The Center of the Universe: Yep, That Would Be Me

by Anita Liberty

I CAN'T FIX THE WORLD. I CAN ONLY SIT BACK AND CRITICIZE IT. Welcome to the story of my life. Well, at least the story of my junior and senior years of high school. It's a profound, touching, and hilarious (if I do say so myself) tale told through cunning poems, revelatory diary entries, perspicacious (look it up) word definitions, shrewd bits of advice, and off-the-cuff (but brilliant) insights. You'll probably relate to a lot of it. Especially the parts about hating my parents, never feeling cool enough, failing my first attempt at the SATs, having an incredibly romantic (but one-sided) relationship with the coolest guy in school, and getting hexed by my ex-best friend who became a Wiccan. And if you can't relate? Well, step to the back of that humongous line. You'll probably be right behind my family. If you're lucky, my mom'll bring snacks. How can I be who I am and who my family wants me to be when the person I am wouldn't be caught dead with the person my family wants me to be?

Genres: Young Adult, Humor, Chick Lit, Teen, Fiction, Poetry, Realistic Fiction

292 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2008

Reviews

[Arminzerella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anita Liberty took her high school journals and put them to excellent use in producing this fictionalized account of her teenage years. Detailing her thoughts, feelings, and experiences, it also provides advice, SAT words (used in a sentence for context!), and poetic interludes. Anita also keeps running lists of “Parental Infractions” and “Parental Compensations” to score/grade her parents on their parenting skills. Their first mistake is moving to an unrenovated Manhattan loft with practically no privacy, and forcing their teenage daughter to live on a platform (she refers to it as a STAGE for all of her teenage drama) in the center of it all. Short, smart, obsessed with the opposite sex, and trying hard to find her place in the world, Anita’s escapades and the way she tells them (perfectly tempered with experience and hindsight) will have readers in her corner (and feeling her pain) from the get go.

Excerpts:
To see what I see
and to feel better than it - 
that's cake.
Being witness to the inferiority of my fellow tenants
of this society - 
that's not hard.
But to respond gently
and humbly and graciously
to the failings of humanity.
Now, that is a trick.

p. 134

Advice from Anita Liberty: There are a limited number of decent guys in any given high school. If you're one of those girls who tends to attract a lot of guys and have no intention of using all of them, then cut a few loose so the rest of us can have a go. It's the same lesson we all learned in kindergarten - share, take turns, and don't hog the sand toys.*

*In this case, please substitute "hotties" for "sand toys."

p. 137

Alexandra came in today and just announced that she had become a Wiccan. First of all, I don't think that's something that you can just decide overnight. I believe (unless I'm wrong, and that's unusual) that Wiccanism is a form of Paganism wherein one worships nature and ascribes to the belief that there are multiple deities, both male and female, and engages in rituals at certain times of the year. I've done my research. But whatever. She's decided that she's a teenage witch, and that's all there is to say about that...

It's all very annoying and contrived and artificial. I hate that the most about people in high school, that they're all so unaware of how stupid they're being at any given moment. It's like there should be some giant Mirror of Truth, and Alexandra should stand in front of it and it should say, "Cut it out. You're acting like an idiot."

pp. 182-183

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is like the BEST candy you've ever eaten in your entire life. That first bite is so good that you end up shoving every single piece (of the jumbo sized bag) into your face and are left with a pile of wrappers. It's hysterical, annoying, ADDICTIVE! One of my favorite lines compares being high to running in a marathon--only you can't run straight. Love, loss, parental grief, the rare parental approval, studying, good friends, bad friends, honesty, college, first time--you know what I mean, pets, NYC and so on...

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHAT A GREAT BOOK! I could have read this book in one sitting but I found it so hilarious and fun to read that I made it last a week. It's a romp through two years of private high school in New York City full of misadventures and awkward sex, the stress of school, and Anita Liberty's increasing disdain of her parents. She makes the angst of being a teenager seem like a comedy skit and peppers it with a lot of snide commentary on how fake and full of shit her fellow classmates are. But she has friends and even boyfriends and her parents prove not to be all that bad.

[Kyle Wikle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very fun book to read. It was quirky and funny and was not too difficult to just pick up and read a few pages. Many of the pages had either big huge bold letters that took up much of the page or sometimes just a single sentence. This made this 295 page book absolutely fly on by and kept me wanting to read more! In all, I enjoyed the pace and story line in this book very much and might consider checking out more books by Anita Liberty.

[khalisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

i adore this book. i used to read this book every summer from grade 5/6 until grade 12. its just such a light fun book and ive never read a comedy book that actually made me laugh aside from this one. it’s the perfect book for a delusional teenage girl (and me since i apparently never grew out of that phase)

[Casper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This books is a great read for any high school students. It is a good blend of romance, comedy and information. This book can help one identify some struggles that may occur in high school and help others avoid these struggles.

[grace · Rating 1 out of 5]

yup! this book was so forgettable i had forgotten i had already read it until i was 68 pages deep and realized i was feeling a very familiar sense of disappointment.

[Edna Fuentes · Rating 4 out of 5]

it was a good book to show kids life isn't always going to suck even if you always anticipate the worst

[zoë]

I forgot this book existed until recently and I loooooved it as a 12 year old loser

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book’s written like a diary, with SAT words and example sentences, poems, and charts rating how annoying her parents are. I’m still trying to figure out how much of this book is fictional. I thought it was all made up, but How to Heal the Hurt by Hating, also by Anita Liberty, is real… so I’m confused. I attempted to Google and figure it out, but my Google skills are somehow very lacking.

But this book is hilarious. Seriously. Anita is completely self absorbed and arrogant, but unapologetically so. She doesn’t pretend to care about anyone outside herself and her little bubble. She never goes on random tangents about poor starving kids in Africa. The book is focused on Anita, and only Anita. But really, that’s okay. Because Anita has her problems, and she makes it so hysterically funny to read about.

She’s every teenager who has ever been unsatisfied with life. She has parents who she hates a lot of the time. She makes tables and rates each thing her parents do that qualify as infractions or compensation to her. She writes angsty and hilarious poetry. I’m not a poetry fan- but still. She goes through her fair share of boyfriend troubles. And then later in the epilogue writes about what happens to them.

Anita chronicles her life from age 16 to 18. It skips a lot obviously, since there’s a little less than 300 pages, and no one can write a whole detailed two year span in that number of pages. But the important stuff is still there.

Slightly raucous with no filter, which makes the book all the better. Looking for a something to brighten up your day? Wanting to escape problems in your life? Read this.

[Brandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s a lot a teenager can relate to in this lightly-fictionalized memoir of the author's junior and senior years of high school: the frustrations of not having a boyfriend, the frustrations of having boyfriends who are less interesting up close than they were from afar, the frustrations of having parents who move their teen daughter across a city to a loft apartment with no privacy, the frustrations of having parents who enroll their daughter in summer acting classes but also don’t make a big deal over a poor score on the SATs. On balance (and Anita does keep the parental scorecard, weighing their infractions against their compensations), Anita knows she doesn’t have it too bad.

The book is put together with a combination of things: diary entries, parental scorecards, SAT words (and sample sentences related to Anita’s current dramas, mostly relating to boys), and some exceptionally bad poetry. The voice is authentic (I’m sure if I looked at my own high school journals I wouldn’t see a lot of differences), but that’s not the same as being compulsively readable. Some teens will find Anita’s teenage self engaging and funny, though there are undoubtedly others who will find her annoying. There’s not much foul language, but mentions of sex and sexuality, while not graphic, are frequent enough to make this a better choice for upper-high-school students rather than younger teens.

[Jennifer Wardrip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviewed by JodiG. for TeensReadToo.com

Anita Liberty is not the happiest teenager you'll ever meet. In fact, she can be downright morose. But she does it in a way that is so hysterically funny you can't help but love her.

Among the people who contribute to Anita's misery are her twelve-year-old sister, who is already in a committed relationship; her friends who vary in their degree of "friendliness" from week to week; the boys who are, well, boys; and her parents, who don't seem to know anything about her or understand her in the least.

Now she also has to deal with the pressure of SAT's, college applications, boys (of course), oh, and the Wiccan curse that has been placed on her by one of her "friends."

So how does a girl deal with the pressure and disappointment of her everyday life? Well, in the words of Anita Liberty, "I can't fix the world. I can only sit back and criticize it." And she does. Through journal entries, poems, charts, and SAT words (yeah, I know, but it makes sense as you read it), Anita details the misery she suffers through from the ages of sixteen to eighteen.

THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE (YEP, THAT WOULD BE ME) is the hysterically funny story of a girl whose view of the world is a little skewed but completely accurate. You may find yourself reading it over and over and laughing every time.

[Alanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I do not recommend reading The Center of the Universe by Anita Liberty. It is the average mushy love story about a stereotypical lovesick teenage girl. She kisses a different boy just about everyday. She hates her parents for a lot of bad reasons. The story is suppose to be true, but I think only some little details are because it is so far off.

The Center of the Universe was not a good book. Nothing happened. The story never made me smile, cry, scream or even laugh. The Center of the Universe was just one of those books you can't wait to put down and are forced to read. I don't recommend this book for anyone because it is written at about a fourth grade level but has inappropriate content for anyone under the age of 15. I don't recommend reading the book The Center of the Universe.

[Shauna · Rating 3 out of 5]

picked this up to read and maybe help me navigate my teenager better. he got ahold of it and already read it and then i started it and am shocked at how many swear words and sexual references there are and i feel like a terrible mom for letting him read it before me! it's basically in a diary format. it's interesting how teenagers think for sure. it's also a quick read so far.

7/20/08: finished this today. It was a quick read. It was entertaining but I think too much for middle schoolers for sure. Do kids in high school really do all of those things?? Man, I hope not! Scary thought. It was clever how she incorporated word definitions from her SAT studying words into her diary entries. I might be interested in reading her Healing by Hurting book.

[Adriana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fast read, somewhat humorous but too crude and even raunchy at times, which I felt was inappropriate for a teen book. I've read other teen books that use strong language and innuendos before, but this one came off as too forced. The character's language was also on the immature side for being 16, 17 and 18, it came off more like a 14 year old. The best parts of the book were when the author herself wrote an intro. and epilogue, so I probably would rather read her stuff written for adults. I just never felt invested in the character, she never became likeable or adorable, like what I feel when I read the Georgia Nicolson books, which this seems akin too. It was just OK.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this because I thought it would work for an assignment. It didn't, but the book itself is funny and reminds me of all those crazy feelings we all had during high school. I found myself having been in the EXACT same shoes as Anita during my "teenage years." This book has it all: love, hate, jealousy, kissing, making out, pot, beer, SEX, musicals, family, parents....ALL OF IT! Two thumbs way up for this. "As for you, go have fun being a teenager. Or not. I don't care. It's your universe. The rest of us just live in it." Best final line of a book I have read in a LONG time. I want to put this in my classroom, or use it as journal prompt, or somehow put this quote to use.

[Lilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me start off by saying this was a book to easily get through, I literally finished it in less than 4 hours. After reading the past the prologue and reading the first 10 pages I figured I would hate it because of this girls stuck up attitude. However once I pushed past it I noticed the way she thought of herself related to me. In a cheesy sort of way Anita Liberty's little biography showed me how that all can be pushed past. It also proved that not everything does suck and even though "I can't fix the world. I can only sit back and criticize it", it showed ways to enjoy the awkward way of the world.

[Grace.707]

OH MY GOD THIS WAS THE BEST BOOK I EVER READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I READ IN THREE DAYS LAST SPRING AND SINCE THEN I HAVE READ IT AT LEAST A MILLION TIMES SINCE THEN(before I lost it. )-:)I think that almost anyone will be able to relate to Anita's issues in the book with school, friends, family, relationships, and life. Anita actually wrote this book and it's all true! This book is quirky, creative, edgy, touching, hilarious, and just plain amazing! You will feel all of the character's emotions. This is my favorite book!

[Sesana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fun, quick, light read. Nothing earth-shattering happens, but does it have to? I enjoyed it enough that I added the other two Anita Liberty books to my "to read" list. The structure is a little different. It alternates diary entries (which do not start with Dear Diary, of course) with poems and SAT definitions. It also includes a prologue and an epilogue from Anita updating the events to the present. It really does sound like a real teenager, and I appreciate that. (Maybe not enough emphasize on the school side of things, but there you go.)

[BookChic Club · Rating 4 out of 5]

As you can tell just from the summary alone, this is an extremely hilarious, laugh out loud, and very funny book. Told through various poems, diary entries, SAT Problems, and the occasional list, Liberty's debut teen novel is the perfect read for any reader who enjoys sarcastic humor. The voice in this book is just so perfect and rings so true, and the plot is just compelling. If I didn't stop myself, I'd have read this book in one sitting. It is that good, and that quick of a read. It's just so hard to put it down. A very entertaining read.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book to see if it would be a good recommendation for my 14 yr old daughter. Absolutely NOT. Too many eff-bombs, too much focus on make-out sessions, drinking, smoking pot and having sex. However, I, personally laughed out loud and found this to be hilarious, fun, silly, ridiculous. Maybe this is one best read with age, maturity and hindsight. In any case, I thought it was a very fun read.

[Astrid · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had this book recommended to me by a friend. I expected it to be comical and relatable, it's not. The main character kisses random boys every other day, developed new crushes daily, and dumps boys as soon as they like her. She annoys the heck out of me! She is everything wrong with teenagers today, and as a teenager, I hate the stereotype this book appeals to. The redemption for this book was the ending. I didn't find the closure terrible, and feel that she nicely concluded the book.

[Deanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book after a teen patron said "If you are standing up and reading this book, you should sit down because you'll be laughing so hard you'll fall if you don't."
Honestly, I couldn't have said it better myself! I laughed my butt off reading this. I made my family listen to me read funny parts aloud and they cracked up too. Delightful!

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a lot in this book that made me laugh out-loud. There was also a lot in this book that made me cringe out-loud. I'm not sure if the cringing was caused by the liberal peppering of the eff-word or because I KNOW I effed just as much, for exactly the same reasons. Overall, I thought the book was funny and honest and a perfect look at the life of a teenager.

[Mr · Rating 5 out of 5]

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The Center of the Universe I would reommend this book to someone a litle older then me because of some of the adult conflict and cruel language.Teenager girls would eb able to relate to some of the different relateionship.-Skylar Mattis

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definately for older teens since the depictions of being an older teen are actually realistic and not moralizing, horrifying, or sugar coated. The main character reminded of Veronica from Heathers with all the funny journal pieces.

[Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in two nights. Felt like looking over my own journals, unsurprisingly. Not a lot of meat but enjoyable in bringing back some memories of being a self-focused kid, though I never had the mouth she had. :)

[Gretchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is technically YA, but it is hilarious and totally worth it for anyone who likes Anita Liberty...or incredibly cynical sarcasm.

[Kaitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good, has awesome poems. Has a lot of cussing and sexual references though.

[Autumn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cracked me up the whole time!