What do You think about Looking For Alaska (2006)?
some people are careless, and in an adrenaline-fueled all-caps teen reviewing frenzy, will inadvertently give a major spoiler for this book.avoid these people, even though ordinarily, they are pretty cool.this is a really well-written teen fiction book. i mean, it won the printz award, i'm not discovering america here. i think i wanted to emphasize that it definitely reads like a book intended for a teen audience. and i think that me as a teen would have numbered this among my very favorite books. however, as an adult, there are a lot of years between me and the characters in this book, and i have read a lot more books than the average teen, so i am mostly jaded and ruined, but imagine me discovering this at say, 13...1) a group of smart kids going to boarding school who read all the time and take pleasure in learning and have hundreds of books and quote marquez and rabelais. karen would have loved to have had friends like these2) emotionally unstable female lead who is mysterious and changeable who is not afraid of her sexuality but doesn't use it all the time to get what she wants who says tough and dramatic things like "y'all smoke to enjoy it. i smoke to die" (thirteen year old karen loves this line, grown up karen rolls her eyes)3) drinking and smoking and fornicating that do not lead to bad grades and ruined lives. there are other causes for those things...4) blow job tips. 'nuff said5) brief crash course in eastern religions that would have been so exotic to small town karen.and the structure would have been novel to young karen: countdown leading up to the event then countdown leading away from it. very cool. so i see why the kids like it. and i liked it, too, but i think it would have been more important and surprising and enchanting to me as a kid - all the first love and first loss type stuff, all the unwritten behavioral codes between the teens and the authority figures, and the slow unravel of a mystery. very cool.but i have a question. and it is a spoiltastic question, so i am going to put up a barrier of images to protect anyone who has not read it, and wants to. these will be subliminal suggestions that are so subtle you won't even know what is happening...dude, seriously - why didn't jake go to alaska's funeral?? there is no reason for him not to have and there is absolutely no explanation given. it makes it easier for the author, yeah, to not have to write a confrontation scene between jake and pudge, and to have the mystery unravel more slowly, but it makes zero sense for someone so in love with his girl to not go to her funeral. seriously. dumb. i will accept any private messages about this, to keep the thread spoiler-free, but until john green tells me why, i am going to say "dumb"
—karen
I didn't like this book. This is not what I expected to be. I hoped to find a book in the style of Stargirl (or something novel) and what did I find? A bunch of teens who try to ease their anxieties in their not-so-original vices and a sudden drama which leads to nonsense talking. All hiding, of course, in a couple of beautiful quotes that wrap all the 'inspiring-sites' on the internet, the reason I got to the book and I bet that you too.Boring, it was so so boring. I didn't like the characters. Alaska was unbearable (oh no wait, she was awesome if you were a character too: fantastic girl,beautiful and wonderful and ohmarrymerightnowplease, and she had to be an intelligent woman, so the author made her feminist and an avid reader, to prove she had brains), and there is no need to write about the boys because... booh. The main character was a cronic linnet, who got lost in his difficulties (mostly, not having a girlfriend, such a big problem you see) and searching The Great Perhaps, thing he forgot to do so easily so... What a waste of time!2013 EDIT: almost FOUR years have passed since I read and reviewed Looking for Alaska and I hope nobody expects me to discuss anything related to the book. It's great if you loved the book but I didn't. Maybe at this time of my life I would express myself in a different way but when I wrote this I was convinced of all I said before. After Looking for Alaska, I read other John Green's books. And I loved some of them, like really did. It's sad that Looking for Alaska didn't work for me but I think it is wonderful that it did for you. Not so many books can inspire that kind of passion :_)Thanks everybody for your likes and comments and my apologies for not answering them anymore.
—Cristina
I love John Green. For me he is one of a very few male YA authors whose writing I really enjoy. His nerd-boy perspective on the world is fresh and interesting. For a change, it's nice to read how boys perceive girls instead of being stuck in boy-obsessed girls' minds portrayed in numerous female-POV YA books so popular these days."Looking For Alaska" is the second John Green's novel that I've read. This book is a Printz Award Winner, and rightfully so. The story is funny and sad, profound and silly. It explores the lives of several teenagers at a boarding school which include all usual attributes: pranks, hook-ups, and illicit activities involving alcohol and cigarettes. But the story goes beyond that as a tragic occurrence shakes the world of these teenagers and they are faced with issues of loss, suffering, and meaning of life. What I like about Green is that he is never condescending in his writing, or overly simplistic, like many YA writers are. He skillfully tackles important questions of love, sex, death, religion and philosophy, all within the limits of an YA novel. I think I would have been impressed by this novel more have I not read "Paper Towns" first. What bothered me was how similar the two books were. While I enjoyed the stories and writing, I wish Green would venture beyond the theme of a nerd boy obsessed with understanding of an enigmatic voluptuous girl who ends up to be a simply disturbed person with an artificially created air of mystery around her to cover her pain.Having said that, I enjoyed this book very much and will read the third novel of Green's "An Abundance of Katherines" and follow his work in future. Reading challenge: #3
—Tatiana
