I'm entering my second year of college in two weeks, I'm an English major. I'm not really a reader, that is to say, I don't "read for pleasure" very often. The last time I bought a book non-school related and read it simply because I wanted to was when I bought "the Book of Lies", the book that inspired Mother 3. Remember when I wrote about that so long ago? Yeah, it's been that long.

Yesterday I met up with some friends for dinner at a local shopping center. As usual, I'm early, so I started looking around the book store where I found a little lime green book called "The Perks of Being A Wallflower." It's a novel of sorts. The concept is that it is a collection of letters written by a 15 year-old boy named Charlie. He has just entered high school, the year is 1991. I started reading it while I waited for my friends. It was pretty good, so when my friends told me to meet them at the restaurant, I quickly bought the book (last copy!) and went on my way.

I didn't touch it again until noon today, and I'm already half way through. At first, main character Charlie talks about the suicide of his friend right before he enters high school. Like most kids, he's nervous. It started off a bit cliche, but Charlie is a charming character. Having recently gone through the high school thing myself, I can relate. The book quickly turns into an account of some of high school's more shady underculture. The back of the book recommends this story for young teenagers and my first thought was "No, this is inappropriate for fifteen year-old kids". But then I put the book down awhile and thought "Well, it's the sad truth, but I bet a lot of high school kids know about worse stuff than I do being in college..." and I kept reading.

Charlie quickly makes friends with a stepsister/stepbrother duo, Sam and Patrick. Charlie develops a little crush on Sam even though she is older, and Patrick turns out to be gay. Somehow Charlie winds up going to a lot of parties that involve things like drinking and LSD abuse and other "adult" activities, a lot of activities that would cause me to leave a party had I been the one there. And I just started to feel really bad for poor little Charlie, and although I don't know if this is the point that the author is trying to get across, I interpreted it as a message stating that there is nobody out there protecting boys from the crap in the world. People jump to the defense of girls, they're more likely to be protected or sheltered, but nobody worries about boys. Society sort of encourages boys to act more mature than they really are, and more often that not, it harms them in the long run.

The book not only describes Charlie's trials and tribulations with his friends, but also with his family; his family seems pretty normal, but Charlie is very analytical about it and really seems to place a lot of blame on himself. He's in an advanced class in school, but he doesn't seen confident or even aware enough to realize that he's doing everything he is supposed to. His teacher insists that he "participate" more not only in school but in life in general. That's horribly misguided, because the teacher doesn't push him into clubs or activities, but into dances and parties and the not-so-nice social aspect of a high school. Charlie isn't exactly sure about the suggestion, but he does it anyway.

The book is written entirely in first person and Charlie addresses the reader directly. Like a good movie I found myself saying "Charlie, just get out of there." or "It'll be fine, just do what you think is best." It sounds so cliche, but I found what I've read so far very riveting and captivating, but also very upsetting because there is just so much truth to it.

It's been mentioned here on Lumine Hall several times already that high school is one of the most dirty, immoral places on the planet, and this book agrees. This is a good book, but you need to be in the right mind set. I feel that I'm at a good age to read this, and I really wonder what somebody who is older than me would say after reading it, or even somebody younger. I bet it would mean something TOTALLY different to them, purely because of age.

Does anybody have anything to say about this kind of peer pressure/high school drama/experience stuff?

I'm probably going to finish the book tonight. It's very good.