Looking for Alaska

First Friend. First Girl. Last words.

John Green is the King. Once, when I was working, I overheard a disgruntled parent whine that “the reason boys don’t like to read is, because there’s nothing out there for them to read”. She got that impression because SHE was looking for a book, instead of having her son do it. John Green could get anyone, even pubescent boys, to read. An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska are captivating. Green’s writing is smart, funny and well-researched. His protagonists are male (historically) but that basing a “good book” on the protagonist’s gender is no way at all to judge a book. For my under-read sister, it’s a contemporary-set Virgin Suicides (Jeffery Eugenides). By the end of my recent reading, I was compelled more by it than the first time I read it. There’s something to poetic and striking about it.

Looking For Alaska is, fortunately and unfortunately, being made into a movie. The unfortunate part is that, the title will be Famous Last Words instead. Meh. I find that cinematically-cliche for a book of this magnitude.

Thumbs: 2 out of 2