Looking for Alaska

by John Green

My current author obsession? John Green. Why? Tots obvs. He's brilliant. The Fault in Our Stars? And now, after reading Looking for Alaska? I must immediately read everything this man has ever put down on paper. He writes for a "young adult" audience, and his stories typically revolve around teenage characters. However, I love how he doesn't write his characters as people who are too young to know any better, or with shallow emotions. He writes his characters with depth, with true and heartbreaking emotion. They struggle with finding themselves, discovering love and making their way through the "labyrinth of suffering".

Looking for Alaska centers around our narrator "Pudge" as ventures to boarding school (voluntarily) to seek his "great perhaps". He meets an array of  characters who break him out of his daily stupor and essentially change who he is, no one more than Alaska. Sure, this process involves a lot of smoking cigarettes and getting drunk out in the woods... but it also involves great friendship, love, and loss. I'm still thinking about this story and Pudge's revelations days after finishing it. Let me just include some quotes from the book to spark some interest...

"When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail." - John Green, Looking for Alaska

"So I walked back to my room and collapse on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane." -John Green, Looking for Alaska

Please read this, and call me so we can talk about this modern day Breakfast Club of a novel.

The Name of the Wind

by Patrick Rothfuss

     I was gifted this book by my fabulous friend Stephanie. She is an absolutely voracious reader, and I trust her reading opinion implicitly. When she gave The Name of the Wind to me for my birthday, it was because she's (and I quote) "obsessed" with the series, and "you like books like this". I do? I do! At first, I wasn't sure if I was a fan of  the fantasy genre, but on closer reflection it's pretty clear that I am. Especially since The Name of the Wind runs along the fantasy lines found in books like Diana Gabaldon's Outlander, which I LOVE. Add a mix of the magical academia found in Harry Potter, and I'm hopelessly sucked in.
     Enough rambling, back to the review. Set. Go. I'm not going to hold back... this book was fantastic. It is the beginning of an epic story that is supposed to last over the course of three huge novels (this one was over 700 pages long). The story is told by the hero Quothe in his later years, when he is discovered hiding from the world  and his past in a small tavern during a time when unspeakable creatures roam the countryside. Through his own storytelling, we learn about his early life and years at the university, his triumphs and his flaws. With his honesty, Quothe becomes a totally relatable hero despite his almost inhuman capabilities. There is a side plot regarding a drug-addicted dragon that I don't think was strictly necessary, but it added another opportunity for Quothe to demonstrate the hero that he was slowly developing into. Rothfuss mixes action, magic, love, and a hero story with seamless effort that I lost myself in. As soon as I feel up to starting another fat novel, his follow up in the series will be on my bedside table.