Screaming at a Wall

Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed every page. I found the writing to be very entertaining, insightful and on that selfish level, was able to identify with most of it. It kept me totally entertained for the last week and a half. I have quite a bit more to say about it, but suffice to say, it was damn good on many levels.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent look at 1990s youth culture
Review: This is the autobiographical story of one person's journey through 1990s youth culture.

Greg is your average resident of the Bay Area of San Francisco, more interested in drugs and the opposite sex than school. A couple of teachers along the way attempt to "reach" him, thinking that he is some sort of troubled teen, when a much better diagnosis might be "smart but bored with school."

He has a variety of jobs during this time, including spending a couple of years working behind the counter of a local bike shop. It's the sort of place where items like air guns and super glue are used in all sorts of intesesting ways. After high school, he intentionally gets out of town and enrolls in a sort of alternative college in Arizona to learn search and rescue. He leaves there after he finds that the school is the sort of place where the faculty would rather look at the goodness inside each of the students than actually teach search and rescue. During this time, Grundle Ink Publications is born, as Greg hand binds copies of his writings and hands them out to friends.

Everett eventually ends up in the college town of Chico, California, where Grundle Ink becomes more of a "full-time" job. The fact that he knows absolutely nothing about the publishing business is irrelevant; nothing like learning the hard way. He also makes several attempts to get off drugs.

Throughout this book are many relationships with the opposite sex. Some of the women Everett meets are decent, reasonable people, while others can best be described as one-dimensional idiots. He is unable to break off the relationship, so he intentionally acts like a jerk until the woman gets frustrated and does the breaking up. The conversations recounted are not literary masterpieces; sometimes, they consist of little more than "dude" and "(insert swear word)."

Because of the very large amounts of drugs and swearing in this book, it is not for the faint of heart. To attempt to understand youth culture of the 1990s, this does an infinitely better job than the various stories and films of adolescent hijinks. The writing is honest, sobering, and, in places, very funny. I loved it.

Rating:
Summary: Very unique...
Review: This was one of the most unique and interesting books i have ever read. It follows the life of the author, Greg Everett, from childhood to present-day, and kept my interest from the first page until the last. I think that Greg's life has aspects that almost anyone can relate to, and his life's story is one that will entertain everyone who cares to read it. His life is filled with hard choices and big decisions about everything from his love life to his drug habit and, although some might say disagree, paints a relatively accurate picture of adolescent life. I would recommend this book to anyone, regardless of their age or background.