Book: Looking for Alaska
Author: John Green
Pages: 231
How Long it Took Me To Read: 3-4 days.
Plot Summary: The book takes off when Miles Halter decided to
leave his home in Florida and transfer to a boarding school called Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama in hopes
of making a change in his life. Miles is a loner, he doesn’t have a single
friend in his present school and his main interest in life is to find out and
memorise the last words of famous people. Miles hopes that moving to Culver
Creek Academy will make his high school experience a better-rounded one.
At Culver Creek, Miles meets and befriends an odd-ball group
of people. There is Chip Martin aka The Captain, his roommate and closest friend who loves reading
and memorising world capitals. He is a scholarship kid who has a huge chip on
his shoulder. There is also Takami, who remains a secondary character at best.
Then there is Alaska young, a cigarette smoking, cigarette selling, strawberry
wine drinking foul mouthed feminist who has a roomful of books for whom Miles
falls for at first sight. But Alaska Young is a complicated enigma.
This one year in Miles’ life changes him forever in ways he
couldn’t even imagine.
Characters: There is Miles himself, our central character,
the one from whose perspective we see the rest of book and it’s world. I didn’t
like Miles. I really didn’t like him. There were points in the book I wanted to
get inside the book and punch him in the face. I can’t even pinpoint exactly
what I disliked so much but let me try. He was whiny. Oh so whiny! And so dam
sensitive. And slightly selfish. Not someone I wanted to root for at all.
His roommate Captain was a much better character. He was a
scholarship student from the trailer park. He was bright and fun and determined
to do better in life and buy his mother a proper house and move her out of her
trailer. I liked him immensely.
Then there is our tittle character Alaska Young, I liked her
best. She has a roomful of books- I liked her immediately on reading that. She
is building her Life’s Library- I like! She is fun, well-read and a feminist.
She is clearly troubled but keeps her troubles to herself. She drinks and smokes
and is no way the typical heroine of Young Adult books. I wish there was more
of Alaska and less of whiny Miles in the book.
What I liked: The writing was great. I love John Green and
his writing is pretty much flawless. So even though the story or the characters
didn’t make my heart sing, the writing was a joy to read.
I also really liked
Alaska Young- a book collector, a master prankster and all-round fun girl.
Reading about her was great too.
I loved how realistic this book was- the characters were all
real, no one was a Greek God or model beautiful. They were short, too skinny,
had pimples and spots and were like regular normal teenagers. I also liked they
weren’t perfect kids they drank, smoked, hooked up and used bad language.
What I didn’t Like: Oh lord so much! I really didn’t like
this book; hence it took me 3-4 days to read. I hated it. I didn’t want to but
I did.
I didn’t like Miles. Not one bit. He could get hit by a
truck and I wouldn’t care.
The whole story was a bit blah to me, really pointless.
The second half of the book was really boring and I almost
stopped reading.
I don’t want to give away spoilers, so I won’t say what
happened but I couldn’t care less about the aftermath of the ‘big deal’.
A real disappointment this book was.
General Thoughts: I am a fan of John Green. The Fault in Our Stars was one of best books
I read last year. I also loved Paper Towns and wanted to read more of this
works. Out of the rest of his books, this one sounded the most appealing and I
had heard really good things about this book. I thought I’d really like it. But
I just didn’t. It was very pointless and didn’t move me like I think it was
supposed to.
Will you like it? Maybe if you really enjoy books about
coming of age and about life in a boarding school, pranks and friendship.This book has really high rating on Goodreads and has won a ton of awards and accolades, so clearly I am in the minority of readers who despised this book.
Rating: 2/5
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