Review: Paper Towns by John Green

Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Series: stand-alone
Publisher: Speak
Publication Date: October 16th, 2008
Source: Purchased for Kindle
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows.

After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.

John Green is a Legend of sorts. If you are a reader at all, you have surely heard his name.  Also there is that whole nerd fighter thing he has going on, whatever that is. But it's popular. Anyway, I read The Fault in Our Stars a while back and I liked it. I didn't love it, it was too wordy for me. I preferred the movie.

I feel like I will probably prefer the movie for Paper Towns as well. There is something wonderful about Greens writing, but at the same time, I don't click with it. There are moments when I read a line and I think, wow that was brilliant. But most often I'm bored and want the story to move along.

I should have known I wasn't going to love Paper Towns. I tried to read a book last year, that was compared to Paper Towns. I thought, sure it's compared to a John Green book, it has to be a winner. Nope, I couldn't get into it. I tried but it wasn't for me. I can't even think of what the name was, that's how much of an impact it's made on my life.

The thing that I disliked the most about Paper Towns was Margo. I thought she was an asshole. And Quentin thinks she shits candy. She does not. Though I'll give her props for some of the pranks she pulls off in the beginning. I was diggin the book early on... but then it just drops off and I was bored.

Finally things start happening again. But in the end, I felt like... really I pushed through all that for this. It was rather uneventful I'd say. I just expected more. And that could be because of the hype, or just because Greens writing isn't my thing. I'm not sure.

When I watched the movie trailer, I thought it looked like something I would really enjoy. I'm still going to give that a try, because sometimes the movie is better.

I would recommend this book for sure. I know a ton of people who have read and loved it. I just wish I would have liked it more. :/

About the authors:

John Green's first novel Looking for Alaska won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award presented by the American Library Association. His second novel An Abundance of Katherines was a 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His next novel Paper Towns is a New York Times bestseller and won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best YA Mystery. In January 2012, his most recent novel The Fault in Our Stars was met with wide critical acclaim, unprecedented in Green's career. The praise included rave reviews in Time Magazine and The New York Times, on NPR, and from award-winning author Markus Zusak. The book also topped the New York Times Children's Paperback Bestseller list for several weeks. Green has also coauthored a book with David Levithan called Will Grayson, Will Grayson, published in 2010. The film rights for all his books, with the exception of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, have been optioned to major Hollywood Studios.

In 2007, John and his brother Hank were the hosts of a popular internet blog, "Brotherhood 2.0," where they discussed their lives, books and current events every day for a year except for weekends and holidays. They still keep a video blog, now called "The Vlog Brothers," which can be found on the Nerdfighters website.

Find John:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

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Labels: john green, meh, movie, paper towns, reviews

Banned Books Week Giveaway Hop 2014

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read

September 21−27, 2014

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community –- librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types –- in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.

By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship. Check out the frequently challenged books section to explore the issues and controversies around book challenges and book banning. The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted with removal or restrictions in libraries and schools. While books have been and continue to be banned, part of the Banned Books Week celebration is the fact that, in a majority of cases, the books have remained available. This happens only thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, students, and community members who stand up and speak out for the freedom to read.

For more information on getting involved with Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read, please see Calendar of Events, Ideas and Resources, and the new Banned Books Week site. You can also contact the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom at 1-800-545-2433, ext. 4220, or bbw@ala.org.

(The above information comes directly from the Banned Books Week page on the ALA website.)

To view a full listing of the top ten books challenged/banned each year for the last decade, visit here or view PDFs of the lists in the BBW press kit.

To do my part to help support this worthy cause, I'll be giving away one of the top ten frequently challenged books from last year to one lucky winner. FYI, Looking for Alaska was banned or challenged for the following reasons: drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group.

Rules:

• This giveaway is international. As long as The Book Depository ships to your location, you are good to go. (You can double-check that here.) 
• One entry per household. 
• Entries will be verified. Any entry found to be falsified will result in disqualification of all entries for that participant.
• Please note that if you use your Twitter account solely for giveaway entries and you enter using the Tweet about the Giveaway entry, that entry will be disqualified. Please remember that this entry method is to spread the word about the giveaway, not simply increase your chances of winning.
• Winner will be notified via email. Winner will then have 48 hours to respond before another winner will be selected. Please check your SPAM folder!!! 
• We are not responsible for lost packages. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Now that you've entered here, be sure to check out all of the other stops on the Banned Books Week Giveaway Hop:



Thanks to the ladies at BookHounds and I Am A Reader, Not A Writer for hosting!

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Labels: banned books, favorites, giveaway hops, giveaways, john green, looking for alaska

{Movie} Review: The Fault in Our Stars

We all delight in seeing our favorite books brought to life on the big screen.  We cringe at casting.  We scoff at release dates.  All the while, we're gearing up to see if the director's vision lives up to the world we've conceived in our own imaginations.  Sometimes it does...and sometimes it doesn't.  We could lament the movies that don't measure up, or we could return to the books for a re-read, possibly with a slightly different mind-set.  All's fair when it comes to artistic vision, right?





Today, I'm featuring the following movie:

Title: The Fault in Our Stars
Director: Josh Boone
Stars: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff, Laura Dern, Sam Trammell, Willem Dafoe
Release date: June 6, 2014
Based on: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Hazel and Augustus are two teenagers who share an acerbic wit, a disdain for the conventional, and a love that sweeps them on a journey. Their relationship is all the more miraculous, given that Hazel's other constant companion is an oxygen tank, Gus jokes about his prosthetic leg, and they meet and fall in love at a cancer support group.

Okay, my friends. Most of you have read the book, so none of this will be new to you. But just in case you're the one person on my friends list who hasn't read the book or seen the movie yet, there will be loads of spoilers from here on out. So, ya know, if that kind of thing bothers you, you should probably stop reading here. Okay? Okay.

I went with my sister on Saturday to see TFiOS because we'd listened to the book together at some point last year and we both loved it. I've since listened to it several more times, and each time, I think I found a new favorite part. So, obviously, I was a little worried that this movie wouldn't hold a candle to the book from which it was adapted. But it did. It so did. Mendy even thought so, and she's pretty freakin' hard to please. She's also maybe a bit cold and unfeeling, as she didn't shed a single tear during the whole dang movie, while I was a hot, embarrassing mess. OR, when she ran from the theater the second the credits started rolling, it could have been because her fake eyelashes were floating down her cheeks on rivers of TFiOS-inspired tears. I guess we'll never know, since in my haste to follow her, I managed to drop my phone somewhere in the row in front of us and the lights hadn't come up yet.

The general consensus afterward, though, was that it was a beautiful, heartbreaking movie, and it was one hell of a nearly-true to the book adaptation. The feels were all there. The pivotal moments remained. The witty dialogue, for which John Green is known, was there in spades. There was only one scene I remember being cut, and it was the one where Augustus is arguing with his mother to go to Amsterdam. And I totally get why that was eliminated because it really added to the sting of finding out Gus was sick on that bench with Hazel Grace. I'm sure there were other scenes missing, but as I said, the pivotal moments made it, and that's crucial to any adaptation, but especially this one. TFiOS fans can get downright rabid in their vehemence that this film adaptation remain as true to the book as possible. As a fan myself, I think the movie was pretty damn close to the book I've loved more each time I read it.

Like so many others, I was nervous about the casting. Brother and sister in one movie, only to be cast as lovers in another. That might not have been such an issue, had the release of both movies not been scheduled so close together. Honestly, I still can't speak to that because I haven't seen Divergent yet, but after seeing them in TFiOS, it's obvious they have chemistry. But I think that chemistry could also be conveyed in a sibling bond, the way they joke and jab at each other in this movie. I think Ansel Elgort is the perfect Augustus Waters. I'm still not sure Shailene Woodley was the Hazel Grace Lancaster I had pictured in my head, but she was well-cast nonetheless. And Nat Wolff as Isaac...so adorable. When he's breaking the trophies in Gus' room after Monica breaks up with him because she's too chicken sh!t to see him through his surgery, he is so acutely Isaac in that moment. I never would have envisioned Willem Dafoe as Peter Van Houten, but it worked. And I still despised his character as much in the movie as I did the first time I read the book. I understand him to an extent, but that doesn't mean I have to like him, not after he treated Hazel Grace -- his biggest fan -- so atrociously.

The funny thing about this movie is that all the parts that I thought would be my favorite scenes -- Hazel leaving the Venn diagram for Gus, Gus telling Hazel that he is in love with her, the kiss in the Anne Frank house, the egging of Monica's car -- none of those compared to the scenes that just generally showed the chemistry between these two characters. Like, when Gus is blatantly staring at Hazel from across the circle at the group therapy session. It was silly, it was cute, and it was kind of swoony in a juvenile sort of way. And it wasn't the kiss in the Anne Frank house that I found so delightful...it was the two sick kids climbing all those stairs, trying for some semblance of normal in the face of what Van Houten had just done to them. So many beautiful moments...I honestly don't know if I could pick a favorite anymore.

I'm an ugly crier. I shouldn't have seen this in the theater. But the rest of the audience looked as puffy and swollen as I did, so who cares, right? Except that everyone outside could pinpoint exactly who had just come from seeing TFiOS. Still, when my older sister asked if I'd read the book, would I recommend it because she was thinking of buddy reading it with her neighbor and then going to see the movie, I told her I absolutely would, even though she "hates sad crap" and doesn't like sad movies. (How am I the only sister who isn't emotionally stunted?) Because it's not just about the sad, emotional bits. It's about all the feels. All that snappy dialogue and those beautiful moments. It's about dealing with life, pain, and death, and coming through it. So, yes, I highly recommend it.

If you've read the book, I think you'll love this movie. If you haven't read the book, you're going to hate John Green as so many have already complained, but then you'll read the book and you'll love him again. And you'll probably still love the movie. Or not. But either way, you'll remember this experience and know it's always better to have read the book first. But even reading the book first in this case can't save you from all the feels.

GIF it to me straight:

Were you a fan of the book? Have you seen the movie? How do you think it fares as an adaptation?

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Labels: adaptations, all the feels, all the swoons, favorites, john green, movie reviews, movies, must-read, must-see, the fault in our stars

{Audiobook} Review: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan

Title: Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Author: John Green & David Levithan
Narrator(s):  Nick Podehl & MacLeod Andrews
Series: stand-alone
Length:  7 hrs 52 mins
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Publication Date: April 6, 2010
Source: purchased as an Audible Daily Deal
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible

One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens—both named Will Grayson—are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history’s most fabulous high school musical.

Hilarious, poignant, and deeply insightful, John Green and David Levithan’s collaborative novel is brimming with a double helping of the heart and humor that have won both of them legions of faithful fans.

I feel like every book I've read lately has been set in Chicago.  Wonder what that's all about?  Maybe it's my subconscious telling me I'm ready for a trip.  Whatever the case, this audiobook was the perfect remedy for my mid-winter blues.  It's funny, it's thoughtful, and it was just what I needed to beat the doldrums.

But can we call this book what it should have been?  Tiny Cooper, Tiny Dancer.  That kid stole the freaking show with his own show in this story.  Never has a big-boned gay guy endeared himself to me more.  I actually used to work with a guy who I continually pictured in this role, and it was awesome.  I wanted to give him hugs but I also wanted to applaud the fact that, unlike the Wills of the story, he knew who he was and he was pretty okay with it.

Okay, back to the Wills.  Will Grayson is the boy written by John Green, the one that some might call pretentious and the epitome of a male character drawn by the likes of JG.  So be it.  I, myself, have always preferred to surround myself with intelligent people who challenge me and actually appreciate my use of SAT vocab words.  And so I usually like the characters John Green creates.  To those who cry that normal teenagers don't speak so eloquently, don't have such poignant thoughts...maybe you didn't, but I did.  I like that Green doesn't make his characters less than they are just because others might not appreciate them in all their glory.  Anyway, this Will Grayson likes girls.  Well, in the beginning of the story, that wasn't so clear.  He was actually more asexual, but through a series of events, he realizes he might actually want to have feelings for Jane, his and Tiny's mutual friend.

will grayson is the boy written by David Levithan.  This will grayson is cynical and peculiar, and he likes boys, though he hasn't come out to anyone yet, not anyone who knows him in real life, anyway.  I've only read Dash & Lily's Book of Dares, which Levithan co-wrote with Rachel Cohn, but in that book, I think his character sounded more like a John Green character.  This will grayson definitely did not.  Even if I had not been listening to the audio, it would have been easy to separate the two voices.

Will Grayson is voiced by Nick Podehl.  Podehl is a fantastic narrator, and he sounds every bit the slightly arrogant and jaded boy that Will Grayson is.  He manages to sound guarded when speaking Will's dialogue, but he also perfectly portrays the wild thoughts of a boy who's less in control than he might have you think.  The other will grayson was narrated by MacLeod Andrews.  He's a favorite of mine because he always seems to become the character he is portraying.  His narration made will grayson the idiosyncratic, fast-talking, sarcastic boy I'd believed him to be.

I found Will Grayson, Will Grayson really amusing, probably more so because of the audio, but I'd have enjoyed the story either way.  I like a good coming-of-age story, full of self-discovery and hilarious antics, especially when a lot of those antics come by way of one Tiny Cooper.  Seriously, that kid made this book. I'd read another book all about his various exploits if one such book existed.  As it stands, I really enjoyed my second book by each of these authors, and maybe now I'll make the time to read the others of their's that are sitting on my shelf.

GIF it to me straight:

About the authors:

John Green's first novel Looking for Alaska won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award presented by the American Library Association. His second novel An Abundance of Katherines was a 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His next novel Paper Towns is a New York Times bestseller and won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best YA Mystery. In January 2012, his most recent novel The Fault in Our Stars was met with wide critical acclaim, unprecedented in Green's career. The praise included rave reviews in Time Magazine and The New York Times, on NPR, and from award-winning author Markus Zusak. The book also topped the New York Times Children's Paperback Bestseller list for several weeks. Green has also coauthored a book with David Levithan called Will Grayson, Will Grayson, published in 2010. The film rights for all his books, with the exception of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, have been optioned to major Hollywood Studios.

In 2007, John and his brother Hank were the hosts of a popular internet blog, "Brotherhood 2.0," where they discussed their lives, books and current events every day for a year except for weekends and holidays. They still keep a video blog, now called "The Vlog Brothers," which can be found on the Nerdfighters website.

Find John:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads



David Levithan (born 1972) is an American children's book editor and award-winning author. He published his first YA book, Boy Meets Boy, in 2003. Levithan is also the founding editor of PUSH, a Young Adult imprint of Scholastic Press.

Find David:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

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Labels: audiobooks, contemporary, david levithan, funfunfun, john green, lgbt, penguin, reviews, will grayson-will grayson

{Audiobook} Review: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Title: The Fault in Our Stars
Author: John Green
Series: stand-alone
Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Publication Date: January 10, 2012
Source: purchased
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 13, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumors in her lungs... for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumors tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

Somebody needs to smack me around for taking my sweet time getting to this book.  Especially since I've had a signed copy on my shelf for ages.  I guess even I was tired of waiting on me to get around to reading it, though, 'cause I ended up listening to the audio instead.  I don't think there's a word for how far from being a mistake that decision was.

“What a slut time is. She screws everybody.”

Kate Rudd perfectly executed the narration of the verbose Hazel Grace and the loquacious Augustus Waters.  Her portrayal of these two unbelievably poignant characters still has me pondering the book, days after finishing it.  Every bit of the dialogue felt as if I were listening in on a real conversation between two real people, the wit and dry humor perfectly reflected in their sarcasm and clever banter.  Rudd's intonation was such that every emotion could be felt through the headphones as if it were my own.  I am not a cryer, and I'm not sure if I would have cried reading this novel to myself, but Rudd's interpretation of this book managed to bring me to tears.  And not just a few, either...no I was ugly crying, sobbing at my desk at work like someone had just run over my childhood dog.  (Luckily, I share my office with my sister, and she understood...I even got her to listen to it!)

I don't know what I can really say about this novel that hasn't already been said.  But, maybe I should mention that this is my first John Green novel, so I had zero expectations going into it, other than having been warned that I would bawl my eyes out.  (Which I did.)  However, I do have experience with novels about cancer and other illnesses.  I really don't want to admit this, but I had a penchant for Lurlene McDaniel's novels when I was a prepubescent youth.  I know, I know.  Looking back now, those novels were kind of really ridiculous.  Regardless, they don't hold a candle to how realistic and genuine and just lovely the story of Hazel and Augustus is.

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

Their story is beautifully sad and even amazingly funny at times, and it is masterfully told without coming off as morose or by making light of the situation these two kids are faced with.  And what endears me to this author further is that the characters are intelligent and clever and sound like real teenagers, not the perceived notion of them.  And Green took chances with these characters.  They are quirky and imperfect.  They're dealing with issues and illnesses that some have never even heard of, and they don't always take things in stride.  But it is the imperfect way in which they handle life's setbacks that make them honest, real, and right.

“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”

This may have been my first John Green book, but it will not be my last.  I finally see what all the fuss is about.  And now I want to read and own every book he's ever written.  Because I can't imagine this book is a fluke.  Or that thousands of people could be that wrong.

“My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.”

Rating: 

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Labels: audiobooks, contemporary, favorites, john green, must-read, penguin, reviews, the fault in our stars, tough subject

Judging a Book By Its Cover #10: A Kid's Perspective on The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Okay, so I totally stole this idea from Sara at Forever 17 Books, who got the idea from an article on Babble called Judging a Book by Its Cover: A 6-year-old Guesses What Classic Novels Are All About.  I just discovered her lovely segment, and I immediately requested forced my own four-year-old daughter Katie to provide me with some of her own cover art artwork and then asked her what she thought the book was about.



This week, Katie gave me her take on the following book:

"I think it's a mystery of finding green things, about things that are green and are lost.  And the girl is going to find green things."  When I asked her why green, she said that the last word was GREEN, duh.

Cover Art

The Fault in Our Stars as envisioned by Katie

Man, my kid cracks me up sometimes.  =)  She picked this one off the shelf and begged to color it next.  But then when I asked her why she didn't finish, she said she was too tired.  Silly girl.  She also wants me to read it next.  I have a signed copy, but I also got the audio really cheap in one of Audible's recent sales, so I will probably listen to it instead so that I can get to it sooner rather than later.  Just as soon as I catch up on my audio reviews. ;0)  I know, I know.  I need to get on that.

Have you read The Fault in Our Stars?  If so, what do you think of Katie's guess at the premise?  Did your little darling create a work of art based on a book this week? If so, be sure to link up with Sara over at Forever 17 Books.

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Labels: contemporary, cover art, john green, judging a book by its cover, katiebug, the fault in our stars, tough subject

Judging a Book By Its Cover #6: A Kid's Perspective on Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson & Lauren Myracle

Okay, so I totally stole this idea from Sara at Forever 17 Books, who got the idea from an article on Babble called Judging a Book by Its Cover: A 6-year-old Guesses What Classic Novels Are All About.  I just discovered her lovely segment, and I immediately requested forced my own four-year-old daughter Katie to provide me with some of her own cover art artwork and then asked her what she thought the book was about.



This week, Katie picked a holiday-themed novel to discuss and recreate:

"It's about how much I love Christmas!!!" - screamed with much emphasis by the kid who keeps asking me when it's going to be Christmas  =)

Cover Art by Katie:

Let It Snow as envisioned by Katie

I actually haven't read this one yet, but I'm hoping that between wrapping and last minute shopping and baking and all that good stuff, I'll be able to read these three stories from three fabulous authors.  It may not be about how much my Katiebug loves Christmas, but I'm sure there is a Christmas-y good time to be had, regardless.  ;0)

So, what do you think of Katie's attempt at recreating this cover and her summary?  Did your little darling create a work of art based on a book this week?  If so, be sure to link up with Sara over at Forever 17 Books.

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Labels: anthology, cover art, holidays, john green, judging a book by its cover, katiebug, lauren myracle, let it snow, maureen johnson