Review: Looking For Alaska by John Green

Looking For Alaska is a book by John Green, first published in 2005 by Dutton Juvenile, and republished in 2015 by Harper Collins.

 This review will differ from others, but I will start with a 'factual, normal' explanation about the book and its content. 

Pudge wants to find the Great Perhaps. And how he will find it, is for you to find out. He spends his teenage years at Culver Creek boarding school, and here he will find many things. One of these, is Alaska Young. And with Alaska, comes many things. What things? That is also for you to find out.

I will continue with three, very different extracts from the book, so if you don't want spoilers, skip the words in purple!

♥

 

"As the door shut behind me, I felt a tap on my left shoulder. I turned, but there was no one there. Then I turned the other way, and Alaska was smiling at me, the skin between her eyes and temple crinkled into a starburst. "The oldest trick in the book," She said, "but everybody falls for it."

♥

"It's not because I want to make out with her"

"Hold on." He grabbed a pencil and scrawled excitedly at the paper as if he'd just made a mathematical breakthrough and then looked back at me. "I just did some calculations, and I've been able to determine that you're full of shit." 

 ♥

We got off at the next exit, quietly, and switching drivers, we walked in front of the car. We met and I held him, my hands balled into tight fists around his shoulders, and he wrapped his short arms around me and squeezed tight, so that I felt the heaves of his chest as we realized over and over again that we were still alive. I realized it in waves and we held on to each other crying and I thought, God, we must look so lame, but it doesn't matter when you have just now realized, all the time later, that you are still alive.

♥

                   

This part of the review is going to be long and rambling, and more personal and less factual than others. Because, this book for me was not just a beautiful story, it was a lesson. And, here is what I learned.

In short, this book taught me that suffering is not just pain, it is other things in other ways, many different ways. Suffering is beautiful. Not joyus, but beautiful. 

I didn't cry while reading Looking For Alaska, but it left me choked up and wide-eyed. I am not going to lie, it was extremely sad and painful. But not the normal kind of pain everyone is used to experiencing. 

This book shows everyone how lucky we are, to have what we have. We will always have those dark, depressing days, but we have so much. All of us. We all care for each other, we are all here together. You may think, we all care for each other in different ways, with different levels of love. But in some ways, you would be false. No matter what, we are all human, all the same, but different. I love my boyfriend, I love Emma, I love my friends, my family. But above all, I love humanity, all of us. Together. 

And right now, I love John Green, for the person he is and for the things he has done for us, and writes for us. And to have him, to be able to read his thoughts, we are all goddam lucky. 

My last words, for this review at least, will be this: 

Everything that falls together will fall apart. And although we will die we will never die. We are all a tiny blot in this landscape, this universe, individually and together. One day, we will be forgotten. Each and every one of us, and the human race. But we will have always been here, the land we live on will have just been reformed, never created and never dying. And that, is how we will survive in the labyrinth.

'This one's for Alaska Young.'

-Beth

Happy Reading!♥