what I'm going to remember this book for. The storytelling, however, is epic; it's truly not about the destination but how you get there. I want Shiga to produce another one of this ASAP :)

Rage Reading

Do you ever rage read? I do. More frequently than I'd like.

Rage reading is when you HATE the book you're in the middle of, but continue to read for the purpose of continuing to hate on it. I rage read my way through The Passage by Justin Cronin, and just today, finished rage reading the sequel, The Twelve. I can go on for hours about how much I hate these books. And yet, I found myself slogging through The Twelve every day for the last three weeks!

Why do I do this to myself? It used to be that I had a hard time not finishing a book, even if I didn't like it. I'm waaaaay better about that now, especially considering the volume of books I'm in contact with through work. But there are still those rare occasions when I dislike the book so much, I have to know how it ends so I can hate it even more.

I'm not the only one who does this, right? What books have you rage read?

Gone But Not Forgotten

Sorry to the, like, two of you who read this. I know I've been MIA for a while, but let's chalk it up to illness and stress. Just because I haven't been hanging around here doesn't mean I haven't been reading. At my last count, I'm up to 60 books this year, and still going strong. I've read lots of YA that I should have read years ago, and I'm still trying to gain some ground with that.

More reviews will be coming soon! I've read so many good things I want to share!

Review: The Song of Achilles

There are times when I start reading a book really wanting to like it, but no matter how hard I try to put aside the little things that irk me, it just ends up a disappointing mess. I'm saddened that The Song of Achilles happened to be one of these instances.

I should start by saying that I am a HUGE Trojan War nerd. I've read most of the books out there, and I can describe parts of the epic in such detail that I can see people's eyes glaze over as they listen to me talk about it. But of course, that means I hold books about the Trojan War up to pretty high standards. And I know that my idea of the characters are going to be different from someone else's interpretation of them. But I found Miller's Patroclus so weak that I had a hard time caring.

My problems with Patroclus started very early. In most accounts, Patroclus kills a friend, and he and his father go into exile to escape. Here, Patroclus' father is shamed by his act and sends his only son far away. Much later, Patroclus proves he doesn't have much skill on the battlefield and spends his days in camp with the women (only later finding any use for his time in the healer's tent). These weak characterizations just don't jibe with my idea of Patroclus, and I found myself struggling against them every step of the way. I had no indication of why Achilles cared so much for him.

The story itself is fine, following Patroclus from his youth through his upbringing with Achilles to the Trojan War itself. That's a lot of ground to cover, but Miller moves things along well. Achilles himself felt a bit bland to me, but I loved his mother Thetis, who was the perfect blend of cold and calculating and overprotective. And I'm still confused by Briseis, who plays such a pivotal role in Achilles' motivation. There are a lot of characters to keep straight, and if you're not already knowledgeable about the story, you might have a little trouble, but the appendix should sort you out.

I guess that my biggest issue overall was that I just had a hard time caring - about people, about actions, about consequences. Miller's writing is beautiful (aside from some discrepancies with tense usage, but that should fall to an editor to fix), and I can't wait to see a story from her that I don't already know so well.

Buy The Song of Achilles on Amazon
Buy The Song of Achilles on Indie Bound

Review: Charlotte au Chocolat

As a Boston-area food blogger of almost 5 years (and a life-long diner in the Boston area), I always want to know more about the restaurant scene, past and present, around town. That's why I was so excited to hear about Charlotte au Chocolat by Charlotte Silver. It's the story of growing up in a restaurant - and not just any restaurant, but Upstairs at the Pudding, a real Harvard Square establishment.

I never dined at the Pudding (it closed before I gave two cents about good food), but I have since dined at its replacement, Upstairs on the Square. The owners have remained the same, and Silver talks about many of the reasons why the restaurant moved. The one time I ate there, I found that the atmosphere (bright and garish) outshone the food. It's one of those spots that I've been meaning to try again ever since, but it keeps getting bumped down my list.

The back cover of the book makes it sound like it's the story of a girl in frilly dresses, drinking Shirley Temples until her lips were pink from the grenadine. And yes, there is a lot of that in the story. But what makes this an interesting story is seeing the rise and fall of a local institution through the eyes of a child who is forced to spend much of her time within its walls. I'm sure Silver had other things she could have been doing instead of napping under the bar to stay out of the way during service, but there she was, year in and year out. She marks her own growth along with the demise of her parents' relationship and the cracks in the restaurant. She paints restaurant life in very realistic ways, perhaps in ways that only a child growing up in that environment could catalog.

Of course, the little bits of Harvard gossip make this a fun read for anyone in the Boston area. Who here doesn't enjoy watching clips of the Hasty Pudding Awards on the news (all female winners of the award dined at Upstairs at the Pudding, while the males were taken to other restaurants)? I especially loved hearing about the discordant relationship between the Harvard a capella group that would sing during brunch and the wait staff.

Buy Charlotte au Chocolate on Amazon
Buy Charlotte au Chocolate at a local store through Indie Bound

Full Disclaimer: This book was sent to me for free for review. The thoughts about it are all my own.

Review: The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt

Like most kids' book nerds that I know, I was waiting (im)patiently to hear all the award winners from this year's ALA Midwinter meeting. This is when the Newbery and Caldecott winners are announced, as well as a whole slew of other awards. My favorite of the bunch is the Alex Award, given to novels written for adults but which would appeal to kids ages 12 to 18. Many people call these "crossover novels" because of their appeal to YA and adults.

When I was in the YA age group, I just called these "novels." But I digress...

Two of my absolute favorite books from last year were on the list: Ready Player One and The Night Circus. I'm sure I won't get around to reading the rest, but I was intrigued by The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, so I borrowed it from work.

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is exactly what it claims to be: a scrapbook. The book is filled with color reproductions of photographs and ephemera as if it were the real-life scrapbook of a young woman in the 1920s. Frankie is from a small town in New Hampshire and doubts that she'll ever leave, until the smallest of scandals sends her to Vassar College, then on to New York City and Paris. The book takes no time to read, and the story is a bit predictable, but the form is unique enough that it will seem fresh and new to a lot of readers. I'm not entirely sure how many teens will actually enjoy this book, although more and more kids seem to be interested in the 1920s (I think, in part, because of the buzz around the Great Gatsby movie coming soon).

For those who enjoy The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, I would suggest any of Nick Bantock's books (I've only read the Griffin & Sabine trilogy), which combine art and story in ways that are exciting and intriguing.

Buy The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt on Amazon
Buy The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt at a local store through Indie Bound