TheBooky

Looking for Alaska by John Green.

Summary first, review second.

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.

Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another. A stunning debut, it marks John Green’s arrival as an important new voice in contemporary fiction.

Summary from Goodreads

My thoughts on this book but in no particular order.

• I hated Alaska. I don’t care what anyone says, I just didn’t like her. So I didn’t care about what happened to her, or what her deal was. However, I liked how she affected the characters around her and that she had an interesting back-story.
• Miles, oh Miles. Boys are just so clueless, aren’t they? I liked Miles the best out of the list of characters, followed by Lara and Takumi and then the colonel.
  
• Also, the characters (at least Mile-Pudge) realize things about themselves that I’m not sure regular teenagers would. However, I really liked this. They admitted their flaws and tried to deal with them, which was really cool to read about.
  
• The first prank was better than the second, simply because you, as the reader, didn’t know what was going to happen. The second prank was all laid out and stuff, so I didn’t enjoy that one as much.
• I don’t care if this book’s been contested, or whatever. It’s good. The fact that the characters use alcohol and crap, and talk about sex (actually, the blowjob bit was hilarious…but also one of those things that you wouldn’t want someone to read over your shoulder) shouldn’t keep you from reading the book.
  
• Because Pugde (Miles) is pretty awesome and this book is full of many great things. AND it’s very quotable, which I likey. Likey a lot.
  

“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.”

I believe Alaska says this to Pudge.

booksandtea:

untitled by Carina Santos. on Flickr.

(via booklit-deactivated20120305)

John Green (via thisisnthighschool)