Author: John Green
Year Published: 2005
Genre: YA Fiction
Pages: 221
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location (my 2013 Google Reading map): USA (Alabama)
FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from my school library
FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from my school library
Summary (from the inside flap of the book): Frist drink. First prank. First friend. First girl. Last words.
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.
Review: I think I started this book about a year ago and never got past the first page. Then I somehow got into my head that I didn't like it. After reading John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, I remember thinking, why didn't I like Looking for Alaska? But you know how you get an idea in your head and stick with it? So what got me to read it now? April 23 of this year is World Book Night and I am a book giver again (I did it last year, too). Anyway, the book I was assigned to give out this year is John Green's Looking for Alaska so I HAD to read it.
How does John Green do it? His books are so good! I think the Colonel, Miles ("Pudge"), and Alaska are characters that will stay with me for a while. On their own they aren't any more interesting than characters that I've "met" in other books, but together they are so very good and interesting. What they bring out in each other, their relationships, their secrets, their brazen honesty, is so very good.
And the story. It is set in a boarding school, but really could be anywhere that high school students come together, learn from one another, and learn about one another and themselves. I am not sure how to describe the story without giving away the things that a reader should discover. There is drinking, smoking, making out, but there is so much more. There is literature, math, religion, thoughtfulness, friendship, and... life.
I am a John Green fan.
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.
How does John Green do it? His books are so good! I think the Colonel, Miles ("Pudge"), and Alaska are characters that will stay with me for a while. On their own they aren't any more interesting than characters that I've "met" in other books, but together they are so very good and interesting. What they bring out in each other, their relationships, their secrets, their brazen honesty, is so very good.
And the story. It is set in a boarding school, but really could be anywhere that high school students come together, learn from one another, and learn about one another and themselves. I am not sure how to describe the story without giving away the things that a reader should discover. There is drinking, smoking, making out, but there is so much more. There is literature, math, religion, thoughtfulness, friendship, and... life.
I am a John Green fan.
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