This book by Jeff Kinney was 'alright'. It's my younger brother's. I was invited back to my family's house for tea but when I got here three hours ago they'd forgotten and were all out, so, naturally, I let myself in and found something to do, which in this case was unexpectedly enjoy (yes, I'm a snob, I often expect books, children's or not, that have had immediate commercial success and get turned into movies, to be rubbish) a novel written for people half my age. The book's about a weak, unpopular, socially awkward kid called Greg Heffley, who struggles with - whfff, everything. He's a typical post-childhood pre-pubescent boy, in that he's basically just despicable; he spends his whole life avoiding bullies, vaguely longing after unattainable girls, hungering for artificial screen-based entertainment, inexplicably irritating his parents, and politically planning incremental progression of his own popularity. He has one friend, a dude called Rowley who actually seems to have it more or less together. The diary charts his day-to-day failures at these and other goals, across the time frame of a year. He illustrates his diary with cartoons that help narrate the specific events in which he fails to not get beaten up, fails to make cool friends, fails to do that well in school, fails to conduct a functional respectful relationship with his family or friends. I'm making it sound pretty bleak, aren't I? Greg Heffley's life and diary perfectly encapsulates that weird pre-young-adult bleakness, where one is on the verge of adolescence but hasn't yet left childhood behind, and finds oneself unable to do anything properly. Props to Jeff Kinney for so ably replicating what it feels like during the two or three years that boys spend in that pit before they emerge as marginally-less-weird teenagers - and despite how dark I've been in this post, be assured that the book is a very non-existential wholeheartedly-if-sardonically-amusing read, perfectly appropriate for young readers. I found the realistic presentation of that 12-year-old mindset funny to read, especially given the overall quite 'nice' plot, but then on reflection realising that that's what 12-year-old boys are pretty much actually like, and how depressing is that. Anyway, I wrote this in a massive rush as like I said I'm at home and am writing this on my phone on the toilet and my poo finished ages ago and I heard my family come home about ten minutes ago but they don't know I'm here so I really want to end this post, go downstairs and have the tea that I came here to have. If this were a fantastic and thought-provoking book, I would edit this post later and do a much more thorough treatment, but it wasn't, it was just a fairly funny and disproportionately well-selling (told you I was a snob) children's novel in which the defining climax was that someone eats mouldy cheese. Should you read this book? Meh. Like I said, it surpassed my expectations, but it's just not what I would've wanted to read when I was the age that the people who are expected to read this book are. Boys who are Greg Heffley's age don't want to read about themselves, they want adventure, mystery, excitement, intrigue, magic, horror. It's like Adrian Mole but for kids, and that takes most of the fun out of it, albeit leaving most of the bleakness in. It'd be an alright present for a selfish socially-awkward 12-year-old, but then, it might just be too close to home and depress them. Dunno. There are definitely better ways to spend three hours. Aaaaaaaaaaand, paragraph.
Flush.
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