A Peek In The BiblioBin #139

Welcome to our Stacking the Shelves post! Stacking the Shelves (or as we like to call it, A Peek in the BiblioBin) has been created by the lovely ladies at Tynga's Reviews.

Stacking the Shelves is a way for bloggers to share what books they have won, received for review, bought from the bookstore, borrowed from the library or friend, etc.

For Review:

Black Iris by Leah Raeder (via NetGalley)

Borrowed:

Dead of Winter (The Arcana Chronicles #3) by Kresley Cole

Finally Getting Around To It:

Looking For Alaska by John Green

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

* * * *

When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact.

On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl.

Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself by Printz medalist John Green, acclaimed author of Looking for Alaska. (Taken from GoodReads)


After reading Looking for Alaska I was eager to continue my John Green education. Again, with the recommendation from Heidi at YABibliophile, I chose to read An Abundance of Katherines. Where Looking for Alaska was serious and thought-provoking, An Abundance of Katherines was full of hilarity and slapstick humor.

According to Colin Singleton, he is a washed up child prodigy that is smart enough to be a prodigy but never smart enough to be a genius. When his lazy but loyal best friend, Hassan finds him lying on the floor of his bedroom, mourning the break up with Katherine XIX, he convinces Colin that the only cure for his heartache is a summer road trip. So they head out in Colin’s crappy air condition-less car in search of an adventure that leads them to a town in the middle-of-nowhere (Gutshot), Tennessee. During their physical adventure, Colin also sets out on an emotional and mental challenge of creating and proving a theorem that will help boys and girls everywhere by predicting the future of their relationships.

This story was the perfect combination of smart and slapstick humor. Colin was so socially clueless and inept that you couldn’t help but shake your head at him. His love of anagrams won me over from the beginning (as did John Green’s dedication page – in which he dedicates his book to his wonderfully anagrammed wife). And as socially inept as Colin is, he still has a sense of humor that is so fantastically dry that you might miss it if you blink. Colin’s BFF, Hassan, is cheeky and profane. His irreverent attitude towards everything is reminiscent of the humor you will find in the movies American Pie and Van Wilder. Then there is Lindsey. The cute girl that is content with her small town and her simple dreams brings a much needed dose of normalcy to the story that balances everything out beautifully.

The book is full of mostly humorous foot notes used to explain things that those of us of average intelligence may not understand – definitions of words in Latin, German and French, historical trivia and the explanation of complicated theorems. Don’t worry, you don’t have to read the theorem footnotes….unless of course you are a math lover that wants to help Colin in the development of his Theorem. I found these footnotes to be highly amusing and they were a big part of why I enjoyed this book as much as I did.

In the end, I LOVED this book. It made me laugh more than any other YA book I have read so far which was very refreshing. I give this a solid 4 stars.



Nat

Looking For Alaska by John Green

* * * *

Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.


Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another. A stunning debut, it marks John Green's arrival as an important new voice in contemporary fiction.


Miles “Pudge” Halter follows the steps of all men in his family and decides to finish his high school career at Culver Creek Preparatory School, a boarding school near Birmingham, Alabama. He hopes that with this move he might find his “Great Perhaps”. Once there, he is quickly adopted by his roommate “The Colonel”, Fox, and the beautiful, intelligent and pretentious Alaska. Miles immediately falls for Alaska. Unfortunately she is already happily dating someone else. As Miles not so secretly pines for Alaska, the group shares pranks, secrets, hopes and dreams. Then something tragic changes everything and Miles and his friends must quickly grow up and learn to emotionally deal with what life has dealt them.

I read this book based on a recommendation by Heidi at YABibliophile. She is a self proclaimed John Green fan and insisted that the Bibliojunkies absolutely had to read his books. During the Thanksgiving weekend I decided to jump in and downloaded Looking for Alaska to my e-reader. I had no idea what to expect but I certainly wasn’t disappointed.

This was a pretty serious read with moments of hilarity and poignancy. It’s a very honest look at how high school kids think and behave. And most importantly, the story showed us the vulnerability that lies beneath every teenager’s invincibility. John Green does not hold back with his cast of characters. They love. They fight. They study. They swear. They drink. They smoke. Wait for it….they participate in sexual activity. But not once does he ever glorify or mock a single one of these actions. There are consequences for every action. Some positive and some negative. And some are more obvious than others.

This leads me to what made me fall in love with this book. I love books with messages. As long as I am not beaten over the head with them. Looking for Alaska contains a number of messages. All of them important but none of them heavy handed. And the best part is that every reader will walk away with a different message that they gleamed from this text. What did I take away from it?

1. We don’t have all the answers to the universe but that’s OK. Even without knowing, we can still live and be happy doing so.

2. Every one of our actions has consequences. We do not know who will be affected by our actions and we cannot always see what those consequences will be. And good or bad we must learn to live with what happens in life.

The best part is I will definitely be re-reading this in the next year and I am sure I will walk away with something completely different yet just as important.

After reading this I was shocked that this book has been banned. I know, I know. I should have known this already. Apparently the drinking, smoking, swearing and sex were just too much for some people take. It’s been a long time since I was a teenager but when I was in high school this was exactly what was going on in school. Maybe not every kid was experiencing it, but trust me, it was there. It was happening. And because it was…IS happening, is why amazing authors like John Green are writing about it. By writing about it they are giving teens a voice. They are opening the lines of communication between teens and adults so that there can be open, honest and frank discussion about what is going on in their lives.

I am not going to defend this book anymore than I already have. Not because it doesn’t deserve to be defended but because John Green has already done the work for me. As an end to this review, please watch the video below to hear his thoughts on the controversy behind Looking for Alaska.