Movie Update!!

So you all know how I'm obsessed with books that are being made into movies. I especially like when books I LOVE are being turned into movies!! So when I heard a little while ago that they were going to make The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky into a film I was estatic. While I haven't been able to find out that much information (or a legit movie website) out there yet, I have discoverd (ok so it's all over the web!) that Percy Jackson star Logan Lerman and Harry Potter leading lady Emma Watson are set to play lead characters Charlie and his crush, Sam(antha).


If you follow the link here it provides a little information on the story background, etc. IMDB also lists that Nina Dobrev from the CW Vampire Diaries is set to play a character in the film, as well as other well known actors, Paul Rudd and Mae Whitman.


Alright, show of hands... who else is thrilled by this news?!!! What do you think of the casting choices? While I'm totally on board with Logan Lerman as Charlie, Emma Watson is not exactly who I picture as Sam. And as others around the interweb are wondering, I'm curious to find out who will play Patrick.

Love Drugged
James Klise



rating: 6.5 out of 10 "books"

What could be better than reading a book written by one of your own: I’m referring to a fellow librarian of course. In his first YA novel, Klise presents the possibility of a cure for homosexuality in the form of a little blue pill. And why shouldn’t it be a pharmaceutical company that invents the cure for such a “perversion of the human way of life,” (this is me quoting the opinion of countless people across the globe). For me however, I saw this story as one that presented a possible threat to the happiness of so many people who just so happen to be gay.

Love Drugged, is the story of Jamie Bates, a fifteen year old who just wants to be like any normal girl-obsessed teenage boy. The only problem is that he’s not: Jamie is gay. So when the should-be girl of his dreams, Celia, introduces Jamie to her father, the creator of a in-the-works gay cure called Rehomoline, Jamie, desperately seeking to live the life he feels he was meant to, has no choice but to steal some of the pills. However, as the pills take away his attraction to men; horrible side effects fill its place. Even worse, Jamie sees no advancement in his attraction to women, Celia included. The story follows Jamie as he makes bad choices, one after the other, and the people he will eventually hurt in his quest to be straight.

With the recent national “Things Will Get Better” campaign, I thought this book was fitting, especially since, within my own library system, there have been suicides due to unacceptance and ridicule because of sexual preference. Initially upon reading, I saw Rehomoline as a good thing; why shouldn’t people have a choice as to whether they want to be gay or not. But eventually, and as suggested further on in the book, why should that even be an issue? Why should a gay individual have to make that choice? It’s like an African American having the choice to become white, as if there were something wrong with being black. In an even larger scope, and something that I only realized after reading it further in this book, what if this drug did become available, and instead of people having the choice of whether or not they wanted to be “straight,” the drug was, for lack of a better word, weaponized, and forced upon homosexual individuals in order to mold them into some crazy idea of what a man or woman should be, or, more specifically, who they should love. In my opinion, that’s one less thing that needs to be made available to the likes of the ultra-religious homophobes. The worst part of this story is that the drug does nothing to “cure” homosexuality because although it may take away a man or woman’s attraction to the same sex, it does nothing to make a man or woman attracted to the opposite sex: it simply “suppresses the homosexual response in the brain,” thus destroying the one thing that separates man from all other creatures and turning people into a sort of zombie, devoid of any kind of human emotions relating to love.

Although this book and I started off pretty slow, I really came to like it, especially what it stands for and some of the issues and thought-provoking questions it brought up for me.

Goth Girl Rising
Barry Lyga


rating: 7.5 out of 10 "books"


The end of “The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl,” saw Goth Girl aka Kyra sent away after Fanboy alerted her father to some worrisome activity. Well, Kyra is back after missing the end of the school year, the summer, and the beginning of the new school year at her Maryland high school. After six months with no email from Fanboy, Kyra is a little upset but ready to make up with Fanboy. When she returns to school, she is surprised to find that much has changed since she’s been gone. Fanboy is popular! By publishing his graphic novel as a serial through the school newspaper, Fanboy has suddenly become the newest member of the high school upper class. Feeling abandoned, Goth Girl cooks up a plan to ruin his life.

Whereas “The Astonishing Adventures...” was from Fanboy’s point of view, “Goth Girl Rising” provides us with an opportunity to finally see into Kyra’s head. We never really got the back story of Goth Girl in Lyga’s first novel and I personally wanted to know the deal as to why Kyra was always so pissed off. This story was much heavier than the first as we come to find out that much of Kyra’s attitudes towards things stem from the death of her mother and the unhealthy way she dealt with it, as well as the grudge she continues to feel towards her father, whom she feels was the main cause of her mother’s death. It may be hard to imagine when reading the story, but Goth Girl was not always the bitter, angry, dark clothes wearing sixteen year old. Much of this story is about Kyra trying to find herself and feel comfortable in her own body. We see one display of this as Kyra takes much care to cover up and disguise her figure.

I got angry at both Goth Girl and Fanboy alike at times. I got angry at how Kyra reacted in many of the situations, especially at the fact that she was always so defensive and unable to see things right in front of her. She may have seemed confident in “The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl,” but in reality Goth Girl seems to suffer from self-esteem issues like any teen. She gets hurt by a lot of the things Fanboy does, and instead of facing them head and confronting him about them, she plots to continually destroy his life. Then again, it’s easy to sit back and yell at the way Kyra acts, but in reality, this is how many teenage girls act. Minus the destruction part of course. Fanboy on the other hand, seems to act more like your typical sex obsessed teenage boy in this novel. But it must be mentioned that we are viewing the story from Kyra’s point of view so it is to be expected at least a little. I still got pretty fired up with some of the stuff he did. This coming especially after reading Goth Girl’s thoughts and explanations of how boys just want girls for their looks and bodies, and how Goth Girl purposely covers herself up to ensure this objectification will not happen to her.

I really enjoyed this book and am glad Barry Lyga decided to write a sequel to Fanboy and Goth Girl. It was a nice way to finish off the story of Donnie and Kyra, even if you had to wait until the very end of the story to see anything happen between the two.

Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List
By Rachel Cohn and David Levithan


rating: 5.5 out of 10 "books"


This second collaboration between Cohn and Levithan (who co-wrote Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist), tells the story of Naomi, a tough city girl with seemingly little interest in anything other than her friendship with her best gay friend, Ely. Naomi and Ely have practically been best friends since birth. They’ve lived across the hall from each other in their Manhattan apartments all their lives and have shared everything from the collapse of their parents’ marriages to clothing. One thing they will not share however is men. Hence the reason for the creation of the “No Kiss List,” a fool-proof plan against a “Naomi & Ely breakup.” But a series of events threatens the Naomi & Ely relationship and leaves readers clambering to find out whether the damage can be reversed.

This novel and I got off to a rocky start. Within the first few pages I was bombarded with a flurry of symbols and names that left me confused and discouraged. It took a few reads of some very nonsensical sentences accompanied by symbols to figure out for example, that a character named Robin was actually two people, one male one female, distinguished by slightly different symbols. The first chapter gives us a look into Naomi’s train of thought, detailing her knack for lying (“Lies are easier to process”—Naomi), to her indifference towards others. She describes levels of “I love you’s” that she says to various people, but none seem to embody the true meaning of love. Even Naomi’s feelings towards her boyfriend, Bruce the Second (named as such because of the existence of a former boyfriend named Bruce), are less than real. The recklessness of Naomi and Ely is reminiscent of the CW version of Gossip Girl. Ely is hardly any better than Naomi, going through boyfriends quicker than the season’s fashions go out of style.

For the first portion of the novel I didn’t feel the smallest bit of sympathy toward the two main characters and questioned my commitment to finishing the book. However, the two-dimensionality of the characters was rounded out by the inclusion of other characters’ points of view including: Bruce the First, the High School boy who has not been able to sleep ever since he and Naomi broke up forcing him to join a group of fellow insomniacs, nicknamed the “Bruce Society,” in the wee hours of the night; Bruce the Second, Naomi’s current boyfriend, who struggles with his feelings and identity throughout the story and who appears to be the total opposite of Naomi in every way (Bruce on telling the truth: “There is something so intimate about saying the truth out loud. There is something so intimate about hearing the truth said. There is something so intimate about sharing the truth, even if you’re not entirely sure what it means.”); as well as other characters such as the Robins, Gabriel, and Bruce the First’s twin sister, Kelly.

In the end, I really enjoyed this book especially because I felt that it included many truths and lessons. I even grew to enjoy encountering the slew of symbols that accompanied Naomi’s chapters, eager to decode the meanings.