Jeremy Heere is a typical high school aged guy. He's awkward among his peers, and downright mortified by girls. He keeps a list of all the terrible things that happen to him on a Humiliation Sheet, complete with a categorical breakdown of embarrassments. But one day he discovers the "squip," a seemingly-magical supercomputer that could change his life-- and does, at his thrill, and peril. The one thing he really wants, the one reason he "needs" his squib, seems to be the one thing still out of his reach.

this book is Catcher in the Rye for the iPod set. It is hysterical and cringingly, painfully funny.

the narrative voices of the story. Jeremy and his Squib are hilarious as he learns how to be "cool" from the inside out.

Ned Vizzini is a pretty astute voice of teenaged angst and awkwardness, and I imagine that some of it comes from personal experience, as the biographical clip on the back of the book says he has also written a memoir about his time at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. (Two of my friends went to Stuy, and it's kind of a unique place. )

it is hysterical, painfully personal, and written from a voice that's both wise beyond years and foolish in the way we all are as humans-- even when the computer is doing all the talking for us.

Apparently I'm reading a lot of really good young adult sci-fi with teenaged boys who have chips in their heads. It's an interesting trend...

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Created Aug 27, 2006 at 1:29am • Submit your own review...