Looking for Alaska
Ratings867
Average rating3.7
Unfortunately, this book is not about a road trip to Alaska. I figured this out early on, but I kept reading anyway. It was a good story, but on the YA-spectrum, the writing was more “Y” than “A.” Skip unless you are looking for a super-easy read.
I re-read this book again recently, and it reminded me why I loved the book the first time around.
The way I see it, Alaska Young is the personification of life. Any adjective you can think of for life, your life, my life, her life, his life, their life, life and lives in general...absolutely any adjective you can think of for life-it works for Alaska. That's why everyone loves Alaska so much, and it's also why sometimes they hate her so much too. You cannot really describe her, at least never completely or absolutely. If you try, you end up with a description of life-as YOU see it and feel it. I suppose in a way, Alaska helps us see ourselves better because of that.
Life is not perfect, hence Alaska is not perfect, and there's no point in either trying to make her everyone's favourite character OR judging her unduly harshly. We can no more understand Alaska than we can understand life, so we might as well take it all a moment at a time, a page at a time, while trying our best to stay true to ourselves by not letting the storms of life and the stormy character that is Alaska sweep us off our feet.
Lovely book. Among my favorites.
I just finished reading Looking for Alaska, making it the fifth John Green book I've read, after Will Grayson, Will Grayson, Let It Snow, The Fault In Our Stars, and An Abundance of Katherines. I enjoyed Looking for Alaska immensely, just like I did the other three. (My favorite being Let It Snow, which he wrote with two other authors as a set of three related short stories.) I haven't made a habit out of reading young adult fiction, but for John Green I'll definitely make an exception. I should also pick up some of Maureen Johnson's books; her contribution to Let It Snow was excellent.
I have a confession to make before I go any further: I am a Nerdfighter. I was introduced to John and Hank Green about two years ago by one of my best friends, by way of Crash Course. Since then I've (almost!) caught up on their Vlogbrother videos, watched most of the Crash Course videos (sorry Hank, I'm just not into chemistry) and started watching Sci Show. John and Hank are both extremely educated, well spoken, and yet extremely entertaining and fun to watch. Watching the vlogbrothers episodes where John talks about writing the books (as he's writing them!) is what finally made me go pick up his books to read. And he's GOOD.
In Looking for Alaska, Miles Halter goes away to boarding school at Culver Creek, his father's alma mater. He's in search of his “great perhaps,” his meaning for life. (The phrase comes from Francois Rabelais' last words “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” Miles doesn't want to wait until he dies to go in search of his.) Culver Creek really marks a turning point in Miles' life - from a friendless outcast in his old school to one of the closest friends of Alaska Young. Alaska is a bit of a bad girl (sneaking cigarettes and alcohol into school constantly and pulling ingenious pranks) but also an enigma. The entire school body loves her, but even to her closest friends she doesn't reveal much about herself.
The book is divided into “before” and “after” and it wasn't until within a few pages till the end of the “before” section that I realized what the event was. “After” deals with the characters of the book coming to terms with their life-altering event.
In The Fault In Our Stars, John Green dealt with the lead up to a life-altering event that the characters knew was coming - a long, drawn-out sort of grief. Looking For Alaska deals with the fallout of an event no one knew was coming, and while the emotions are just as deep, they feel sharper somehow for being so unexpected.
I definitely recommend this book, and all of John Green's books. He's a very talented writer, and isn't afraid to put “adult” themes into his “young adult” books. As if sex and alcohol and death and deep meaning-of-life questions aren't things every teenager deals with? I like that he doesn't pull his emotional punches. His books may be “young adult” but they're not fluffy or “easy to read.” Easy in terms of grammar and flow perhaps, but not in content. I teared up reading parts of Looking For Alaska, and outright sobbed for a good portion of The Fault In Our Stars. (Which is now being made into a movie!)
You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.
Okay so I finished reading this book roughly 19 seconds ago and I need to hash this out while it's fresh, ya feel me, Goodreads.com?
I read this book because Tumblr.com peer-pressured me into it. And I had read The Fault in Our Stars and it's just lovely, so why not.
Let me tell you this, Goodreads.com. Let me tell you.
This book. Is terrible. It's awful. It's horrible. It's so bad I am angry I made myself finish it.
The story is populated entirely by pretentious, pseudo-intellectual 16-year-old super special snowflakes. It is written in pretentious, pseudo-intellectual prose. Everyone is in love with the manic pixie dream girl with the quirky name who has no real personality whatsoever other than being sooo mysterious and unpredictable omgggg. Also, boobs and booze. Boobs, booze, and mystery! She serves no purpose other than to be the protag's wet dream, and it's pathetic.
And then she dies only I don't care and neither does our narrator who is mostly upset because he didn't get to bang her before she died.
This book just tries so very very hard to be deep and meaningful and labyrinths and just the biggest load of crap I have ever had to try to make sense out of. The character development is bull. The moral of the story is bull. This feels like it was posted in serialized form on Livejournal before being picked up by a publisher.
John Green, I'm sorry, but we can't be friends anymore.
This one hit me hard...and I don't even know why.
You're so long part of this school life. You're with them as they form friendships, develop desires and wishes. And then POOF you get your feet blown away. Just like that. And you be left to wonder why?
This really wasn't my cup of tea. I had really high hopes coming into this having read “The Fault in our Stars”, but this book just couldn't hold my interest to save my life. I didn't hate it, but it was just ok.
The beginning was boring, but the character development and ending were amazing!
Woah. That was powerful. The only thing I didn't like about this book, and this is nit-picky, is there were parts that seemed hipstery/pretentious to me. Some of the characters reminded me of the obnoxious kids my age that think they've got “everything figured out” and sit around their rooms listening to music nobody's heard of, doing drugs and philosophizing. There was also a lot of name dropping of classic literature and such that made the characters seem a little egotistical. But when I hit the “After” part of the book I slowly began to really get into it. I dunno why, but I usually respect a book, show, or movie more when they take a turn for the darker. Soon what I found pretentious, started to become interesting and I ended up really liked the second half/the ending of the book. Part of me would like to see this as a movie (mostly to see the pranks played out haha) but another part of me says that would just be hipster-fuel on tumblr. Also, it'd probably be a major tear jerker and I dunno if I could handle that...
Proximamente reseña : http://el-extrano-gato-del-cuento.blogspot.com/
Después de pensarlo mucho, no, no es el libro que esperaba. Es básicamente un chica triste que desaparece y el protagonista se quedó con las ganas. Sin duda John Green tiene una manera de narrar sumamente atrayente pero este libro no era para mí.
So good. Loved the characters, each and every one. Loved the setting, the circumstances, the mysteries, the heartache....so....good.
You can read my full review on my blog at http://knowitnotsomuch.blogspot.com/2013/01/looking-for-alaska.html
I loved [b:The Fault in Our Stars 11870085 The Fault in Our Stars John Green http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327880382s/11870085.jpg 16827462] so I decided to give this one a try. I can understand why teenagers would like it, but I felt that this was more conventionally YA than Fault. All the characters are perfectly quirky until it's more emotionally useful for them to not be. It felt like I was reading about characters in a YA novel, rather than reading about people who just happen to also be characters in a YA novel, which is what the characters in Fault seemed like.
I loved [b:The Fault in Our Stars 11870085 The Fault in Our Stars John Green http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327880382s/11870085.jpg 16827462] so I decided to give this one a try. I can understand why teenagers would like it, but I felt that this was more conventionally YA than Fault. All the characters are perfectly quirky until it's more emotionally useful for them to not be. It felt like I was reading about characters in a YA novel, rather than reading about people who just happen to also be characters in a YA novel, which is what the characters in Fault seemed like.
Book Review: Looking for Alaska by John Green - another solid coming of age teen novel by John Green. A bit older in orientation and include more adult references. This is a book that really deals with finding meaning in difficulty. So again it is a slightly different take on the coming of age book. I still enjoyed this book, but it took a darker tone and was rougher than the other two I have read. I wish John Green had been writing when I was a teen.
Click through for my longer review on my blog http://bookwi.se/looking-for-alaska-by-john-green/
Love love love the writing in this one. John Green truly has a way with words.
I could sort of guess the ending, because the characters were well written and thought through. Maybe more elements of surprise would have made this a 5*s for me. This also could have been because I expected A LOT out of the book based on other reviews.
Anyway, an amazing read nonetheless.
Holy fuck, I love this book. This is the third book I've read from the amazing Mister Green, and I loved this one as much as, if not more than Paper Towns and Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I don't know what it is about John Green's books that are so freaking amazing... other than the inventive storylines and relatable characters. I'm just gonna blame it on being a Nerdfighter... yeah, lets go with that.
John Green, you are totally winning.I read a fair amount of young adult books (ostensibly because of my job, but I only teach up to third grade so I think I have to let go of that excuse) and I think John Green is the best author for teenagers these days. I have heard [b:Looking for Alaska 99561 Looking for Alaska John Green http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1312503335s/99561.jpg 919292] is his best book so I hope I'm not overselling him, but I have also read and thoroughly enjoyed [b:Will Grayson, Will Grayson 6567017 Will Grayson, Will Grayson John Green http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1290480018s/6567017.jpg 6759965] and [b:An Abundance of Katherines 49750 An Abundance of Katherines John Green http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1309200918s/49750.jpg 48658] so I think he's the real deal.Few of Green's characters have what I'd call a normal high school experience, but there are things every student human can connect with in each of his characters. Parts of Looking for Alasak were so heartbreakingly sad that I just wanted to curl up and do nothing but sulk in sorrow for a while. This book was powerful and I loved it.
The main character was too dull and unlikeable; everything happened to him, very little happened because of him. The roommate was a great character whereas the love interest was annoying, but I could accept that. There were some great moments of prose and I didn't mind the world religions class.
Same reader and audiobook style as An Abundance of Katherines, and thus the same complaints: tracks were typically under a minute, the musical ‘outros' (the ending of the CDs) were very cheesy and often dissonant with the content of the story, and the repeated tracks were annoying.
I really wanted to love this book, but I can't say that I do... I felt like the book was more about smoking cigarettes and drinking than the more important themes (yes, I did get what the book is all about). I never felt any connection to any of the characters... There were some parts that I liked, but mostly I was left with a feeling of having a read an okay book - nothing more, nothing less. Sorry.
Wow, What a great and emotionally driven novel. At first glance I did not intend on reading it because i didn't know what to expect or much about what was going to happen. What I found as i finished it was a novel that will make you laugh on one page and get you chocked up on the next.
The one thing i really loved in this whole book is that it is very thought provoking and I like the idea of the “great perhaps”. The story moves along smoothly building up to its height until the After part. Which was the best part of the novel in itself. It is a novel worth reading at least once and their will be at least one thing in it that will change your perspective on something or just move you completely.
As pudge did, I fell in love with Alaska's character as well, it was a gripping story of friendship, love and loss.I loved the emotion that Green can give you in his characters,I ended up loving all of them and felt like i was there with them trying to figure everything out.
