The Perks of Being a Wallflower, (Paperback)

this was part of a handful of books my daughter asked for, for her 13th birthday. it is a beautifully written book with characters that so many can relate to. very happy with this purchase.

was the target audience for this book when it came out. Read it in HS, enjoyed it. Became a librarian, spent my first few months as a YA librarian on goodreasa reading reviews on all the books I enjoyed over my life. Realized people hate POBAW. I was like, I don't remember it being that bad. I checked the book out again because I was bored and I have been rereading books the last few years. It was pretty good.. better than I remembered. But the point of this post, is that I have been thinking alot about one quote. "It's like when my doctor told me the story of these two brothers whose dad was a bad alcoholic. One brother grew up to be a successful carpenter and never drank. The other brother ended up being a drinker as bad as his dad was. When they asked the first brother why he didn't drink, he said that after he saw what it did to his father, he could never bring himself to even try it. When they asked the other brother, he said that he guessed he learned how to drink on his father's knee. So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them." Nothing incredibly profound but it's true, we either repeat the cycle when we witness things, or we decide to never go down that path.