Customer Reviews

Looking for Alaska

5 star:		(174)
4 star:		(50)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

...and read this book in one sitting. Okay, it's short and incredibly good, which makes it easy to bolt down. But then you are going to feel like an idiot for not savoring the pleasure, and you're going to be bleary as hell the next day (if you finish it at 4 in the morning, like I did).

This book deals with the Big Ones: suffering, loss, and grief, but it does so with such compassion and humor that the net impact is uplifting. Even the principal turns out to be a human being. There are no cardboard cut-out characters here.

Be aware that the kids in this story do what kids actually do (smoke, drink, and have sex). If that bothers you, read it anyway. There are more important things in life than observing proprieties and pretending that bright kids aren't exploratory. You don't have to approve of these characters. It is enough to love them and learn from them.

Green's debut YA novel follows a year in the life of high school junior Miles Halter, a friendless Floridian who begged his parents to enroll him in the Culver Creek boarding school. Miles dreams of starting anew at his elite Alabama prep school, of finding Francois Rabelais's "The Great Perhaps." At school, he falls in with a prankster of a roommate, the Colonel, and the sassy, sexy, messed-up Alaska Young. For an unforgettable 128 days, Miles learns life lessons in love, loyalty, friendship, literature, and poetry, as well as experiences the thrill of a first girlfriend. When tragedy strikes Culver Creek, Miles is forced to undertake an even closer examination of his own character and relationship with his friends.

This is an outstanding coming-of-age novel that has already proved to be a favorite teen read. It doesn't resort to a cop out of a "happily ever after" ending, but the characters each seek closure on their own terms. The characters are well-drawn, witty, and full of individual quirks and spunk. Green even manages to bring in the reality of cigarettes and alcohol without a preachy or over-glorifying tone. This novel has won the Teen's Top 10 award as well as the Printz Award, and Green is well on his way to YA superstardom. I'm looking forward to his next novel.

Somewhere between searching for the secret to winning at Texas Holdem in Doyle Brunson's SUPER SYSTEM II, A COURSE IN POWER POKER, and envying a 101 year old lady boat captain in Jimmy Buffett's A SALTY PIECE OF LAND, I found John Green's Young Adult Novel, LOOKING FOR ALASKA.

I kept looking at the alluring cover of ALASKA on my night stand and decided that POWER POKER could wait and rushed through A SALTY PIECE.

If you have a child going to boarding school soon, goes there now or has gone there, as my son did, you must read LOOKING FOR ALASKA. If you want to understand the loneliness, happiness, mischief, joy, sorrow, sadness and a few other emotions of a teenager, you must read LOOKING FOR ALASKA. If you are convinced your teenager will not mature until much later, you better not read ALASKA. If you are concerned about the experiences that your teenager might have, do not read ALASKA. If you are a teenager, read this book!

Need help with a pair of Aces? Simple - see Doyle. Got Margaritaville on your mind? No problem - Jimmy is your man. But if you want to come of age with an extraordinarily endearing group of kids, read this book.

My son tells me it is being touted as Young Adult Fiction. I don't know about that. I can only tell you that at 64, I am a younger man for having read it.

As a student at the school Culver Creek is based on, I enjoyed the book on two levels. I enjoyed it first as literature. Though the dialogue is occasionally too clever, and the end includes a little more explanation of Alaska's last night than I'd have liked, Looking for Alaska is a wonderful book about taking risks, exploring, experiencing life, and coming of age. I enjoyed it second as a book about my high school, Indian Springs School. I've been to the stables and that infamous TV room, gotten records from the school judiciary, I know the man the Eagle is based on, etc. I just want to say that in addition to being a great read in and of itself, Looking for Alaska captures Indian Springs School perfectly. John Green has a great ability to make his scenes and characters breathe, a great mind, and a great heart. I definitely recommend Looking for Alaska.

This book is esitially about a lot of messed up kids bumbling their way through a private school. The story centers on a Boy named Miles who memorizes last words, Miles decides that he needs a change from his boring and pointless high school creaer so far so he dicides to venture into the "Great Perhaps" and look for grander meaning at a bording school. There he meets Alaska Young a sexy and screwed up girl who opens up Miles eyes to the world and strips him of his innocence. She finds him his first girlfriend, gives him his first real drink, gets him hooked on cigretts, and is his first love.

What makes this book so good is that it's actually about smart kids going through high school who's only thoughts aren't what there wearing to prom, but instead about the world and who they are and what they're living. The author dosen't try and turn teenagers into air-heads or children, but instead examines what's actually like to be 17. The confison with the world and what it wants of you, the diser to rebel, and the feelings of responsiblity that you are just truly growing into.

In "Looking For Alaska," Green explores the themes of friendship, loss, and coping. The main character, the initially maladjusted and melancholic Pudge, tries boarding school as a means to finding a better life, inspired by such boarding school notables as James Joyce and JFK. He makes friends, has adventures, and experiences the highs and lows of an engaged life. The friends are fiery, nerdy, inspiring, and foreign-- a hodge-podge of endearingly genuine outsiders. Pudge is self-effacing and reflective. Consequently, his delivery of events is wryly charming.

The book moves Pudge through many firsts (kiss, drink, etc), growing extroversion, love, grief, hatred, and philosophy. Fear not: This is not simply a novel of ideas and emotional stages, because it has enough pranks, smoking, drinking, breaking the rules, and scorning the "cool kids" to provide a beautiful counterpoint to earnest soul-searching. John Green has proved himself to be no lightweight, and in doing so, he has also adroitly avoided being heavy-handed.

My favorite quote is pure philosophizing though: (Page 218) "Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless." An excellent mimesis of angst and regret!

"Looking for Alaska" is such a celebratory jugendsbildungsroman that I heartily recommend it to those that can laugh retrospectively at their own awkward youthful firsts; to those that have ever questioned authority and found it as potentially fallible as the rest of human endeavor; to those that enjoy well written literature.

One person may read John Green's YA novel LOOKING FOR ALASKA and see more than enough questionable behaviors to necessitate the public banning of a book. (Yes, some loonies out there actually suggested this.) Another might look past those things and see a tight-knit group of teens exploring the Great Perhaps and trying to decide What will happen in this life? and What will we do when it hurts? and What happens after this life? "Is it nothing? POOF?" Or is there more?

Maybe Alaska, the girl who intrigues everyone she meets, is right. Maybe "straight and fast" is the best way to navigate this life.

Miles Halter may not have a clue about Alaska or her philosophy on life, but if you try to stump him, you'll soon learn that when it comes to the last words of famous people he knows his stuff. They've always intrigued him, as if someone's last words say "in bulk" who someone really is as a person. When Miles leaves for boarding school, he doesn't expect to experience much of the Great Perhaps, but he's glad he does, even if it changes his life forever. His life collision with the Colonel, Lara, Takumi, and especially Alaska, fills his life with something he's never had, both friends and experiences he'll never forget.

But it's the questions that rise from The Old Man's religion class that open up their lives and take this book to a level deeper than most YA books I've ever read.

"How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?" "How do you fit the uncontestable fact of suffering into your understanding of the world?" "How do you hope to navigate through life in spite of it?" "What is your cause for hope?"

Big questions, certainly. Questions that thinking adults sometimes stop to ask themselves, and now perhaps, so do young adults.

Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

This was one of the best books I have ever read. It was supposedly written for the "young adult" genre, but encompasses some very real, and very mature values and emotions, that anyone, within any age group, can benefit from experiencing first hand. This book wraps up the reader, twists his/her emotions in a knot, and takes him/her on a wild and tulmultuous ride up until the last word.

Positively amazing. FINALLY we get a main character with a personality, a character who's not a loser, whon's not hopeless and desperate and grieving and purposefully searching, he just IS. And he embodies the teenage spirit so quickly and so purely. _Looking for Alaska_ perfectly balances introspective and extrospective, as Pudge's emotional relationships with the people around him contrast with his poignantly hilarious inner thoughts.

This book was amazing! I loved how the story covered deep things like the meaning of life and falling in love, but it wasn't over my head. I think this is the only book where I've both laughed aloud and still cried about. The characters came alive - I almost wish there were a sequel, but I think that would ruin the book's impact. Yes, some grown-ups might be wary of letting their teenagers read this, what with the sex and drinking and all, but I think it's worth it. Everything else in the book compensated. But it's too bad there's so much (cough) objectionable content for high school LA classes to read it, since it'd be wonderful for discussion. John Green has unbelievable talent and I hope he writes more! Looking for Alaska is a fantastic book, worth everyone's time.