The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I started reading this book this morning and some thoughts that immediately came to mind.  The format is a letter format that is entirely one-sided.  The letters essentially cover a one year period in the protagonist, Charlie's life.  The initial letters reveal a young man who is the youngest in his family and is pretty much confused about everything that happens around him.  His ignorance borders more on the naive than the stupid.  I completely understand this.  I felt just like him in high school, like everyone else just seemed to understand things more than me, but somehow believed that I was right there with them.  I often found myself nodding and pretending that I understood when I was just as confused.  Perhaps in today's world with the easy access to online information, today's youth is more educated in the social atmosphere of high school.  Some quotes that struck me in the first section were:

"Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve."

"Not everyone has a sob story, Charlie, and even if they do, it's no excuse."

"I feel infinite."

I wonder how many of you students will understand the references to Pittsburgh and the movies, TV shows and Music of the time period.  1991 and 1992 do not seem like they were very long ago, I remember them quite well, however, I suppose that twenty years have passed since then. Perhaps my own sentimentality has taken hold and driven me back to a time when I, like Charlie, was ignorant of the things going on around me. So far, this book has grabbed my imagination and filled me with great anticipation as to what Charlie is going to experience in the next set of letters.

One final note, the English teacher asking Charlie to call him Bill has me kind of concerned.  Not so much that he is assigning Charlie extra reading and assignments and guiding his education in that way, but the first name intimacy is inappropriate in the classroom. I love my students and form very tight bonds with them, but at the end of the day, they are my students and I am their teacher.  Some lines cannot and should not be crossed.  I hope this is just a side part if not a totally insignificant side part of the book and doesn't develop into anything more than just an irritation on my part.

Finished: The Book Thief

I finished the book thief this week. There is a profound moment of great sadness that resonates deeply in the psyche.  Anyone who has read WWII literature and understands the holocaust experience will be interested in looking at the experience from the viewpoint of the common German people.  We talk about Nazi Germany and the atrocities of war enacted on a "helpless" people, but what of the ordinary Germans who were not members of the party?  What was their experience when the party came to town, inducted their children into Hitler Youth movements and judged them as to whether they were "Jew-lovers" or "Conspirators" or what-not. Liesle becomes for us a protagonist that we can love and cherish like one of our own kids.  She finds outlets, not always legal, for her energy and confusion.  We wonder about her real mother and feel her terror when hiding in the basements during the bombings.  We applaud her reading to the community and wonder at a time when not everyone could read or read well.  What books would we read in the bomb-shelter today?  Would books make a resurgence if our electronics were to disappear?  I would list this book among my favorites for this style and genre of book, especially for young adults. My next book will be The Rag and Bone Shop, by Robert Cormier.

Reading to distraction.

After reading the first three quarters of The Book Thief, I feel like stealing a book from someone.  Of course, my situatiion is much different than Liesle's situation and I would have a hard time justifying the theft.  I can appreciate her desire for stories that distract from the general fear of living in Germany at that time, and I wonder if today our distractions are less literary and more electronic.  Watching students and children of all ages and temperments, I am struck by their need for constant noise. They all assure me that they can still hear me, even with one ear-piece fastened, possibly permanently, in one ear.  I am liking the distraction of reading, even if it is centered on my kindle.

More on this later.