Our Reality Is Purely Coincidental…

Book Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Published: 2008
Pages: 305
Category: fiction: young adult

Paper Towns was released in October 2008. I devoured it. And a few days later we got in my car once again and drove to the Seattle Public Library (an extremely beautiful building) for the Paper Towns Book Tour. John Green read from his new book, Hank Green sang some of his songs, and there were more performances than I can remember.

We wore nerd shirts, we bought and industrial package of those fill-in-the-blank nametags and filled them out, and handed them out to people. We were the nametag girls. We also had the opportunity to talk to John and Hank. We also got to do something a bit different than a usual book signing. We got to sign a copy of Paper Towns for the author – John Green. Anywhere we wanted to.

I chose to underline a paragraph from partway through the novel;

“I couldn’t help but think about school and everything else ending…it was a kind of sad I didn’t mind, and so I just listened, letting all the happiness and the sadness of this ending swirl around in me, each sharpening the other. For the Longest time, it felt kind of like my chest was cracking open, but not precisely in an unpleasant way.” (215)

And I thanked him for these words. These words that put a description to the feelings I was having at that moment in time. Those words that he was able to write directly to me, despite never having met me before. Good fiction, rather great fiction does this. Helps you to recognize something inside yourself that you were unable to put words to.

While Looking for Alaska continues to be my favourite John Green Novel, Paper Towns is my second favourite. What isn’t to love? There’s a breakneck paced road trip, a mystery, a puzzle of maps and poems and pranks. A manic pixie dream girl who turns out to be what we all least expected – including the protagonist- a real character, with flaws and faults and depth. It was terrifying in places, and made me cry in others. It made me laugh as well.

And when I was reading it again this time, in late December, it made me think about what it means to leave a place – as I was packing to move myself as I was reading it. Packing to leave the only place I’ve ever really called home, and incessantly worrying about what that meant to me. Margo Roth Speigelman taught me about reading. While Q reminded me about the important things we leave behind.

“And as paralyzing and upsetting as all the never agains were, the final leaving felt perfect. Pure. the most distilled possible form of liberation…It is so hard to leave – until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.” (228-229)

If you haven’t yet picked up a novel by John Green, please do so. He is truly one of my favourite authors, and you are missing out if you’ve never read one of his stories.

Book Title: Looking For Alaska
Author: John Green
Published: 2005
Pages: 221
Category: fiction: young adult

The day I finished Looking for Alaska for the first time, was also the day I started it for the first time.

This book so captured me, held me to the page, that I finished reading it in the early hours of the morning. And then immediately got out of bed, went to my desk, and began writing. I wrote for over an hour. Putting my feelings, my thoughts, my questions, onto the page in front of me.

Writing about Looking for Alaska was the first time I ever thought seriously about writing about books.
But the story of how I came to read this book is a complex one. In the fall of 2007, I got into my car with two friends and drove for 5 or 6 hours to go to Everett, Washington, to attend a concert at the Everett Public Library. The concert was a Wizard Rock concert, and the friends we met there were nerds. Like the 3 of us who had driven down in my car.  These new friends told me to go watch a video on Youtube.

The video was a song about Harry Potter, written by half of a two-brother video blogging project. The other brother, the one who had not written the song, was John Green. He turned out to be an author. And the rest, as they say, is history.

A great deal of what made me want to write about this book so much is to do with the plot, and the journey that these characters undertake. I won’t go into details, because if you haven’t read it, you need to. And you need to read it the way I first did – with no idea what was going to happen within those 221 pages, and to discover those days with those characters, alongside them.

 
Looking for Alaska contains many of the reason why I enjoy Young Adult Fiction. It is powerful without pressing a message down your throat. It is poignant without being sappy, and it is provocative without being needlessly shocking.

It’s the reason I think of the Great Perhaps as a destination, the reason I ponder the labyrinth, and it’s also the reason I tried Strawberry Hill.