Home » Blogs » Looking For Alaska

Looking For Alaska

■■■■■ A Definite MUST read!

□□□□ Really good. You should read it!

□□□ It was okay, I finished it. Something was missing.

□□ Read it if you’ve already read the cereal box twice.

Time I’ll never get back. Probably didn’t finish it.


Looking for Alaska

By John Green

Publication Date 2005

John Green does an excellent job transporting the reader into the lives and emotions of his characters. Looking For Alaska is a story about a group of friends at a boarding school. These students break the rules almost constantly and go to bat for each other when they get caught. Even though they come from very different backgrounds, their friendship makes sense.

The story is interesting and I found myself revisiting the old question, what happens after we die? This question is visited throughout the book; from their “illegal” after-lights-out get-togethers, to their world religion class. The main character’s obsession with famous people’s last words brings a nice touch of brevity to the subject.

The book is divided into two parts: before and after—a reference to a traumatic event. This event doesn’t bog the story down it creates a subtle tension that kept me turning the pages (although I was already turning them at a good rate).

Green excels at writing young adult fiction, but I think his themes apply to adults as well because adults have been through adolescence and quite frankly, do we change all that much when we become adults?

This is a book that will stay with you for a long time. I blazed through it in a day but it deserves a reread at a leisurely pace. If you like a story that is entertaining, thought provoking, philosophical, and less than 225 pages, this is a great book for you.

Do not be deterred by the fact it is called young adult, as C.S. Lewis said, “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.”

Read it.

Leave a Reply

Sierra News Online

Sierra News Online