The Perks of being a Wallflower.

The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky was a fairly random pick. I had seen some previews for the movie, and decided to check out the book. It turns out that it has been a popular book for a fair number of years. There is even a whole section at the end with topics for book club discussions and such. The book covers many topics including: teenaged drinking, drug use, smoking, sexuality, and mental health, as well as a teenager's view on abuse, drinking, both suicide and attempted suicide, and death within his family. A person could talk or write for a very long time about this book and get into some deep discussions. I won't write that much because it really needs the back and forth of discussion.

The book is written in the form of letters. A troubled teenaged boy (Charlie) is writing to an unknown person (seemingly the reader). It runs over the course of one school year (and a summer). Charlie has an extremely difficult transition from middle-school into high-school. His only good friend committed suicide shortly at the end of the school year before. Charlie is also struggling with the death of his Aunt (about 9 years earlier) with whom he had an interesting/ distressing relationship.

Charlie is quite introverted, and socially awkward, and naive, yet he speaks what he thinks (sort of like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory). In efforts to "participate in life" he becomes friends with a set of siblings, both of whom are a couple of years older than him. He gets accepted into their group of friends. With this group of friends, he goes through many stereotypical (or maybe just typical) teenage behaviors including exploring sexuality, drinking, and drugs.

This book really made me think about my high-school experience. While I was in it, I didn't think that my experience was out of the ordinary (for an introverted geek). When I entered collage I realized just how different my experience was.The thing about this book is that it captures the feelings of teenagers so well that you don't have to have experienced the situations to relate to them.