Looking for Alaska by John Green
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I don't care.

That's really the only thing I could think about this book, specifically anything involving Alaska.

I like John Green. I admire him and his brother immensely, I've followed the vlog, and I've wanted to read a John Green book for a long time. I could never bring myself to do it, however, because John Green has an infuriating habit of writing YA. I enjoy YA books, and I am still in the YA category (if on the latter end of it,) but I can't shake the very wrong stereotype that most YA books are simplistic and trite. Some aren't.

This one is.

I found the characters shallow, the story nonexistant, and the emotions hollow. I didn't feel for the characters, but rather what the characters reminded me of in real life. These are not the same things. I cried at the end of The Book Thief because the characters had become real to me, their life and love and happiness and suffering was all there to share and I took them into my heart. These characters stood in hollow representation of real-life emotions and experiences, and offered an overall disappointing reading experience.

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Anne Rice and Alaska

Current Book: Looking for Alaska by John Green
Progress: Pg. 20

As I find myself in the midst of three very large books (Anna Karenina, Kushiel's Dart, A Moment in the Sun) I decided to give myself a break from the sheer volume of those three tomes and relax with a couple smaller books.

My first choice was Anne Rice's novel Interview with the Vampire. My first experience with anything Anne Rice was the movie version of Queen of the Damned. For a few years that was sufficient, and I only very recently watched the film Interview with the Vampire starring the always entertaining Tom Cruise (who had to stand on boxes and phonebooks in several scenes just to come eye-to-eye with his costars. I like to think this included the very young Kirsten Dunst as well.)

My biggest complaint is how incessantly whiny every single character is. The main character is insufferable, and most of the time I find myself wanting to knock their heads together. This isnt' a feeling I had when watching the movies, and I believe that is because they had to cut so much out of the movies to make it to-length that it got rid of a lot of the unnessecary and grating ANGST. If there is one word that can summarize all of Anne Rice's novels, it is ANGST (at least it's not sparkly angst.)

In a strange turn of events, I found myself needing a book to read to get away from the book I was reading to get away from my other books, so in a fit of book-ception I finally bought John Green's Looking for Alaska.

John Green is a man I have admired for a long time. I've kept up with Vlogbrothers for almost as long as it's been running on Youtube, and I have wanted to read his books for a long time, but every time I see one or read the synopsis it reminds me that he writes YA. I enjoy YA books, and I am still in the YA category (if on the latter end of it,) but I can't shake the very wrong stereotype that most YA books are simplistic and trite. Along a similar vein, I have a hard time shaking off the guilt of biting into a still-breathing author when there are so many public domain texts that are begging to be read.

Both of these are exceedingly silly reasons not to read a book.

I really want to like this book. I really, really want to like this book. Unfortunately, I think that's clouding my judgement a little bit. I've been trying to convince myself to read this book like it was written by someone completely unknown to me. "John Green didn't write this," I'll say, "Not THAT John Green, a different John Green, one that lives in rural Canada and ownes fifteen billygoats wrote this..."

Billygoat John Green created a Mary-Sue love interest for his protagonist.
Billygoat John Green created the nerd's dream "dangerous girl"
Billygoat John Green wrote the most annoying female character I've ever read.
Billygoat John Green titled this book after a female love intrest so obnoxious I want to rip her eyes out and wrap them around her electic-blue painted toenails.

Oh, Looking for Alaska, please get better. Please, please get better.

A Moment in the Sun

Current Book: A Moment in the Sun by John Sayles
Progress: Pg. 22


I have begun a new venture.

That's how it always feels when you begin a new book, especially when you know absolutely nothing about the book you are reading. Allow me to explain.


Myself and a good friend typically find ourselves wandering the isles of our local Evil Corporate Controlled Bookstore (hereafter known as ECCB) on at least a weekly basis, devoid of anything interesting to do or that can be agreed upon. On these visits, as we wandered up and down the shelves, sipping at our Evil Corporate Controlled Coffee-Based Beverages, we've come across two books that never fail to catch our eyes. The first is Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, a tome notable for its sheer girth and heft. It's practically a brick.

The second that caught our attention, many months later, was John Sayle's A Moment in the Sun. Each time we passed it we would pick up the book, weigh it in our hands, and marvel at its size, then replace it. However, today was different. Today, after work was out and we were driving around aimlessly, my car took us to our local ECCB where we found ourselves bearing down upon the only two copies of the book in stock (as that's all that would fit on the shelves). Like people possessed, we bee-lined for the checkout before either of our senses could order us to put the books down, and we were out of there, tomes in hand, in less than ten minutes.

We sat in a slightly shocked silence for a bit, pondering the precise weight and consequences of what we had just done, when my friend turned to me and said, "We're going to need some notebooks."

And that's why I am now reading A Moment in the Sun.