Review: Paper Towns by John Green

Paper Towns by John Green

Review by Kate

 

Publication information: Dutton Juvenile / 16 October 2008 / 305 pages

Genre: Young adult contemporary

Where I heard about it: I loved Green from Looking for Alaska and sort of stumbled upon Paper Towns recently as I was digging through YA and looking for some golden nuggets of goodness. My love of Alaska made me curious.

Spoilers: As safe as an Amazon page.

 

 

Review:

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life – dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge – he follows.

After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues – and they’re for him.

 

I’ve said it before and I said it again: I love Looking for Alaska. It was a book I devoured in days after I watched students tear through the three copies I had in my classroom; three, and then none, because it was one of the most-stolen books in our collection. When I say that Paper Towns uses a lot of the same tropes as Alaska – mysterious girl, boy kind of obsessed with her, a disappearance that no one can trace – I couldn’t resist.

There’s a certain easy enjoyment that comes from the start of the book, too. The characters are funny – Radar and his epic internet project, Ben and his too-desperate need to find a girl, Q as the ring-leader of the outcasts – and there is a high-school feel to the book. Like the start, with the conversations in the hallway and the school bully in Q’s face, belongs in that category of 90s high school movies where it’s a little clichéd but only because high school is clichéd.

Except then, you meet Margo.

 

“Yeah,” I said to Ben, still not listening, still trying to see as much of her as I could without being too obvious. It wasn’t even that she was so pretty. She was just so awesome, and in the literal sense. And then we were too far past her, too many people walking between her and me, and I never even got close enough to hear her speak or understand whatever the hilarious surprise had been. Ben shook his head, because he had seen me see her a thousand times, and he was used to it.

 

I think there are few books in which a character you rarely see becomes such an integral piece of the story. Margo Roth Spiegelman is the Voldemort of Paper Towns, the character that drives the entire plot but is mostly detached from it. When she and Q went on their adventure together, and even after, I couldn’t decide: did I like Margo? Was she actually profound or just doing that teenage thing of trying to be profound? Did I want Q to get a clue and leave her on the curb? Was she really as complicated-beautiful as everyone else seemed to think? The more the story wore on, the more I couldn’t decide and the more it frustrated me that I couldn’t. I alternated between wanting to beat Q over the head and between understanding why Margo meant so much.

The “mystery” that comes with Margo, too, has something both real and surreal about it. There’s an atmosphere in the places Q visits as he wanders through Orlando, by himself and with friends, that I can’t describe without spoiling every place he visits. All I can say is that with the mystery comes a sort of desolation, an emptiness of Q without Margo, that I think spreads throughout the book. I felt lonely, at times, while I read, but I think the loneliness was necessary. I don’t think the book would’ve been the same without it.

 

“It’s more impressive,” I said out loud. “From a distance, I mean. You can’t see the wear on things, you know? You can’t see the rust or the weeds or the paint cracking. You see the place as someone once imagined it.”

“Everything’s uglier close up,” she said.

“Not you,” I answered before thinking better of it.

 

But here’s the problem with Paper Towns, one that I’ve mulled over in the last few days: there is only so much fever-pitch you can hurdle yourself into. The action builds in the last half of the book, becoming frantic and exciting, making you want to devour the pages whole just to get to the end. I had to stop myself with about 45 pages to go because it was too late to keep reading and I knew if I didn’t stop then, I wouldn’t. But the next day, when I read the ending, I wasn’t sure whether it was the right one.

I’m not sure if there was a right one.

Because Paper Towns isn’t really about finding Margo as much as it is about finding yourself, and I’m not sure there would’ve been any emotional outcome that would’ve fully satisfied every craving I had. Whether this is a good or bad thing, however, I don’t know.

 

I thought she would leave, but she just stood there, watching me. I waved at her and smiled, but her eyes seemed fixed on something behind me, something monstrous that had already drained the blood from her face, and I felt too afraid to turn around to see. But there was nothing behind me, of course—except maybe the dead guy.

I stopped waving. My head was level with hers as we stared at each other from opposite sides of the glass. I don’t remember how it ended—if I went to bed or she did. In my memory, it doesn’t end.

 

8 frosted doughnuts: If it’s a series, you want more, if its a stand-alone, you’re sad it stood alone!

(For more rating information, see here.)

Book Babble: IMM DFTBA edition! (6)

DFTBA shirts:
The DFTBA definitions can be found here
The Giraffe Love can be found here.
The Esther bracelet can be found here. John’s explanation for the Esther bracelet is here; I encourage everyone to watch it. Even if you can’t help by buying a bracelet or donating some money, you can still decrease world suck.

Books mentioned in this IMM:
But I Love Him by Amanda Grace | Goodreads
By The Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead by Julie Anne Peters | Goodreads
The Tao of Travel by Paul Theroux | Goodreads
We Were Here by Matt de la Pena | Goodreads and the aweome People of Colour Challenge can be found either here or by clicking in the banner in the sidebar.

Book Babble: IMM May – Part 1!

In My Mailbox (IMM) is a weekly feature organised by The Story Siren. IMM is a post where you can show which books entered your house and it also gives you a chance to say thank you to the people that kindly sent them. To find out more about how you can join in click here.

Books mentioned in this post:
The Tunnel by Ernesto Sábato | Goodreads
Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta | Goodreads
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan | Goodreads
Gillespie & I by Jane Harris | Goodreads
Before I Sleep by SJ Watson | Goodreads
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins | Goodreads
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins | Goodreads
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins | Goodreads
Die For Me by Amy Plum | Goodreads
If I Stay by Gayle Forman | Goodreads
Where She Went by Gayle Forman | Goodreads
The Returning by Christine Hinwood | Goodreads

Books I got which were not mentioned in this post:

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath | Goodreads
The Robber Bridge by Margaret Atwood | Goodreads
A Season of Eden by Jennifer Laurens | Goodreads
Winter’s Passage by Julie Kagawa | Goodreads

Book Babble: Fragment Friday – Paper Towns by John Green

Fragment Friday is a meme hosted by James at BookChic wherein bloggers are asked to read a fragment of a new book, a book they’re reading, a favourite book or – hell, any book at all! You can find more information on his site.

John Green did an excellent reading of Paper Towns here on Vlogbrothers. You can find out more information on the book at Goodreads.

Review: Looking for Alaska by John Green

Looking For Alaska by John Green

Review by Elle

Publication Information: HarperCollins Children’s Books / 31 Mar 2011 / 272 pages

Format: Brand new paperback reissue; the cover with the smoke was prettier but the water does have some amusing significance, I suppose. It’s likely to appeal to a wider audience but it irks me a little.

Genre: Young Adult

Where I heard about it: It’s John Green, guys. I actually only heard about him recently (I, who lives in a bubble, did not know such an entity existed as The Green) and bought An Abundance of Katherines first before Kate screamed, “NOYOUMUSTREADALASKAFIRST!”

Spoilers: Nothing that you won’t get off the book jacket or Amazon.

Review:

BEFORE. Miles Halter’s whole life has been one big non-event until he starts at anything-but-boring Culver Creek Boarding School and meets Alaska Young. Gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, screwed up and utterly fascinating she pulls Miles into her world, launches him into a new life, and steals his heart. But when tragedy strikes, and Miles comes face-to-face with death he discovers the value of living and loving unconditionally.

AFTER: Nothing will ever be the same.

My relationship with this book is complicated. After I finished it, I promptly tweeted John Green to inform him that he had broken me and he replied to tell me that beating me with my own soul was his pleasure. That, people, is because John Green is a sadist.

You see, my dilemma is that there is nothing actually that special about the basic ingredients of this book. I know that doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement for a book that I am gifting with 8 frosted doughnuts as a tribute but it’s true. Miles Halter is nothing special: he’s a geek, he’s not physically gifted, he’s a complete social outcast, he doesn’t know how to speak to people and he’s running away to Culver Creek Boarding School (where his father went as a young man) because he thinks it will somehow be better, like the Great Perhaps he’s looking for is a portable suitcase like The Luggage ala Monsieur Pratchett. Weedy geek doing a Cinderella at a boarding school! All of the bestest YA tropes in one place. It should actually be a recipe for big hearty yawns.

But, guys, it’s just not.

So we lay in the tall grass between the soccer field and the woods, passing the bottle back and forth and tilting our heads up to sip the wince-inducing wine. As promised in the list, she brought a Kurt Vonnegut book, Cat’s Cradle, and she read aloud to me, her soft voice mingling with the frogs’ croaking and the grasshoppers landing softly around us. I did not hear her words so much as the cadence of her voice. She’d obviously read the book many times before, and so she read flawlessly and confidently, and I could hear her smile in the reading of it, and the sound of that smile made me think that maybe I would like novels better if Alaska Young read them to me. After a while, she put the book down and I felt warm but not drunk with the bottle resting between us – my chest touching the bottle and her chest touching the bottle and us not touching each other, and then she placed her hand on my leg.

The magical element in Looking for Alaska is how stunningly ordinary everyone is. The crunch in the cookie is that not a single one of these characters would be all that special on their own. You could reasonably meet the Colonel walking down the street (although you won’t notice him because he’s so wee). You could theoretically watch Alaska skirt around the edge of a party, intoxicating everyone she passes and trying your absolute best to avoid her because there’s just something dark in her (much like Lily from Junk) and, well, frankly she’s a bit of a psycho. The speciality of The Green is how stunningly unspecial everything is.

“You’re fine,” Takumi said. “Let’s go.”

And then I leaned forward and threw up on Lara’s pants. I can’t say why I didn’t lean backwards or to the side. I leaned forward and aimed my mouth towards her jeans – a nice, butt-flattering pair of jeans, the kind of pants a girl wears when she wants to look nice but not too nice – and I threw up all over them.

Mostly peanut butter, but also clearly some corn.

Yet that’s why this book was so emotionally devastating to me. Without giving a single thing away (and thus, making this review the limp noodle of my chicken broth of sorrow), Looking for Alaska deconstructed little parts of me because it spoke to my life. It spoke to a hundred parts of people I know. It spoke to that little crack that I think exists in everyone (stop it), the one where you drip-drop all of the little sad things of life until it splits right up the middle. What is that you say? Elle has lost it and is not making sense?

IT’S NOT MY FAULT, I TELL YOU.

How can I remain coherent in the face of this:

I am several steps in front of him before I realise the Colonel has fallen down. I turn around and he is lying on his face. “We have to get up, Chip. We have to get up. We just have to get to the room.”

The Colonel turns his face from the ground to me and looks me dead in the eye and says, “I. Can’t. Breathe.”

But he can breathe, and I know this because he is hyperventilating, breathing as if trying to blow air back into the dead.

In reality, I think that Looking for Alaska carries a simple message with it: sometimes things don’t have answers. Sometimes you can’t analyse right down to the bare bones of a thing and make it make sense. That was the best bit of the entire novel for me, the fact that although The Green appeared to give you something of a clue as to why The Thing happened, really you’ll never know. And Miles will never know.

And that just makes it beautiful.

And so sad.

And a book I will not be rereading again until – oh, who the hell are we kidding? Until I own shares in Kleenex.

Just read, it okay? Okay.

8 frosted doughnuts:
If it’s a series, you want more, if its a stand-alone, you’re sad it stood alone!

(For more rating information see here.)

Book Babble: Elle’s IMM March Edition!

In My Mailbox (IMM) is a weekly feature organised by The Story Siren. IMM is a post where you can show which books entered your house and it also gives you a chance to say thank you to the people that kindly sent them. To find out more about how you can join in click here.

Books mentioned in this post:
The Piper’s Son by Melina Marchetta | Goodreads
Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta | Goodreads
Illegal by Bettina Restrepo | Goodreads
Unlocked by Ryan G Van Cleave | Goodreads
So Shelley by Ty Roth | Goodreads
Looking for Alaska by John Green | Goodreads
An Abundance of Katherines by John Green | Goodreads
The Victorian House by Judith Flanders | Goodreads
Harmonic Feedback by Tara Kelly | Goodreads
Subway Girl by P J Converse | Goodreads
Tiger, Tiger: A Memoir by Margaux Fragoso | Goodreads
What Can’t Wait by Ashley Hope Pérez | Goodreads
Nevermore by Kelly Creagh | Goodreads
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins | Goodreads
Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins | Goodreads

The Great Big Sample Post: Part 1 ft. Kate

 

 

Over the last few weeks, while my school life was far too frantic to even look at my Kindle, I found solace in amassing samples. Non-fiction, YA, fantasy, sci-fi — you name it, I sent something in the genre to my Kindle in hopes of reading it later. As it turns out, “later” was a week of plowing through more than 40 samples, trying to decide what I did and did not want to read.

(I haven’t actually gotten through all of them, but non-fiction and books that are tangentially related to school can wait!)

For that reason, I present to you the five very best and five very worst samples I read, not necessarily listed in true order of preference. The top five is actually more a top 10 that changed every third time I looked at the list, but I think I’m solid now.

Maybe.

We’ll see.

Love It, Lick it, Buy it (Devour it, Never Let it Go):

 
 

 
 

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares

by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

I think, rather than try to explain why I loved this sample (and in fact told Elle to read it immediately), I’ll let Dash do the talking:

Wherever I went, I was on the wrong end of the stampede. I was not willing to grant ‘salvation’ through an ‘army.’ I would never care about the whiteness of Christmas. I was a Decemberist, a Bolshevik, a career criminal, a philatelist trapped by unknowable anguish–whatever everyone else was not, I was willing to be.

I’ve always felt that teenagers in fiction have a habit of not coming across as teenagers. Their cynicism (and joy!) comes across as muted and disingenuous, reminding you constantly that this is an adult trying to recreate their younger years. Both Dash and Lily, from the first page, feel real to me. Damaged and genuine, which is just how I like my characters. Plus, the book’s set in The Strand, that famous New York City bookstore, and features the characters writing back and forth to each other in a red moleskine. C’mon, bibliophiles. How could I resist?

 

 

Heist Society

by Ally Carter

Here comes the big confession: I can be an incredibly shallow reader. Sometimes, I just need pretty-funny-shiny to grab me and suck me in. Combine this with my lifelong love of heist movies, and I think Heist Society was meant for me. The setup is laugh-out-loud funny even if the premise is a bit out there (teenage con artists?) and every word just sung. From the fate of the Headmaster’s car to the introduction of Hale, I was sucked in. Even if it won’t ever be the most heart-wrenching, life-changing read, I’m a law student. I appreciate flirty, frivolous, and fun.

 

 

 

 

Bleeding Violet

by Dia Reeves

It takes a special author to write a character who grabs you from the first moment. It takes an especially special one to do the same with a deeply damaged character. Hanna, from the first page, is broken. It’s not even a spoiler to say that; from the first instant, something is wrong with Hanna. Full stop. But somehow, despite that — maybe because of that — you want deeply to care about her while she tries to make a home for herself with the mother she doesn’t know.

I set my bag on the floor and unpacked: seven purple dresses, purple underclothes, my purple purse, the big wooden swan Poppa had carved for me, and my cell phone. Since the room had no closet, I placed everything on the built-in shelves along the wall opposite the door, including my pills, which took up almost all the top shelf. I put the few toiletries I’d packed into the medicine cabinet. And that was it.

I was home.

There’s something beautiful in the choppy, disconnected way Hanna tells her story. In her imperfections. And that’s special.

 

The False Princess

by Eilis O’Neal

Imagine a Disney movie made into a book. Now imagine it with fewer talking animals and a girl whose life is about to be turned upside down, and you have The False Princess. High fantasy can feel like a trope parade down main street, but something about Princess Nalia and her trouble-making best friend Kiernan is addictive from the first. What starts as two teenagers trying to keep themselves amused by looking for an invisible door leads to Nalia discovering her entire life is a lie. One part prince-and-pauper, one part just solid fantasy, this book promises to wrap me up in its world and I’m desperately looking forward to it.

 

 

 

The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin

by Josh Berk

Long before I met Elle, a friend accused me of preferring male characters over females. I’m sure Elle would agree. When a man (or boy!) is written well, when I feel he’s real — I don’t think I could really ask for more than that. And Will Halpin, a deaf boy who’s embarking on his journey to mainstream school, is written perfectly.

Arterberry keeps turning around or covering his mouth with his flabby arm while writing on the board. Plus, although I realize that the American with Disabilities Act can’t force him to get rid of his bushy lip beast, a basic sense of fashion and/or hygiene should compel him to at least trim his ‘stache.

The class ends before I have any idea what era of history we were even talking about.

Will’s disability, too, is dealt with realistically and feels teenage (like stashing the hearing aids he promised to wear). You might as well just call the book This Will Make Kate Shell Out Her Cash, because really, that’s what it is.

 

Honorable mentions (the rest of the “Top 10″, really):

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A. S. King, Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott, Paper Towns by John Green, Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles and White Cat by Holly Black.

[Editor note: Elle would like to point out that 7 of these were recs by her and that she owns a pretty copy of White Cat, too. Neener.]

 

Burn it (and Then, Burn the Ashes):

 
 

 
 

Tutored

by Allison Whittenberg

I once read a book about a “fat” girl (bear with me) that promised to be an uplifting story but really focused on the horrors of being fat. This sample felt like that with poverty. Oh, the story is one of my favorites — bright girl from a good home, poor boy who struggles in school — but something about the tone of the book just made my skin crawl. Without going so far as to say poor people are icky, it felt that way and I couldn’t detach myself from that connection. There’s no sympathy for Hakiam, the “downtrodden” boy of the story, even from the prose itself, and that’s a problem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elegance of the Hedgehog

by Murial Barbery

Elle informed me this was a translation from the original French after I read and loathed the sample, which explained a lot. Namely, why this book is so unreadably verbose. Every paragraph beats you over the head with ten-dollar words, which would be great if the story was about winning a Scrabble tournament but not so much when it’s about — uhm. Well. I’m not even sure what it’s talking about, half the time.

I then obligingly flaunt these pauper’s victuals–now much improved by the noteworthy fact that they do not smell–because I am a pauper in a house full of rich people and this display nourishes both the consensual cliche and my cat Leo, who has become rather large by virtue of these meals that should have been mine, and who stuffs himself liberally and noisily with macaroni and butter, and pork from the delicatessen, while I am free–without any olfactory disturbances or anyone suspecting a thing–to indulge my own culinary proclivity.

Worse, both the fifty-four-year-old concierge and the twelve-year-old who lives in the building sound exactly alike, florid language and too-long rambling about everything. I honestly couldn’t figure out that it’d moved from one character to another until the girl said she was twelve. I’d say this is either the world’s worst translation, or someone liked thesaurus.com a bit too much when writing.

 

The Adoration of Jenna Fox

by Mary Pearson

Elle told me this sounded like a me-book, and maybe it would be were it not so incredibly choppy. Reading the sample — which attempts to set up how Jenna lost her memory and remembers nothing of her life — is like trying to understand a television show by flipping the TV off every few minutes. The narrative is choppy and jumps around too unevenly for me to really engage. Really, that’s the issue: it’s not poorly written (though sometimes, the sentences are so short and jerky, I think Hemingway is probably rolling over in his grave) as much as it is distracting. Instead of being intriguing, the tiny-boat-in-a-storm feeling made me give up on the sample halfway through. I think I might’ve enjoyed it otherwise.

 

 

 

Willow

by Julia Hoban

If you’ve watched my Book Babble, you’ve heard this rant, but if not, it goes something like this: the introduction of plot shouldn’t feel like being beaten to death with a baseball bat. From the first page — literally, the very first page, this isn’t exaggeration (for once) — Willow is so obsessed with cutting and scratches and pain that the book might as well have a giant THIS IS ABOUT CUTTING! sign. Maybe with fireworks, just in case you missed it.

But Willow’s eyes are riveted by something else: an angry red welt, about three inches long, that runs from the girl’s elbow to her wrist. If Willow squints hard enough, she can just about make out a few flecks of dried blood.

How did she get it? She doesn’t look the type.

Maybe she has a cat. A whole bunch of kittens.

Yeah, that’s it. Playing with her kitty. That’s probably how it happened.

Willow slumps down in her seat.

(And in case that’s not enough blunt force trauma, she’s crouching in the school bathroom and cutting herself by the end of the first chapter.)

I’m not against books about timely topics, and definitely not about getting the issue of cutting out there, but this feels more like an 80s after-school-special than a book. Shallow and painful for it.

 

The Maze Runner

by James Dashner

I should love this book. A bit dystopian, a bit Lord of the Flies, about boys being taken to a strange place and forced to survive by cultivating land and raising animals. But in trying to make the reader feel what Thomas feels, waking up in the elevator that delivers him to his new life, the book ends up leaving the reader in the total dark. There’s no frame of reference or context for anything that’s going on, and the book isn’t written tightly enough for the reader to feel Thomas’s situation. It ends of reading like poorly-written YA fiction, all bombastic confusion and no real meat. I couldn’t even get through the sample, so what does that say for the whole book?

 

 

 

So what about you? Do you download the Kindle sample or does it feel like cheating like the gals from The Book Memoirs? Do you hoarde them? And what’s on your radar?