Book Blog: Paper Towns

Honestly? This was my least favorite John Green book so far. But it's probably my own fault. I didn't do my research and realize that one of the genres was mystery.

See, the cover looked so innocent! There was a nice little map with a big ol' push pin! And the title, Paper Towns, sounded so cute! Note that I didn't know what a paper town was at the time.

SPOILERS BEGIN

The only time I had to read this week was at night. I thought it was going to be a pleasant nighttime read, so you can imagine my horror when Margo and Q found that dead guy. And when Margo told Q to close the window and Q said that it was as if Margo saw a ghost, I flipped out. So I thought it'd be a good idea to read the back cover which said a bunch of stuff about discovering the real Margo. This added to my panic because I thought FOR SURE that Margo was going to be some ghost seer or something. And I hate ghosts!

By now, you can tell that I probably the biggest wimp ever.

Luckily (or unluckily for me. To save myself from further terror, I refused to read this book only during the day when, incidentally, I didn't have very much time to read, thus the five days it took me to finish a three-hundred page book) that wasn't what the book was about at all, but it didn't help that Q kept suggesting that Margo killed herself! This probably wasn't a good book for me.

Is it just me or did Margo seem a lot like Alaska (from Looking for Alaska) and Q seem like Miles (also from LfA)? Margo and Alaska seemed daring while the dudes were both wimpy, "perfect", and sheltered.

What I DID like was the familiarity of Green's writing style. He never fails to makeme laugh   SOMEWHERE in his book   My favorite part was when the people on the rode trip realized that Radar had to wear a Confederate shirt!

All that aside, this wasn't his finest work. But in his defense, Green wrote this in 2009. He improved a lot since then.

3 stars

Book Blog: Looking for Alaska by John Green

It's weird; the book is similar to TFIOSm yet it is nothing like it. I mean, not to sound vague on purpose or anything. It seemed like a nice way to start off a review at the time, but no it just sounds confusing. Forget it.

I remember when I found this book at the bookstore. I looked at the cover and thought, "What the heck is THAT?!" It seemed like steam or something completely unrelated to looking for something (I didn't read the back cover). But I get it now. It's smoke! ...right? Smoke from a cigarette.

I had very, very high expectations for this book. I mean, it's JOHN GREEN, the author of TFIOS! Bt I guess I should have lowered my expectations since this book was written BEFORE his master piece.

I'll start with the bad stuff. The role-modeling factor was bad. There's smoking, drinking, bad language, reckless driving, etc. I personally did not like the fact that Green made it seem that all teenagers did this stuff (see list in pervious sentence). I wish he tossed in more rule FOLLOWERS instead of rule BREAKERS. Just for variety.

Another thing I didn't like was the plot line. It seemed to be all over the place. Half of the time, I couldn't even figure out the point of it all. I suppose it's about Pudge finding the Great Perhaps, but I don't know. Before seemed to be a lot of development and nonsense fluffy while After was the actually meat of the story. And yet the After was smaller than the Before. Weird.

Now to the positive stuff. The constant countingdown of days because it left the reader wondering what was going to happen. And I really like how the readers can relate with the characters. Sometimes. Like the quote below:

"I hated discussion classes. I hated talking,  and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn't sound dumb, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it. I'm the teacher, so teach me." -Page 32-33

Besides the obvious fact that Pudge is complaining (which I think annoys everyone because no one wants to hear someone complain all the time), I totally get that. I also wish that all classes would be lecture classes. And that's why I love Green so much.

But, despite all that, I have to knock off a star. It just wasn't amazing like TFIOS.

Rating: 4 stars

Booked Days: St. Patrick's Day

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

In honor of this highly respected and well-known holiday, I will write in this blog in green instead of black. 

Just kidding. I mean, not about the green font part. I'm still going to type the whole thing in green which I find REALLY annoying. I hate reading stuff in different colored fonts, but I don't want any of you guys pinching my blog. If that's possible.

The real reason why I'm writing a blog post about this particular day is because I felt like I cheated you readers (anyone out there?) with my short book blog about Fire by Kristin Cashore. But I was going nuts and that's how it came out. Plus, today is a "holiday". Has anyone out there ever wondered why St. Patrick's Day is celebrated? It's been an annual tradition my whole life, and I just went along with it, never questioning the reason why I had to wear a color that I looked absolutely HORRIBLE in just to stop people from grabbing at me with their fingers. When I actually sat down to think about it (well, alright. I didn't sit down to think about it. I was standing at the time), here's what I came up with.

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There's this guy called Saint Patrick. He's from Ireland. And he lived on a clover patch. Everyday, since Patrick didn't have any friends, he sat in the clover patch counting how many leaves the clovers had. He sat in that clover patch for such a long time that his skin and clothes turned permanently green. But Patrick was okay with that because then no one would bother him in his clover patch. 

Now, of course Patrick had a family. His dad happened to be some rich guy in Ireland and, seeing that his son was green, pulled some strings and proclaimed that Patrick's birthday (March 17) would be St. Patrick's Day. On this day, everyone had to wear something green, like his son, so that Patrick wouldn't feel so lonely being green. But people didn't care about this new holiday and refused to wear green. Patrick's father became angry and began thinking of a way to punish them. He wasn't a very strong man and didn't want to confront a man (or woman) in a fist fight. Which is why he decided to pinch people. Thus the holiday.

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Or so I thought! St. Patrick's Day is actually a religious holiday. Patrick was born in Roman Britain, not even Ireland! But he was kidnapped by the Irish and made into a slave. He eventually escaped captivity, but went back to Ireland as a bishop. The shamrock was used Christian doctrine of the Trinity to the Irish people. And I was wrong about his father being some wealthy Irish man; his father was a deacon.

But get this; the original color associated with Saint Patrick was blue. BLUE! I look perfectly good in blue. But for some reason or another, they decided to change it to green, probably because of the shamrock. Oh well.

Here's something that I found really interesting when I was researching the real history of St. Patrick's Day.

This is a picture of the Chicago River dyed green. I found this absolutely hilarious! A whole river dyed green....wow. I wonder if they still do that. You'd think that it would cause some kind of problem, like it would pollute the water or dye the sides of the river green.