Paper Towns

Warning - Some spoilers for this book and "Looking for Alaska". It's kind of impossible to not talk about that book.

This book has me...well, confused. See, normally, when I don't quite know which side of the fence I fall on with a book, Goodreads' reviews have a way of straightening me out. Either I read them and think "Yeah, okay, I can agree with this", or "Are you insane? How could you get anywhere close to that conclusion? Is there a way I can physically revoke your access to this website?" That contact forces me to form an opinion. And I came here expecting that.

That's not what greeted me.

People seem pretty firmly rooted on one or the other side when it comes to this book. Some might have a pinkie toe over the partition. Truth of the matter is, if you can honestly read this book and tell me that it's "irritating" or "terribly written", you clearly haven't read enough bad books. That's the good thing about Green - like or dislike his overall story, his writing never stales. It's beautiful, the metaphors are interesting, and the characters have just enough personality that I can almost see myself hanging out with them after a Saturday night booze cruise that ended in self discovery. But if you can wholeheartedly brand it with five stars without so much as mentioning Pudge, Alaska, the Katherines...you either are blind or have never read another Green book in your life.

Which brings me, I guess, to my core issue with this book - if I had read this before "Looking for Alaska", which would I have liked more?

I mean, Margo is pretty much Alaska except alive and (maybe) not mentally ill. "Looking for Alaska", at the least, has an excuse. It was the first of Green's works. He didn't have this little cookie cutter pattern.

And then again, as much as I would like to bash the formula, I also kind of like it. I like the idea of having the zany character and the straight man, and watching the zany one crumble to the surprise of the straight man who then has to spread their wings and...yes, there is some sort of comfort to it. Not to mention that, while the core idea is certainly the same, the zany characters all differ in how exactly they're unique, and the straight men all differ in how they're, erm, straight. They might all love wild adventures, but Margo's are very meticulously planned out, and Alaska's are very spur of the moment (even including her death!). And if you shrug and say "big shit, Margo writes out her plans in a notebook, how does that make her character any different", Green's writing isn't for you, and you might never get it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there's no point in you sticking around his works.

Of course, that's just my outside perspective. But I think that's really the only way I can look at this book. From an analytical standpoint, I'm neutral, stuck. Unable to form an actual opinion. But thinking about it...maybe that's a good thing. The book was fun to read. I think many people need to be reminded that a book can be fun to read, but not necessarily a groundbreaking masterpiece. So I'll give it four stars, for the ride. I want to see Green's formula change, but for now...

Also, if you really think that Margo was an attention whore, you clearly have forgotten your high school years and need to remove your head from its lodging in your ass. Everyone wants to be remembered. Everyone. ( )

I didn't like Looking for Alaska very much at all, but this one -- which certainly shares some DNA with Alaska -- had a much bigger payoff. It's humorously written (I laughed out loud plenty), has fewer rough spots in terms of character interactions and plot, moves along at a good pace without ever starting to bog down as Alaska did for me, and was generally a fun but fairly heavy (in a good way) read. I'm glad I picked it up. ( )

I liked parts of this book. I really enjoyed the bits about leaving, and the line, "It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world." I think the entire concept of paper towns is kind of cool and also ridiculous.

I hated pretty much everything about Manic Pixie Dream Girl Margo Roth Spiegelman, and I did not particularly care for the ending. It just seemed so trite, and not necessarily in line with the rest of the story. ( )

I'm glad I stuck this book out in the end. It chronicles the way we envision and imagine each other. The painful reality of growing up and facing our idols as flesh-and-blood people is poignant and real and raw. ( )

Good book with fun characters. ( )