A Book A Week

This wasn’t planned. I was at the library and I had this indescribable need to get my hands on as many John Green books as possible. And technically I only got a hold of one, by means of the request option. That book is Paper Towns which is sitting on my desk patiently waiting for me to open it.

I found Looking For Alaska on what is apparently called a “playaway”—like an audio book but in mp3 form. Frankly I’m not really a fan of audio books. I enjoy having the book in my hands and interacting with the text. But I was desperate to read this book. I felt an urgency, so I couldn’t wait for the physical copy.

And it was, by my standards, completely worth my impatience.

Certainly not what I expected. I’ve heard so much about John Green and all that he’s done in his career thanks in most part to tumblr, but I’d never picked up one of his books. People would post quotes from novels and I would admire them at a distance, exclaiming how beautiful that one snippet was, wondering briefly who this John Green guy really was.

And now?

I’m enraptured. Just add him to the list of authors I aspire to be like. Because he has done something to my heart. He’s taken it, wrapped it up carefully, stolen away with it, and then written it back to me in the form of this book. And it’s beautiful. Absolutely breathtaking.

I am not an Alaska, as much as I would like to be in some ways anyway. I am like Miles—searching for the great perhaps, and a few times in my life, I’ve met someone like Alaska, who for however long a time teaches me something about life that I will never forget.

It’s the kind of feeling that I’ve felt so many times but can never explain in words.

I think, as Green portrays in the format of the novel, that everything is about The Before and The After.

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I’ve gone slightly off track of the list. I have a pile of books to get through, but I must finish Wildwood. That is my goal for myself. So hopefully that will be done next (unless I get distracted by other lovely storylines). Coming soon: Paper Towns, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and other titles that I cannot recall at this moment.