Paper Towns by John Green

Now, I am admittedly a huge John Green fan. The first book I read by him, An Abundance of Katherines, was a catalyst for me to devour the rest of what he had written. I quickly read Looking for Alaska and loved it and can go on and on and on and on...about the love I have for The Fault in our Stars (arguably in the top 10 contemporary pieces of literature I have ever read). So, on this fabled second snow day I thought what could be better than curling up with a John Green book? Well, a couple of things apparently.

Now, don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the book. It wasn't a terrible way for me to spend the day, but I didn't love it. To me, honestly, it seemed too much like Looking for Alaska. There is a boy, and a girl, the boy is a nerd/geek, but in his own right, and the girl is this person that he has somehow idolized and then fantasized into a being that is so unrealistic that his realization of how wrong he could be could only become part of the plot. He even comes to this conclusion:

So, here is the information on it. The book's main characters are Quentin, who is referred to as Q for the majority of the novel, and Margo Roth Spiegelman, who disappears for the majority of the novel.

Q is your average teenager. Not in the over-stereotypical, media sensationalized sense. He does not party hard, does not sleep around, none of those things. He goes to school, hangs out with his friends, and likes a girl. He is nerd in the sense of not being popular, but is perfectly fine with is lot in life. Except for one thing. He has a...fixation...on Margo. Margo and Q were childhood friends since they grew up living next to each other. Even from childhood he had a fascination with her, and it never faded as they grew into their teens even though they grew apart. He always observed her from a far, but never tried to make things happy.

The concept of Margo is hard to put into words because we never really get to see her from a point of view other than Q's. Even when her friends are talking about her, he still filters it and refutes what he doesn't like, but then again, begins to accept and evolve his concept about her. So, yeah, hard to pin down, but that is supposed to be the nature of her character.

The story begins by sharing a memory from their childhood that would cement Margo in Q's mind as the girl he will always want. This draws the reader in immediately. The, Margo and Q team up for a good number of pages and we are drawn into this realistic night of their lives. If you didn't know they hadn't been hanging out, you would think them two very good friends. Then Margo disappears.

This is the part of the book I found to be lacking. It starts with her disappearance being nothing out of the ordinary. No one is surprised and everyone thinks that she will be home soon, especially since she has done this kind of whimsical thing before. When she is gone longer, it becomes Q's obsession to find her. For good reason, as he does fear the worse. But, when I say obsession, I mean obsession. It got old to read about his dead ends and failed attempts to decipher the clues left for him, and that is where I started to wane on how much I would enjoy this book.

I fear to talk to much more about it for sake of giving out spoilers. But, as I said earlier, I didn't hate this. In fact, I did love the way he incorporated the clues. I really liked that. To me it speaks to the point where we all want to think we matter enough that if we leave hints people will follow them. We all want to believe that our absences go noticed, and that in some sense day to day life is not the same if we are not there. I, as always, also love the way that Green writes his characters. None of them seem far fetched, and it wasn't hard to relate to anyone of them. Even to me, someone who has always known exactly what she wants to do and exactly how to go about doing it, could relate to Margo and her ideas of paper towns and paper people.

The story in the novel itself is good. The characters are developed well, or not - but that is for plot purposes,  and everything seems very realistic. I just didn't get into this as much because I kept seeing too many similarities between this and Looking for Alaska. 

You walk away from this novel with some thought provoking quotes and it does make you wonder about the relationships we value in life, but I didn't dwell on these thoughts long and hard. So, was it good? Yes. Was it great? No. I would recommend it to anyone I know hasn't read Looking for Alaska, and would want to pick their non-predisposed brains on it.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I'll be the first to admit it. When I hear of a book or movie that everyone is talking about, I go through three stages:

What are they talking about? 
I'm not going to read/watch it, it probably isn't good.
Dammit, I have to know WHY they are talking about it.

Admittedly, there have been both wins and losses in this mindless pursuit. Win - The City of Bones and all the following novels, Batman Begins. Major losses - Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Napoleon Dynamite.

But, I must concede that this novel, The Fault in Our Stars, is one of the best things the internet has ever convinced me to read. I was already a John Green fan, but this novel puts him a distinct category very few authors/actors can say they belong in - characters that made me tear up.

Now, not to say I am a heartless hind, but let's face it, it has to be extremely well written for me to get so emotionally invested in a character that I shed a tear. I often get very angry (cue Sirius Black's death), or simply sad (Dumbledore,but let's face it, once that black, rotten hand was mentioned, you knew nothing good was going to happen), or when George R.R. Martin killed the direwolves (I hate when they hurt animals). I do remember distinctly tearing up while reading Bridge to Teribithia  and demanding my father read it so he could explain to me why she had to die. *He never did and to this day I still don't get it*. But, oh, this novel, this novel got me. I didn't bawl my eyes out or sob into a handkerchief, my nose running all uncontrollably. No, it was worse than that. It was the silent tears slowly streaming down your face while your throat gets all tight; the kind of crying we try to hide or prevent from happening because "come on, the person isn't even real!". Well played, John Green, well played sir.

First of all, the novel immediately begins with telling you the main character, Hazel, has cancer. So, naturally, I braced myself for death. If not her, someone. I mean, the first things she does is go to a support group for people who have cancer and immediately tells us about death. So, yeah, someone is obviously going to die. She has a cancer that affects her lungs and thus has to carry an oxygen tank with her everywhere, but she deals really well. (She also makes some awesome comments on the perceived coping mechanisms of those with cancer which I found well written).

He writes about Hazel and how she meets this boy Augustus. Augustus lost his leg to cancer and came to accompany a mutual friend of theirs to this support group. Long story short (only because I don't want to give away any spoilers. Do not interpret this as me Yada Yada Yada -ing through some boring stuff) girl meets boy, boy likes girl, girl likes boy.

One of the fascinating parts of the novel is the way these two characters connect. On the night that they first meet, Augustus asks Hazle what her favorite book is. She tells him (it is not a real book, dammit), he reads its, they bond. Then, as her "wish" (actually his, but that is explained in the novel), they get to go to Amsterdam to meet the author. This has been her dream; she wants him to tell her the ending to his novel. You see, he wrote about a dying girl and the book just ends in the middle of a sentence...very thought provoking, yes?

Well, let me tell you something. If there was ever a time I felt connected to a character is in this book...and unfortunately I cannot tell you about it. But trust me, I know this feeling all too well. When I met the author I idolized, let's just say Hazel and I had very similar experiences.

I desperately want to go through this book event by event and tell you how much i loved it all, but I can't, because then you wouldn't read it, and I want everyone to read this book. EVERYONE. It is that good. But, I warn you, you will get emotional. It is not the death that makes you cry, or at least, that is not what made me cry. It is how the death is viewed. It discusses all the nastier parts of emotions when we are dying; we all know they exist, but once we put a voice to them you feel them in ways that your thoughts alone could never do justice to.

So, moral of this entry? Read this book. Seriously, it is an amazing story. The thing I love best about it is that (I believe) the story isn't to get you to think about death at all, but how you live your life. Which, let's face it, we all could use some time reflecting on.



A note on the cover: Definitely did not make me think I was going to cry.