Review: "Paper Towns"

Paper Towns by John Green
4 out of 5 stars

This is my 4th John Green book and it may be my favorite. Yes, even over TFIOS. I mean, who really says that a book about kids with cancer is their favorite? (If that's you, I apologize. ;)) I kind of have a love/hate relationship with Green though. Yes, every single one of his books are the same (TFIOS is slightly different, but still close enough) but they're still good reading. Paper Towns has the nerdy outsider boy in love with the manic pixie dream girl from afar, something happens to bring them together, then they're apart, and then they're back together in the end, but only for a short time usually, and then they're all okay with that. There's the nerdy boy's quirky BFF, usually non-white, who pretends he's a ladies man but totally isn't and he eventually gets with the hottest girl in the school. There are the nearly non-existent parents who allow their children to go on road-trips at the drop of a hat.

"I'm a big believer in random capitalization. the rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle."

It's the same formula over and over again. So why does it work? I don't really know. I do know that I fiercely want young Margo's t-shirt from the beginning: a pink T-shirt that featured a green dragon breathing a fire of orange glitter. I know that I love the idea of having a revenge night, getting back at all the people who hurt you (especially if you are still in high school when everything is dire and important then.) The idea of just taking off when you can't take it anymore (whatever "it" is.) Margo's little clues for Quentin to find, encouraging him to think about his life and how he's lived it so far.

When Margo left after their night of revenge, I got worried about what was going to happen and actually skimmed the ending a bit to see if she lived or not. (Not saying here yes or no!) The ending redeems the similarity to his other books, in my opinion. You feel for these characters and yet you also feel like maybe you've grown too. Does that make sense? Just like Q, everything has been flat and one-dimensional and you've been okay with that, but all of a sudden your eyes open up and you can see how things really are and how they can be different.

A paper town for a paper girl.

Review: "An Abundance of Katherines"

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green'
3 out of 5 stars

So I'm sure you've all heard or participated in some of the hype concerning John Green in the last few months or so. It seems like lately, he's just been everywhere. I'm not even sure where I first heard about him, but I know it was about his vlog with his brother, Hank. (Probably one of the Harry Potter videos lol.) And I honestly didn't even realize he wrote books until my Twitter peeps started talking about this amazing new book coming out called The Fault In Our Stars. All of a sudden, every other tweet was about TFIOS and I was like, "what the heck are they talking about??" And then I looked it up and was like, "ooooh". Yeah. I added TFIOS to my to-buy list because I wanted to be like the cool kids and then when I saw Katherines at the library one day, I decided to give it a shot.

I can't say that this blew me away, but I did enjoy it and I still want to read his other books because I've heard some of them (TFIOS obviously) are better. Plus, this book had math in it and I'm not all about that. Not that the math bits were boring, they weren't. It just went *woosh* right over my head. :) Oh and he's a superb anagrammer. (That's probably not even a word) I can't anagram without pencil and paper, so that's pretty dang cool.

So what's this story about, besides math and anagramming? Well, there's this guy named Colin and he just got dumped by his girlfriend, Katherine. But the thing about Colin is he likes to date girls named Katherine. Or maybe he doesn't really like to, but it just keeps happening. 19 times to be exact. And he wants to know why. And since he's a super smart dude, he tries to figure it out the only way he knows how: by creating an algorithm. Or maybe it's a theorem? A formula? I don't know, I haven't taken a math class in....too many years. Lol...

Colin's best bud, Hasan, convinces him to take a road-trip after graduating to take his mind off his troubles and the pair end up in a dead-end, broke-down, tore-up town in Tennessee called Gutshot. It's as bad as it sounds. Hasan is pretty cool but then not, if that makes sense. He's an over-weight, self-deprecating Muslim dude who is content hanging out at his parents' house watching Judge Judy and not going to college in the fall. Hasan is pretty dang funny. By the way, I've decided to start referring to myself exclusively as 'Daddy'. Everytime Daddy would otherwise say 'I' or 'Me', Daddy is now going to say 'Daddy'. And he's there for his pal when he needs him most. But the use of the word "fugging" got old very, very quickly. And also the Muslim words being mixed in...it felt very awkward and stilted whenever they did it.

There are minor adventures in Gutshot along with some "Eureka" moments but no real story. There's a girl and a guy and a fight. Colin learns things. Hasan figures things out. There's a wild pig chase. And a dead Austrian. Yes, really. Oh, and lots of math, anagramming, footnotes and smart people talk.

What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?