Oh, boy, this is about to be a wild ride. First off, there is absolutely nothing redeeming about this book. There's no redemption of ANY of the main characters, there's nothing particularly inspiring or hilarious or tragic. On top of that, there's a disgusting amount of playing to stereotypes: gay theatre kids, asshole homophobic jocks, angry and uneducated black men, boring Jewish girls, a Vietnamese man with horrible grammar and Asian cuisine with "mystery meat."Okay. Let's begin.Starting with characterization: awful. For a time I enjoyed Earl, until I realized that he was nothing but a harmful, painted caricature of black people in today's culture; coming from a home with a single mother quite possibly in sex work, no father at home, siblings from different men, a lower-class household in a bad neighborhood, brothers in gang, constant sibling violence, near-constantly mentioning the drugs everyone in his house does, and the grammar. For example, this quote:"Look," he finally said. "You agreed to make a film for somebody. Now what the hell do that mean."... Seriously? I have never in my LIFE heard a person say "What the hell do that mean," bad grammar or otherwise, because that isn't a common grammar mistake unless you're a toddler or just beginning to learn English as a second language. And I mean brand-new to the language. At this point, Andrews is trying way too hard to make a hardened, funny, relatable supporting character, and it read forced and offensively. In fact, there are three (!!!) THREE non-white characters in this book (besides Earl and his family, which as I've already gone over is a ridiculous mish-mosh of cardboard stereotypes); Nizar "the surly Syrian," the Vietnamese man that owns a store, and Greg's high-school principal. And all of them are subject to Andrews' nasty stereotypes of them; Nizar knows no other English than a slew of cuss words, the Veitnamese man's grammar plays terribly on the stereotype of Asian people having a hard time with English grammar, and the principal, just like Earl, is described as looking "pissed off." The only two characters to be described as looking pissed off in the entire book are the two black men. At the beginning of the book, as Greg is describing the lack of a concrete social hierarchy, he says "at many schools, the jocks would be a good bet to ascend to the throne, but at Benson, they're pretty much all black, and many of the white kids are afraid of them." What kind of bullshit..?Greg. Do not get me started on our lovely narrator. Let's talk about this unapologetic jack-ass for a few minutes. He spends the entirety of the novel so completely far up his own asshole that I'm surprised he didn't describe his bowel movements to the reader... oh wait, he did. 
 ... and my stomach got fall fucked up and trust me, you do not want to hear the details. 
 Yeah, you're right. I don't.If that isn't bad, we're supposed to believe that the narrator is a senior in high-school, despite the fact that what he considers humorous, hilarious even, is some fairly crude bathroom humor that would make an eight-year-old sigh and roll their eyes. I'm in high-school now, and I know that slapstick comedy is rampant, but it's more along the lines of dick jokes and implying certain things of a sexual nature, not the toilet jokes that were popping up at least once every few chapters.And can we stop for a moment to talk about how often the narrator talks about how shitty the book itself is? I mean, I get it, Greg isn't one for compliments-- and that, by the way, is super obnoxious by the fifth time reading through entire dialogues of nothing but arguing that he didn't deserve a compliment-- but by the twentieth time reading "this book sucks," I was agreeing. In fact, there's a line that says "you can take pretty much any sentence in this book and if you read it enough times, you will probably end up committing a homicide." I found myself astonished by how accurate it was. Just over halfway through the book and I hate it. Still, I'm trying to finish as many books as possible, no matter how stupid they are. So, I continue.Can I also point out how unnecessary 99% of this book is? It's Greg drooling over tits, thinking about how much he doesn't care about Rachel, and whining about how lazy he is. Literally. Oh, also, there's an entire scene of no significant importance whatsoever wherein Earl and Greg completely trash bisexuals. For no reason. It's random and never mentioned again, and it was so stupid I nearly DNFed the book there. But, I continued! I was hoping that there would be something redeeming, something rewarding at the end for finishing the book.Guys, don't waste your time. Seriously. All you're going to get for your efforts is a dickhead narrator who goes through absolutely no character development, no lessons learned, no redemption, no emotion. Nothing. On the back cover of the copy I borrowed from the library reads the following review by Jon Skovron: 
 This book is so funny it'll make you want to repeatedly punch yourself in the face. 
 Well, he got one thing right.