Nose in A Book: Paper Towns

  • Jan 30, 2014

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I am excited to be starting a new feature on my blog: book reviews! I’ve always loved reading, and I’ve been wanting to expand my posts beyond just fashion. I’m also pondering a name change, but that’s another post.
I finished reading Paper Towns by John Green last night it was pretty good. I read it in two sections, the first half last year but I had to return it before I could finish it. Then I spotted it in my friend’s dorm room last week and asked to borrow it, so after a year I have finally finished it!

This makes a total of five John Green books that I’ve read, and I think this one is my second favorite (The Fault in Our Stars being my first favorite).

I’ll give you the dust jacket synopsis, since I’m not the greatest at summarizing things:
“When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night—dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows her. Margo’s always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she’s always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they’re for Q.”
It was fun, interesting read, and I was surprised by the ending, which is a good thing. Some of John Green’s other stories seem to follow a bit of a pattern, or at least he has certain plot elements that pop up in a lot of his stories, but this one was a bit different.

Having the story be a mystery added a new element of problem solving that was really entertaining to read. Margo is a complex character, and I like that he portrayed her as being clever and selfish and strong and weak at the same time. I also appreciated her taste or classic literature (Leaves of Grass and The Bell Jar). As an English major, it’s kind of exiting to see the things you’ve studied elsewhere. Sometimes they can seem so dull and confusing when you’re reading them, but  it’s fun to have that connection when you see them in a different context.

Quentin was a great main character as well. I liked how his though patterns formed and how he would fall into the same traps of romanticizing Margo and then realizing he was wrong over and over again. I think that was one of the things that felt most real to me about the story: no matter how many times you correct your thoughts they have a way of straying from reality into a dream world where things make sense and fit together neatly.
The supporting characters were all fun to read too, as they usually are in Green’s novels. He always manages to walk the fine line between realistic and over the top personalities, but he does it well. They’re just enough to contrast with the main character while still feeling relatable.

I would definitely recommend checking out John Green’s work if you haven’t. He’s not my favorite author, but he’s definitely one if the better young adult authors. The movie adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars comes out in June/July and the trailer came out today. You can check it out here. It looks wonderfully cast, and from what I’ve heard it should be very close to the book. I know John Green was on set for a lot of the filming, so they definitely took his opinion into account. Of course, I still think you should read the book if you can. I’ve read it a few times and have always enjoyed it.

I hope you liked this book review. Hopefully it will be the first of many, and the beginning of a new chapter in my blog (no pun intended, haha).

~Kelsey

January 19, 2014

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