Book Review: Looking for Alaska by John Green

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Paperback, 221 pages

Published March 3rd 2005 by Puffin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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.

My Thoughts:

I now understand why this book won the Michael Printz award for excellence in young adult genre. Not only is it funny, cunning and witty, but it's relatable, and most of all, something we can learn a lot of literature and a lot of other facts too- not in a boring manner, but interestingly. It's now almost 1 am but I fervently and honestly want to discuss this book...so bad! (thus, i find myself writing a review so early in the mornin- on my ipad,so hard to type.) Anyway.

I need not say this but I'll say it again. John Green is a genius of an author. I really hope I'll meet him someday. Looking for Alaska was not what I expected it to be, and not in a bad way. I thought it was about someone looking for Alaska, literally. Like some kind of people-hunting. It was in a way "person-hunting", just in a different concept. Miles's narration was funny and insightful and Honest. It made all the difference to the story. The before and after division of the novel was a smart move. The characters were so alive and vibrant that I have thought they might be real people. Each of them had their distinctive character, and through Miles's thoughts, we can deduce what kind of people they are, even without leaning towards Pudge's opinions. The conversations between characters hold on so much meaning and some leftme wondering what they really meant. Alaska's character was not someone I'll befriends with, but I'll say this- she's one heck of a woman with lots of raging hormones inside her. Vermoody in a different way. You don't get her, nobody does, and I think she wants it to stay that way, to be mysterious, and she does that on purpose-- again, not someone i'll get close too.

This book is utterly compelling and just deeply full of meaning. The pranks were...well, what pranks are, and I have to admit the pranks they did was ingenius. I feel so energetic after reading it. Love it!

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