This is absolutely one of those just okay books that I am going to habitually read throughout my lifetime. For a story that focuses largely on learning to interpret texts to find what resonates with you, it ironically does a lot of telling and not showing. There are a ton of sentences like “the boys grew silent, touched by Neil’s impassioned reading and Tennyson’s statement of purpose.” You could just say they went silent. I think I can figure out the rest!

I had movie brain going into this which actually helped me with the pacing of the book. It moves rather quickly on its own considering how short it is, but the large indistinguishable mass of male characters was clearer to me due to the faces I had already associated with the corresponding names.

There’s a scene in the book where the boys take a “pop quiz” in which they write an essay while Keating puts salacious photos of women on the projector? In order to teach them to focus for when they get to college or some shit which was incredibly wild! A stark difference from book to movie is that Todd doesn’t actually sign the paper at the end in the book! I found that better character development and am not sure why they had him cave in the movie. They also had him write his own funky little poem at the end.  

The ThingTM that happens at the end of this story feels almost out of place in the book. The sense of tension wasn’t raised as high as they built it in the movie, but it could be just that I knew it was coming. 

TLDR: Dark academia classic. Writing was inconsequential but I’m a sucker for a fruity little flowery story about some prep school idiot. Movie better than book, but the book was based on the movie which I didn’t learn until just now!