Looking for Alaska by John Green

Title: Looking for Alaska
Author: John Green
ISBN#: 9780525475064 (hardcover)

I made a mental note to check out one of John Green's books after I started watching vlogbrothers (a collaborative video project between John and his brother Hank). I finally followed through on this plan during a recent trip to the library. His name just popped into my mind, and so I searched for Looking for Alaska, his first novel.

Looking for Alaska takes place at a boarding school in Alabama where Miles, the narrator, goes to in search of the "Great Perhaps." He isn't exactly sure of what that is, but he feels compelled to go after it. After all, he doesn't have much to lose, but everything to gain. Once he arrives at Culver Creek, he meets his roommate (Chip, or, the Colonel), gets a nickname (Pudge), and meets Alaska (no... that really is her name).

It's safe to say that Pudge goes through a lot of changes at Culver Creek. He didn't have very close friends back home in Florida, first of all, and he'd certainly never met anyone like Alaska. He finds her instantly intriguing, and, with all of her characteristics and mannerisms, I found myself sympathetic to that. She is, without a doubt, interesting.

It's hard for me to write this review without attempting to sum it up, but this isn't a book that you can just describe to someone else (therefore I won't even try, which is probably better). I really enjoyed reading from Pudge's perspective--seeing him change during his stay in Alabama, realize his feelings for Alaska (whatever they are), and even eating bufriedos. Everyone in Pudge's immediate circle of friends has some unusual talent or quirk (one memorizes countries and their capitals, another can rap on the spot... etc.), and they're all very intelligent.

John Green's writing style is incredibly poetic, even when describing the simplest of things. I could just hear his voice as I was reading, almost as if it was actually John talking to me--and I mean that in the best of ways. I also wondered just how much of Looking for Alaska was autobiographical. That made the book, which already had a certain amount of mystery, even more mysterious. How much of it actually happened?

If you're looking for something very thoughtful, witty, or just plain well executed, try Looking for Alaska. It's definitely made me more of a John Green fan. On a side-note, reading his novel made a lot of the little references that he makes in his video blogs with Hank a lot clearer--so there's also that to look forward to! I will certainly be reading more of his works in the future.

And here is a video from John Green, which pretty much covers what I was trying to get at with the autobiographical thing: