Dig a Little Deeper!

Monday, November 18, 2013

The Resident Bookworm's Thoughts On: The Spectacular Now

Hello, fellow bookworms!

The book of the week this week is The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp. This book has had a little cult following for several years, and it was just recently adapted into a movie starring Shailene Woodley. I'll be honest: the movie looked really cute and romantic, which motivated me to read the book.

Summary: "Sutter Keely. He's the guy you want at your party. He'll get everyone dancing. He'll get everyone in your parents' pool. Okay, so he's not exactly a shining academic star. He has no plans for college and will probably end up folding men's shirts for a living. But there are plenty of ladies in town, and with the help of Dean Martin and Seagram's V.O., life's pretty fabuloso, actually.

Until the morning he wakes up on a random front lawn, and he meets Aimee. Aimee's clueless. Aimee is a social disaster. Aimee needs help, and it's up to the Sutterman to show Aimee a splendiferous time and then let her go forth and prosper. But Aimee's not like other girls, and before long, he's in way over his head. For the first time in his life, he has the power to make a difference in someone's life -- or ruin it forever." - Summary courtesy of amazon.com

The Good: I love how Tim Tharp wrote Sutter's dialogue. You get a little taste of it in the summary, with words like "splendiferous" and "fabuloso." Sutter as a character is really hilarious, actually. It makes it easy to read. He doesn't care about anything, and he just constantly flies by the seat of his pants for everything he does. Sutter is also on the brink of alcoholism, and he drinks all day every day. This addition really added quite a bit to the story, because Sutter is sort of an dope sometimes, but people like him anyway, despite his quirks. However, everyone is wary of his drinking habits, especially whenever he decides to drink and drive, which happens entirely too often. So everyone can accept him being quirky and off-the-wall, but they can't accept his drinking habits. I thought that made it really relatable.

The Bad: If I were honest, I would admit this shouldn't be a factor, but Aimee was sort of a letdown for me. I expected her to be...something that she wasn't, I guess, and I blame that on the movie previews. Don't read this book if you think Aimee is going to be Shailene Woodley. Because she's not. It's also a slow story, to be sure. There are large chunks of the "story" when it feels like there isn't a story. It's just Sutter running around, drunkenly causing a ruckus. It was entertaining sometimes, but other times, I found myself flipping forward two or three pages at a time, just waiting for something to actually happen.

Overall: So I have this tendency to generally avoid books written by men that also have male narrators solely because I have a hard time relating to them. Obviously there are exceptions (13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher comes to mind, and if you haven't read that yet, STOP READING THIS RIGHT NOW AND GO GET YOURSELF A COPY. That's an order. It's one of the best books I've ever read. Looking for Alaska comes to mind, as well, which is also fabulous. But I digress.), but normally I don't like most of them. If I were honest, I wasn't overly impressed by The Spectacular Now, and, staying on the honest train, that might be because it was from Sutter's point of view instead of Aimee's. That might have made all the difference. So I'm going to give this one a 6. It was enjoyable and parts were laugh-out-loud funny, but other parts really dragged.

Would I recommend this to a fellow bookworm?
This is a tough one. The Spectacular Now vaguely reminded me of a John Hughes movie for reasons I don't pretend to understand. I'll admit that I think this book's mediocre score is just me being picky, so if you think you would enjoy reading Ferris Bueller's Day Off in the form of a novel, then I say go for it.