Looking for Alaska

“con todo mi retorcido corazón.”

This book is good, but the TV show is better and I'm gonna spend my entire life convincing everyone I meet to watch the TV show

Pretty standard coming-of-age stuff here, a quick and mostly enjoyable read. Deeper than your typical teen lit, getting into real questions of suffering and struggling to find your life's purpose.

Pros:
pretty funny
engages with religion thoughtfully in unexpected ways
the characters all feel like real people with their own quirks and issues
having grown up on a boarding school campus myself, the “campus vibe” felt really spot-on

Cons:
has the “let's include drugs/sex to feel edgy” vibe common in teen lit
She kind of falls into the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope

One of the better John Green books I have read. Whereas many of his other books feature larger-than-life characters, Miles Halter feels relatable, and is generally an all-around decent, likeable, teen. This, coupled with a plausible storyline made the book resonate.

I've been intending to read this book for many, many years, and now, thanks to The Great American Read, I have.

It's the story of a boy, “Pudge,” who goes off to boarding school and develops, for the first time, friendships. Two of his favorite friends are scholarship students Alaska and “The Colonel,” and this book is not only the story of Pudge but also the story of the difficult lives of Alaska and the Colonel.

It's a story of love and loss and learning about oneself and one's place in the world. It's an excellent book.

Very emotional. The ending did not conclude much, which makes sense given the situation, but still left me wanting something tied up.

You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it.

I just love this John Green book the most. I love the quotes and the meaning behind it.

This was the first book that I have ever read as a teenager and I will never forget the impact it had on my life. This novel will forever have a special place in my heart.

Buku ini menceritakan ttg kehidupan remaja di sekolah berasrama khas amrik, melibatkan kejailan, minuman keras, rokok, hook ups. Namun pd akhirnya pesan buku ini bagaimana remaja2 ini mengatasi kehilangan tragis salah seorang teman dekat mereka. Teman dekat yg impulsif namun menceriakan suasana, mengajari mereka pelajaran kalkulus sehingga mampu lulus. Betapa berbedanya keadaan setelah teman mereka itu pergi & bagaimana yg ditinggalkan mengatasi rasa sedih & kehilangan mereka, memaafkan diri sdr krn perasaan bersalah yg mereka bawa krn “bagaimana jika”.

I don't know what to say. I both love and hate this book. The funny thing is that I hate this book for the same reason I love it.
It reminded me a lot of my friendship with one of my best friends.
I thought the aftermath of Alaska's death was pretty realistic. This book was beautiful, raw, and real.

I am having a hard time putting into words how I feel about this book but I am going to try anyways. I had a little bit of a hard time getting into this book when I first started it because it was really boring to me. It was just a story about kids being kids and all the dumb stuff that they do. Even with it being boring though it held my interest enough for me to be able to finish it and I am so glad I did. I laughed out loud and I got a little teary eyed at moments. When I first started this book I wasn't expecting what happened but at the same time after getting further into the story and getting to know the characters I had an idea that something like that would happen. I have to say even with the slow start for me I still really enjoyed the book.

As the second John Green book under my belt, I bounced between charmed and incredulous as the story progressed. On the one hand, the character's are real and highlight John's insight into the depth of the adolescent mind.

We have a normal group of high school friends in a mostly abnormal setting of a boarding school. We have neurotic girls, confused boys, mischievous pranks, and deviant behavior. Authority is mocked, then respected, and the cycle continues.

Written for the YA audience, John Green seems to have taken it upon himself to introduce teenagers to complex concepts. This book included such heavy topics as deity, after death, grieving and mourning, memorial, and loneliness. On the flip side, we also see fun and excitement in friendship, pranks, young love, and boring lecture classes.

Finally, John absolutely perfected a particular scene, wherein two naive 17 year-old kids experiment with a physical manifestations of a romantic relationship. I nearly died laughing.

Here's the thing. I'm not a John Green fan. I'm just not. I know I'm not his target audience - 13-15 year old girls - but if it's well written that shouldn't matter. Not that the author is absolutely terrible, he's not. He just...there's a tendency...he has a habit of letting his voice take over the characters. I feel like I'm reading JOHN, not Chip or Miles or Alaska or Hazel or Gus (ugh how I hated Gus in tFiOS. I'm probably one of like 10 people in the world who hated Gus. But anyway...). I often get this little voice in the back of my head screaming about how no one talks like that.

With Looking for Alaska, the preachy-ness (for lack of a better term at the moment) was still there, but it felt less/better. I saw it come through more with the adults - the religion teacher, the dean/principal - and the kids were more normal teens. Sure they had issues, but they weren't waxing poetic all the time. Well, except for Alaska, but she made sense in an odd way. I liked the interactions between the circle of friends and between them and the adults.

I figured out pretty much what was going to happen pretty early on, though I wasn't sure of the how. It all felt a little too Bridge to Terabithia after that.

4.5

I decided to read this book after countless recommendations from my friends, who quoted and referenced it often (all the “I go to seek a Great Perhaps” is getting really annoying tbh). After only a few “chapters” in, I was kicking myself for not reading it sooner. It is written in a style that gives me the impression that the main character is sitting down with me, a year or two later, and personally telling me the story. It makes a great deal of literary and historical references but always explicitly states them as such and never comes off as pretentious. It's simply a joy to read (if joy is the right word, since often it produces emotions that are anything but joy). Above all, it's real. It does not censor itself, but cuts right through the crap and tells it exactly like it happened. Even if the truth is embarrassing.

I said “chapters” because the book is divided up rather unconventionally; instead of following a linear progression (chapter 1, chapter 2, ... chapter 30, etc etc etc), each section is titled as “one hundred twenty-seven days before” or “forty-six days after,” and so on. This is because the entire book revolves around one central event that occurs roughly in its center, and as it is told from the perspective of the main character, Miles “Pudge” Halter, time exists only as a distance before or after this event.

Alaska was the most fascinating character to me, something I think John Green intended. I was hooked by her just as Pudge was–she continually intrigued me, made me laugh, frustrated me, mystified me. (I re-read her line “Ya'll smoke to enjoy it, I smoke to die” several times. She's just so meta.). I am hardly ever affected by character deaths but as soon as I got a few pages into the “After” section I had to put the book down for a few minutes to absorb what I had just read. I was actually in a minor stage of denial for a few pages. I kept thinking, “Alaska's not really dead, is she?” Maybe John Green was trying to pull off another Paper Towns kind of story-line. When I came to accept it, I shared Pudge's and The Colonel's (Chip Martin) desparation to find out WHY.

At first I felt a little gypped by the ending: was her death an accident or was it a suicide? But after I thought it through for a while, I decided that it was better that John Green left us not knowing. Why? The world is full of mysteries. Not everything that happens in life is completely resolved (sad truth).

While it's not the most entertaining, out of the entire novels I've read in my life, Looking for Alaska definitely falls somewhere in the top 10 or 50 or 100 of the best written coming-of-age novels. I would definitely recommend this book to any age group, but especially anyone who is interested in writing and wants to see an example of great literature.

I just couldn't get into this book, although I really wanted to since I absolutely adored Fault in our Stars. I practically hated both Pudge and Alaska - I found them both boring. Pudge had this neat personality trait where he enjoyed famous people's last words but he never really had any kind of interesting dialogue... or interesting thoughts, for that matter. He just thought about how hot Alaska was and counted the number of layers of clothes between him and the nearest girl. Alaska was this moody, super-sexualized cock-teasing bitch and does it make me a terrible person when I say that I didn't really care at all and also saw it coming when she died? Well, I guess, it is a John Green Book lol. Anyway, I can't count the number of times I felt uncomfortable about Pudge's overly fantastical description of Alaska's top straining against her breasts or the heat of Alaska's hand on Pudge's thigh. These moments literally made me stop reading and just stare at the book, thinking, “really?”

I did love the Colonel and his mother though. They were cool. The ending actually kinda made me think the book was okay, instead of absolutely hating it, since it showed that actually, and obviously, Pudge wasn't the only one affected by Alaska's presence. I found him incredibly self-centered, especially with what he did with Lara, so I felt better about Takumi leaving that last letter for Pudge to read.

This was such a great book. Told in two parts the “Before” and the “After”. Throughout its pages we meet Miles “Pudge” Halter. He's recently left home and is now enrolled at Culver Creek a boarding school - seeking his “Great Perhaps.” Looking for Alaska chronicles his ordinary life - leaving behind his former Florida high school and moving out to Alabama. There he finally feels that he fits in. He makes friends with the Colonel, his roommate, Lara Buterskaya, Takumi, and last but definitely not least, Alaska, the girl he immediately falls for.

Mr. Green does a superb job in really capturing the lives of these teens. Their feelings, emotions, actions were all relate-able, realistic, we have all been there, we have all done these same things. I really commend him for not only introducing us to these characters but, if you're anything like me, you'll feel like you not only got to know them by the end of the book, but that they're also your friends. Pudge, the Colonel, Alaska, Lara and Takumi are just living their lives - but doing whatever possible to amuse themselves along the way. Even if it means irritating their teachers, playing pranks on the Weekday Warriors and all without getting caught by “The Eagle”, the dean. They learn about alcohol and just how good it can make them feel, and then exactly how bad it can also make them feel, they learn to smoke cigarettes and experience sex for the first time.

This is their story of growing up, of loving and losing, of dealing and eventually just living life to the fullest. Mr. Green's writing is witty, entertaining, thought-provoking. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. And I guarantee it will stay with you long after you are done with it.

Emotional and predictable.

This book left me like:


I really liked it. I liked the story and I really liked the characters.
I didn't expect the story to leave me like that though. The characters ended out having a lot more meaning to me than I expected.

Such a typical John Green book. What really annoys me is that all the protagonists in his books I've read (Miles, Hazel, Q) have someone of the opposite sex of which their happiness relies on. Also there are many parallels between Miles and Q as well as between Alaska and Margo from Paper Towns; it just seems like the scope of his writing is limited to adolescent first world problems. That being said, I'll most likely still read his other work as everyone continues to rave about all his books.

It started out slow. When the book picks up again do to a tragedy it helps me want to continue reading but I was just reading for the enlightenment. Great writing. I love Miles “Pudge” Halter and his obsession with last words.

I couldn't stick with this book. I really wanted to like this book. I love watching John Green's nerd fighter videos and I wanted to support him. This book gave me too much insight to the mind of teenage boys. I couldn't get stand they way that the main character is attracted to a girl who is self-destructing. The writing skill is nice and I think that John Green can be a great writer.

I didn't like or hate this book, l'm more in the middle. It's an interesting book about life, death, how when you're a teenager and you're trying to find your path.John Green is a great author, I adored [bc:The Fault in Our Stars 11870085 The Fault in Our Stars John Green https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360206420s/11870085.jpg 16827462], I even cried but this one I felt it was very slow and I didn't feel any connections to the characters. Maybe l'm not a teenager anymore but they all seem to be a bunch of alcholics and not caring about consequences.It's a fast read, the message in the book is good but felt something was lacking.I give this book a 3 stars

Very sad but still a good read. John Green never fails to make me cry. Makes me wonder what the hell is wrong in his head to write such sad books.

This book actually made me feel for the characters, which doesn't happen all that often for me. However, when “After” began, I felt as though some things felt repetitive and that bothered me for a while. Still, overall a really good read in my opinion.

Read in March.
3.5 (closer to 4 stars than 3 stars)
John! YOU GOTTA STOP PLAYING WITH MY EMOTIONS THAT MUCH. Geeeeeeeeee.
Calm your tits, dude... Chill.

Edit: 28 of June 2014
3.5 stars closer to 3 stars than 4 stars.
My opinion of this changed after reading Papertowns. To me, this whole book captivated the hearts of everyone when he killed Alaska, and I didn't come to that realization until I read Papertowns. While in PT, that was a real story which deserves appreciation based on the quality of his writing and story, not because someone we love died. Don't get me wrong, I liked the characters in this book, and how awesome they were, and some of the situations were epic. Butttttt, and since LFA and PT are so close, I go towards PT, and I secretly hate John Green (a teensy weensy bit) because he made two stories so similar and then left us to deal with both of them.