Perks

Right now, I'm in the middle of reading Justin Cronin's The Twelve. I will for sure write about that when I'm done with it, but in the meantime I thought I'd talk about The Perks of Being a Wallflower, book and movie.

I saw the movie last Wednesday (with a friend who had never read the book). I was periodically distracted by Emma Watson's British-ness occasionally poking through, but beyond that, I thought the adaptation was good. The casting was pretty spectacular (really, if you put Paul Rudd and/or Mae Whitman in just about anything, I am likely to enjoy it), and Ezra Miller is a real find. That said, I think I'm just too familiar with the book to say much about the movie. I know things have to be cut for the sake of time and again, it's a good adaptation (and should be, given Stephen Chbosky's involvement). But. I don't think I could be truly satisfied with anything that isn't the book itself.

I actually re-read the book about a month ago and never wrote about it here. It's a book I've read more times than I can remember - actually, I don't remember when I first read it. Mostly, all of my other memories of this book are subsumed by the memory of reading it during my freshman year of college. It was spring break and I stayed on campus, so it was painfully lonely and snowing the whole time and so cold in my dorm room and I read the book twice (because I was apparently feeling masochistic). Also, I had just gotten a perm (not a gross tight one) and my hair still smelled like the stuff they use to make the curl last. I guess I remember that time so well because my mood was already so appropriately matched to the mood of the book and because I associate that bone-deep cold and the perm smell so strongly with that feeling and that moment in time. In fact, I got my hair permed at least once after that and it took me a couple of days to realize why the smell was depressing me so much. Anyway, that's what comes rushing back every time I read this book. And because I associate it so much with all of that, it's hard for me to say much else about this book and hard for me to have any critical and well-expressed thoughts about the movie.