Book the Fourth: Looking for Alaska
Title: Looking for Alaska
Author: John Green
Page Count: 225
Status: Reread
Synopsis: Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words -- and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.
ATTENTION PLEASE!! Please please please, do not read any more of this post if you haven't read the novel because I really don't want to spoil this wonderful, wonderful book for you. I want you to read it, and I want you to experience it the way you have to on the first read without knowing what happens, but there's no way to escape the end of the book in talking about it here. So I'm begging you. If you haven't read this book, stop reading this post RIGHT NOW, turn off your computer, and head to the nearest library. I am not kidding. You will really regret it if you let yourself be spoiled and then decide to read the novel. You will be robbed of so much, and I don't want that on my conscience.
So, in short, yes, I recommend it. I absolutely do. Go read it now. And then come back and read the rest of this. :)
My Thoughts: Oh, Lord, where to start? I first read this book a year and a half ago, and I am not in any way exaggerating when I say that this book changed, if not my life, then certainly at the very least the way I look at young adult literature. I reread it because I'm leading a book discussion at the end of the month, and it touched me just as much, if not moreso, the second time through. It also made me cry. Again. Jerk (That was directed at John Green).
Before I read this book, I read primarily fantasy novels or young adult fantasy novels. In other words, I read books where the only characters who died were those who deserved to die (ie, the evil guys) or characters it was clear were destined for death due to tradition (this would be the elderly mentor of the hero who must disappear somehow for the hero to complete his journey). The main characters in my books didn't die.
Enter Alaska Young. Alaska died. She was troubled and bright and full of life and an amazing character and the love interest of the narrator, and she died. The first time I read this book, that took me completely and utterly by surprise because, discounting Harry Potter (an epic legend of a magical war; aka, casualties inevitable), characters in my books didn't die. It was all supposed to work out all right in the end. THE Event was supposed to be the kiss, supposed to be Miles and Alaska getting together and being adorable.
Except that this was realistic fiction. This book was about real life, not fantasy, and Alaska died and Miles had to deal with it.
This book is about the troubled core that's inside all of us and that ever-present question that applies to each and every one of us as much as to all of John's characters. How do we get out of the labyrinth? Is straight and fast the only way? Or do we just stumble around and hope we find our way some day?
For a book that is so full of what is crass and crude, a book that focuses in almost embarrassing detail on sex and horny teenagers and underage drinking and illegal smoking, for a book that, as John said, "features a lot of jokes about peeing," this book also contains some of the most amazing life lessons. It also has some of the most mature symbolism I've ever encountered in a book, and some of the greatest quotes of all time.
"That's the mystery, isn't it? Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape -- the world or the end of it?"
"I'm not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they're going to do. I'm just going to do it. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia."
"You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."
"People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to."
"'We're all going,' McKinley said to his wife, and we sure are. There's your labyrinth of suffering. We are all going. Find your way out of that maze."
"After all this time, it still seems to me like straight and fast is the only way out -- but I choose the labyrinth. The labyrinth blows, but I choose it."
This book . . . It is amazing. I can't wait to lead this discussion. I have so much more to say. Everyone should read this book. It's not only an incredibly realistic portrayal of a group of adolescents who think they're just trying to figure out how to get through school and typical high school angst when they're really trying to figure out who they are and what they're doing and how they're supposed to survive, it's also a message for all the rest of us.
There is so much for us to get out of life. There are so many questions for us to answer. And it may suck sometimes, being stuck in this labyrinth, but the truth is that answering those questions is often the only thing that makes life worthwhile at all.
I choose the labyrinth, too.
Tally: 4
Books Read: 3
Books Reread: 1
1.* The Calder Game by Blue Balliett
2.* Alphabet of Dreams by Susan Fletcher
3.* The Wizard's Map by Jane Yolen
4. Looking for Alaska by John Green
Author: John Green
Page Count: 225
Status: Reread
Synopsis: Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words -- and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.
ATTENTION PLEASE!! Please please please, do not read any more of this post if you haven't read the novel because I really don't want to spoil this wonderful, wonderful book for you. I want you to read it, and I want you to experience it the way you have to on the first read without knowing what happens, but there's no way to escape the end of the book in talking about it here. So I'm begging you. If you haven't read this book, stop reading this post RIGHT NOW, turn off your computer, and head to the nearest library. I am not kidding. You will really regret it if you let yourself be spoiled and then decide to read the novel. You will be robbed of so much, and I don't want that on my conscience.
So, in short, yes, I recommend it. I absolutely do. Go read it now. And then come back and read the rest of this. :)
My Thoughts: Oh, Lord, where to start? I first read this book a year and a half ago, and I am not in any way exaggerating when I say that this book changed, if not my life, then certainly at the very least the way I look at young adult literature. I reread it because I'm leading a book discussion at the end of the month, and it touched me just as much, if not moreso, the second time through. It also made me cry. Again. Jerk (That was directed at John Green).
Before I read this book, I read primarily fantasy novels or young adult fantasy novels. In other words, I read books where the only characters who died were those who deserved to die (ie, the evil guys) or characters it was clear were destined for death due to tradition (this would be the elderly mentor of the hero who must disappear somehow for the hero to complete his journey). The main characters in my books didn't die.
Enter Alaska Young. Alaska died. She was troubled and bright and full of life and an amazing character and the love interest of the narrator, and she died. The first time I read this book, that took me completely and utterly by surprise because, discounting Harry Potter (an epic legend of a magical war; aka, casualties inevitable), characters in my books didn't die. It was all supposed to work out all right in the end. THE Event was supposed to be the kiss, supposed to be Miles and Alaska getting together and being adorable.
Except that this was realistic fiction. This book was about real life, not fantasy, and Alaska died and Miles had to deal with it.
This book is about the troubled core that's inside all of us and that ever-present question that applies to each and every one of us as much as to all of John's characters. How do we get out of the labyrinth? Is straight and fast the only way? Or do we just stumble around and hope we find our way some day?
For a book that is so full of what is crass and crude, a book that focuses in almost embarrassing detail on sex and horny teenagers and underage drinking and illegal smoking, for a book that, as John said, "features a lot of jokes about peeing," this book also contains some of the most amazing life lessons. It also has some of the most mature symbolism I've ever encountered in a book, and some of the greatest quotes of all time.
"That's the mystery, isn't it? Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape -- the world or the end of it?"
"I'm not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they're going to do. I'm just going to do it. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia."
"You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."
"People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to."
"'We're all going,' McKinley said to his wife, and we sure are. There's your labyrinth of suffering. We are all going. Find your way out of that maze."
"After all this time, it still seems to me like straight and fast is the only way out -- but I choose the labyrinth. The labyrinth blows, but I choose it."
This book . . . It is amazing. I can't wait to lead this discussion. I have so much more to say. Everyone should read this book. It's not only an incredibly realistic portrayal of a group of adolescents who think they're just trying to figure out how to get through school and typical high school angst when they're really trying to figure out who they are and what they're doing and how they're supposed to survive, it's also a message for all the rest of us.
There is so much for us to get out of life. There are so many questions for us to answer. And it may suck sometimes, being stuck in this labyrinth, but the truth is that answering those questions is often the only thing that makes life worthwhile at all.
I choose the labyrinth, too.
Tally: 4
Books Read: 3
Books Reread: 1
1.* The Calder Game by Blue Balliett
2.* Alphabet of Dreams by Susan Fletcher
3.* The Wizard's Map by Jane Yolen
4. Looking for Alaska by John Green
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