Book Nerds Across America: the perks of being a wallflower

Showing posts with label the perks of being a wallflower. Show all posts

Sunday, September 25, 2016

Banned Book Week Giveaway Hop

It's Banned Book Week! If you haven't heard about it before here's the brief gist:

"The Banned Books Week Coalition is a national alliance of diverse organizations joined by a commitment to increase awareness of the annual celebration of the freedom to read. The Coalition seeks to engage various communities and inspire participation in Banned Books Week through education, advocacy, and the creation of programming about the problem of book censorship. The 2016 celebration will be held September 25-October 1.

Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than 11,300 books have been challenged since 1982 according to the American Library Association."

I grabbed that from the Banned Books Week website: http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/. The site also includes a list of the Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2015:

Looking for Alaska, by John Green
Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James
Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”).
I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
Reasons: Inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group.
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin
Reasons: Anti-family, offensive language, homosexuality, sex education, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“wants to remove from collection to ward off complaints”).
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
Reasons: Offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”).
The Holy Bible
Reasons: Religious viewpoint.
Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”).
Habibi, by Craig Thompson
Reasons: Nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter
Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence.
Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan
Reasons: Homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”)

For the giveaway, I am going to be giving away a book that was one of the top ten challenged titles in 2014 for reasons of "drugs/alochol/smoking, homosexuality, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group. Additional reasons: date rape and masturbation." (*source). Marshall University has a good timeline of events surrounding this book. Geekade also has a detailed blog post about this.

I thought it was interesting that this title was also chosen as a World Book Night U.S. title for 2014. So that is the edition I am giving away. Without further ado...

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

by Stephen Chbosky

I simply adored this book! The movie, too. (I also have not had such a linktastic blog post in a long time! Sorry, random aside.) Anyway, you can enter via the Rafflecopter:

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thank you for stopping by! And now you can hop on:

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Summer Blog Promo Tour: Perks of Being a Book Nerd

It's time to meet another blogger! Yay! I am super excited about this one, because it's Kat from...

Perks of Being a Book Nerd !!!

Another Book Nerd! What great taste! I love her blog already, just based on the name. I mean, besides the obvious Book Nerd love, it also references a book and movie I loved, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.

We decided it only made sense for Kat to share some fun book nerdish goodies, so without further ado...

Do you want all of her stuff?! I want all of her stuff! Thanks so much Kat!

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The Perks of Being a Wallflower: The Movie!

So, last year the Book Nerds had a monthly feature where we read a book that was going to be made into a movie. It got to be a little too much to do it regularly, but there are just so many great books being made into movies these days that we will continue to write about both.

That being said, a good friend of mine who is an English teacher and I, the Book Nerd, have been anxiously awaiting the movie adaption of The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. First of all, the book is just fantastic. Just fantastic. I am sure you have heard this famous quote from it:

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

That was my status update on Google for the longest time after I read the book! The movie slightly adapted it, expanding it and turning it into:

"I know these will all be stories someday. And our pictures will become old photographs. We'll all become somebody's mom or dad. But right now these moments are not stories. This is happening, I am here and I am looking at her. And she is so beautiful. I can see it. This one moment when you know you're not a sad story. You are alive, and you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you're listening to that song and that drive with the people you love most in this world. And in this moment I swear, we are infinite."

I love it! Doesn't it just give you chills?!

On top of that, there are soo many actors I love in this film: Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Nina Dobrev, etc, etc. I was out of town the weekend it opened nationwide, but I went with my friend (who had incidentally already gone once -- lol) on the following Monday.

So good.

This was a great book to movie adaptation. I don't know if it's just because the book is small anyway, so there wasn't really a need to cut anything out. I don't know if it's just because Stephen Chbosky wrote both the book and the screenplay. I don't know if it's just because it's a great story. Probably all three. At any rate, if you liked the book, you will not be disappointed. And even if you haven't read the book, I think you will still be able to follow everything and be entertained.

Short review: Great book! Great movie! Read it! See it!