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B2b Digital _2_digital_printing — سيرة ذاتيه تحكي ظلم التاريخ

Emmanuel Gotanzil emmanuelgo2a7f — Great. Must read it again soon.

S5 Merkwaardige s5nl — Book 01/52 for 2012, review cross-posted to my blog. [It was so difficult to make this review spoiler-free, but I think I've managed it, so no need to worry.] Something gives me the feeling that "Looking for Alaska" might be some degree of autobiographical. Don't know what on earth gives me that idea, it's not like John Green grew up in Florida and attended a boarding school in Ala- oh. Well. According to Green himself, the book is entirely fictional - as far as a novel written by a human and set in the world with which we're most familiar can be, I suppose. That's fair enough by me. This is only my second Green read (after An Abundance of Katherines). I'm not one of those Nerdfighters that's devoured everything he's ever scribbled like so many defenseless Peeps - I'm only really a Nerdfighter at all in the loosest sense. However, I'm starting to sense a pattern in his protagonists. Can a trend of two even be called a pattern? Extrapolation from such a small dataset would be foolish since technically joining any two points makes a straight line, unless we're working in non-Euclidean geometry, which all things considered is a likely possibility and I've lost my train of thought. Green's protagonists are quirky and smart yet flawed guys, in love with quirky and smart yet flawed girls, orbited by a system of even quirkier and smarter friends (though their flaws probably aren't worse - if they were then I guess they'd be the protagonists). I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm just pointing it out. You could just as easily accuse Tolstoy of writing about far too many Russians, or chide Agatha Christie for all those damn murders. (In her books, I mean.) The characters in Green's books are interesting enough, the plots engaging enough, the factlets peppered about regularly enough, the ideas explored thought-provokingly enough, for the existence of a possible "formula" to not matter. It was probably pointless even mentioning it, but, y'know. Word count. The plot in short: Miles Halter, a sixteen-year-old who collects famous people's last words, moves from his safe but lonely life in Florida to a boarding school in Alabama. He seeks "The Great Perhaps" that François Rabelais alluded to with his final earthly breath. Here he meets a whole host of people, including Alaska Young - an intelligent and sexy but troubled girl. He falls in love with Alaska, but she's a dangerous girl to love, which Miles discovers when a shocking event tears apart his new world. "Looking for Alaska" seems to me to be primarily a book exploring religion and its applications to our own lives and thoughts. Much of the book centres around Miles's lessons with Dr Hyde, a no-nonsense religious studies teacher who opens Miles's mind to considering the world through the lens of religion and philosophy. Green is clearly an admirer of teachers, as I am - we've all had those educators that change the way we look at the world. I hated my own religious studies lessons at school because they were delivered somewhat by rote, but this book has made me want to explore it in-depth. I suppose this means Green himself would be a good teacher, which won't be surprising if you watch his Youtube videos. The way the chapters are numbered - "X Days Before/After" that aforementioned shocking event - brings to mind things like how dates can be measured in relation to an event such as the birth of Jesus or the Hijra of Muhammad. Indeed, Miles's interest in last words rather than the people who said them seems like the ultimate example of measuring time in terms of its relation to a single event - in this case, that event bisecting life and death. Throughout the book Miles wrestles with all sorts of big questions, of the sort that many teens (and grown-ups like me - oh god, I'm so old) will already be considering themselves. Green is eminently quotable as well, which is a trait I love in a person. Here's just one from the 232 available on the Goodreads quote page for this book: “I still think that maybe the "afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe we are just matter, and matter gets recycled”. I like how he doesn't sugarcoat the teenage experience - though Miles does sometimes seem a little intellectually mature, he's just as interested in the other kind of "maturity" as most teenage boys. By which I mean: yep, there's a sex scene. All the other angst that goes hand in hand with the fun of hormones is present too. (Though considering the fact I spent my formative years reading novels I'm probably not qualified to comment on "the teenage experience" as if I'm a character in "Skins".) On a more negative note, I don't really like Green's use of ableist language like "lame" and how he pokes a bit of fun of the deaf-and-blind school. I'm just too attuned to that sort of thing these days to let it pass. (I also have grandparents who are profoundly deaf; one is also partially sighted. I remember when I was quite small taking exception to the use of the term "deaf and dumb" in one of my story books.) However, it's still possible to enjoy media with problematic elements, as I enjoyed "Looking for Alaska". You just have to be careful. Another thing to be careful about is the presence of a few particularly visceral descriptions of grief and death, which hit me quite hard because of similar experiences and thoughts I've had personally. I can't be clearer than that without giving away the big plot twist - if you're worried then just give it a quick Google. It won't ruin the book really - I knew the twist before reading and I still got a great deal out of it. Including having the song "Blake Says" by Amanda Palmer in my head for at least a month. So, in closing, should you read "Looking for Alaska"? In the last words of Alice B. Toklas: "Yes".

Duan Yuliang _ryptozoiceon — I liked the book, but the ending lacked, then again, I think there is supposed to be another book.

Rockstar Atelier rockstaratelier — It's books like this that make me wonder why I ever wasted my time with Bergdorf Blondes -type novels. Breath, Eyes, Memory had so much depth. It was painful and beautiful all at once. Just remarkable.