I read John Green’s book Looking for Alaska which was published in 2005. It is Green’s first young adults novel. John Green has also written The fault in our stars (2012) which was made into a movie that released in 2014 and became widly popular. John Green also has few other books like the Abudance of Katherine.
This book is a story about love in all it’s forms. It a story about love between a boy and a girl, between friends and person’s love towards life. It’s a young adults novel and in it’s own way it breaks the form that we’ve been used to in these kinds of novel. On the other hand it fit’s the form really well. It takes up the questions that many young adult thinks, such as does that other person like me or what is the purpose of living here on earth. It’s also good story about friendship and loyalty and helping one in need. I’ve read Green’s other novel The fault in our starts and this novel has some similarities with it. One of those similarities is that someone dies in the book and someone is desperately in love with that person.
One of the main character in this book are Miles Halter who changes school from Florida to Culver Greek in Alabama. There he meets his roommate whose nickname is Chip and everyone calls him that. He loves to prank everyone and has a little rough background considering her mom living in a trailer and trying to pay his school bills. In Culver Greek there is this beautiful girl called Alaska and she is Chip’s friend and after a while Miles’ friend too. One of the last main characters is Takumi who is this Asian kid with crazy skills with hiphop and rhyming. Miles fells in love with Alaska even when she has a boyfriend out of town and he has a girlfriend at campus. Even with all that drama all of them are good friends with each other and they always have something going on. Everyone of them represent some kind of stereotype of young adult. So I think that everyone finds something to identify oneself with.
The book’s languange was really easy to read and i didn’t have any trouble at all with it. One interesting fact was that there was a count down before the big breaking point of the book. It was plased in the beginning of every chapter so every chapter was named either days before or days after, like exemple: Eighty-nine Days Before or Seven Days After. In this book there is a lot of people’s last words because Miles hobby was to learn them. There is also some fragments from some books and poems. There isn’t that much of sayings or anything like that.
For me the reading experience was over all good even though there were some things that really annoyed me. Miles had this attitude that no one else can love nor miss Alaska execpt for him even though everyone else of her friends had same rights as him. Also there was something about Alaska that I really didn’t like, like exemple she was kinda leading Miles on thinking that she had feelings to him eventhough she said she loved her boyfriend more than anything else in this world. The story it self was good but it was a little bit predictable. For me reading an English novel was no new experience so in that way there were no new feelings involved.