Book Review: Looking For Alaska by John Green

I read a book by fellow Nerdfighter, John Green, and so far, it is one of my favorites out of the books I have read for the project. I also loved The Chosen, and highly recommend it.

Looking For Alaska is about famous-last-words-obsessed Miles Halter, who moves to a boarding school in Alabama. Up until he goes to the boarding school, his life has been one big non-event. He leaves his Florida home to seek a “Great Perhaps.” There, Miles is transformed into Pudge and becomes friends with the Colonel (a genius with a napoleon complex) and Alaska Young, who is funny, smart, beautiful, and self-destructive. Pudge falls in love with her and his life becomes the opposite of boring. One day though, a terrible event changes the world of Culver Creek and nothing is ever the same again.

Compared to the other books I read this semester, this book didn’t incorporate religion as much as the others, although it still plays an important role. In the book, Pudge and his friends have to take a religion class, and the class was basically a way for John Green to directly ask the big questions that were themes throughout the book. A couple of these questions are, “Is there life after death?” and “Is life just pointless suffering?” Religion tries to provide answers to these questions often.

John Green was a double major in English and Religious Studies in college, and he worked as a chaplain at a children’s hospital while attending divinity school in Chicago. It seems that Green was very comfortable with writing a book dealing with the questions listed above from a religious perspective. Here's a link to John Green's website if you want to learn more about him and his books: http://www.johngreenbooks.com.

Although I did love this book and I felt like Green handled the issues in the book with grace, it wasn’t my favorite book by him. I liked The Fault in Our Stars better. Sometimes the book can get a bit boring, Pudge was not as vibrant as other characters in Green’s books, and all of the characters seemed extremely immature. Alaska reminded me of Holden Caulfield, but she was even worse than him. I liked Holden, I didn’t like Alaska. She was an alcoholic, depressing, idiotic, and sort of a jerk. Green had to make her pretty and intelligent, so he made her an avid reader and feminist with a great body. I don’t think we were supposed to like Alaska though. She was suffering and she made a questionable decision in the book that changed the world of Culver Creek.

I always read John Green’s books as works of philosophy though, so it doesn’t really matter to me if I don’t like the characters because what I want to draw from his work is between the lines. I still highly recommend the book, and I think John Green’s writing is top-notch. I would even go so far as to say that he is one of the best writers alive today. Overall, I give the book four out of five stars.

Here’s a link to the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Alaska-John-Green-ebook/dp/B000YI1K0C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399224816&sr=8-1&keywords=looking+for+alaska