Did I Ever Mention That I Love John Green?

It happened again. Don't expect me to be capable of using Amazon to order all my Year 13 books without sneaking in something I actually want to read as well... Sorry A2 Politics textbook but you don't really fit that definition. I don't think there's anything I would prefer to arrive in the post on a Saturday when I don't have to get up to do anything than a new (to me) book that I can dive into and read pretty much in one go. This one was no exception. According to Wikipedia Paper Towns is Youtuber John Green's third novel, but I know this is true because I have also read AND LOVED Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines. And don't even get me started on The Fault In Our Stars. I love this book so much it feels like a tiny piece of my soul.

 

Anyway. Thoughts. It would be wrong to say that Paper Towns is a love story, not because it isn't, but because its so much more than that. Its a growing up story, a coming-of-age tale of life in a small town on the edge of a huge country full of futures. Its about friendship, knowing who you are while accepting that all that could change at any moment. Its about road trips, adventure and mystery. Its about “a lovely, eccentric girl; a mystery that begs to be solved by clever, quirky teens," but also about a boy. A boy who believes in college and jobs and the future and spends his final days of high school questioning all of those beliefs. Paper Towns is all about confronting what is and isn't real. The imaginary towns drawn onto maps that don't really exist are "paper," but so are the suburbs and the communities full of houses that all look the same, containing the cookie-cutter lives of people who grew up accepting "the whole allure of a life rightly lived." There probably isn't anyone alive who hasn't found themselves, at some point, asking these questions and it helps sometimes, when you feel like you're struggling to decipher the point to existence, to read a book like this.

 

I liked it a lot, but I'm kind of struggling to put into words as to why. I think it may be one of those books that you read fast and then put down for a few months while it simmers away in the back of your head until you pick it up again and go Oh I Get This Now. This Is All So True And etc. etc. One part I really liked was the idea that "the metaphors have implications." The way we decide to perceive things does affect the world and the way things are. The whole book felt full of little moments like this; tiny sentences of wisdom, in between the drama and humour and car crashes, after-proms and midnight break-ins of the plot. Drunken chats in empty bathtubs at parties with people you had never spoken to before. Falling asleep on long drives. Maps on bedroom walls, highlighted bits in books, messages to your friends, lying to parents, sneaking out and back in again. All of these things are so recognizable as parts of growing up: everyone can find a memory of their teenage years in here.

 

Much of Paper Towns is structured around this incomprehensible poem by Walt Whitman. I searched through the internet for a bit and eventually I found one quote that I liked from part of Song Of Myself: "My words itch at your ears till you understand them." I might have to let Paper Towns itch at my ears for a while until I get it but I would still definitely recommend reading it. I think its quite rare for books aimed at teenagers and young adults to be about stuff that actually means something. It can feel like if you want to read something that understands the questions that are nagging at you about life or the future or whatever your choices are limited to books written in the past. Obviously there's nothing wrong with this, but equally it would be wrong to limit philosophical questioning and stuff to *old* books. We should be doing it today as well, because sometimes it feels like there's more and more options and more and more to question than ever.

Okay I'm done. If you've read Paper Towns or any other John Green books, what did you think?

I wear short skirts, I wear t-shirts.

 "Because she wears high heels, I wear sneakers. She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers..."

Firstly, I love Taylor Swift. Her music makes me want to dance around my bedroom, singing into my hairbrush. It cheers me up after a bad day, a long shift at work or a fight with someone I care about. It makes me smile when I'm already in a good mood, and is the only thing I want playing on a long train journey. I have some tissue paper hearts that came out of the confetti cannon at her Summertime Ball performance on my wall of posters in my room and I own most, if not almost all, of the music she has released. Red is my running music, Speak Now gets me up in the morning and Fearless plays through my headphones while I fall asleep. Listening to We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together got me through my GCSE revision last year as whenever I thought I was going to go mental doing chemistry questions, maths equations or history past papers I would get up and dance madly around my house, singing along and blasting it from my speakers. And I will be the most excited person in the country when she announces UK dates for the Red Tour.

However, listening to the lyrics of You Belong With Me the other day, I realised something. Although it may be my favourite Taylor Swift song, and definitely her best video, it kind of made me sad. Its safe to say its a pretty well known fact that Taylor is famous not only for her music but for her high profile relationships and break ups as well, so it probably isn't a surprise to anyone when she writes songs about heartbreak and girls stealing her boyfriends from her. But something that occurs almost as frequently in her songs as mentions of beautiful blue eyes and driving trucks through the rain, are lines where she sounds pretty harsh or judgemental about other girls. She is a star, so it is in the job description to be entertaining and make music that people will love and want to listen to over and over. You may think that it doesn't really matter whether Taylor Swift makes a bitchy comment in a song - whether its about what a girl "does on the mattress" or what a guy is doing "with a girl like that?" - and you would be right. With people dying in wars all over the world and losing their jobs and homes due to the economy, the lyrics in music could be seen is completely irrelevant. But you could also argue that it is important; that how we talk about people is what makes us who we are.

And, honestly, that line just really irritated me. Because we all (girls.. mostly) have days where we do want to get up in the morning and put on a really short skirt and a lot of eye make up. Perhaps you're not feeling very confident or there's someone you want to impress, maybe you just want to dress up for the day. And sometimes on Taylor Swift's planet it seems like that makes those girls into the "slutty" girls. But at the same time, maybe even the next day, you might wear jeans and trainers, or go bare-faced, not even bothering with mascara and does that then make you the "sweet and innocent" one? The one "listening to the kind of music she doesn't like?" Not really. The way you dress shouldn't influence what other people think of you, and even though the image you present to world can sometimes feel like the most important thing in the world, it's not. Who you are doesn't change because of how you dress or how your hair looks. And sometimes, I want to wear high heels and sneakers at the same time. That's why wedge trainers were invented, okay.

My little sister, her friends and many people their age and younger all love Taylor and I think a lot of parents would prefer their daughter to be singing along to her music rather than Rihanna or Ke$ha. Its a little more innocent and while they may not actually understand some of the lyrics, Taylor Swift's whole image is just that bit more classy, more appropriate for younger girls to look up to. However as much as this is a good thing to have role models, and to admire people who are talented or successful, I think its just as important, personally, to be a "good" person. The definition of this could vary depending on different people's values, or what they see as important, but overall I would say you should be kind about other people. We're all guilty of it, and people who know me might be laughing if they read this, as I have a really sarcastic sense of humour and can probably say some very harsh things. This isn't necessarily something I'm proud of though, and I hope that people know that when I laugh at them, its because we're friends, not in spite of it!

 

So Taylor, maybe you need to take the advice Tina Fey gave you at the Golden Globes. Maybe you do need some "me-time to learn about yourself." And even though I really, really, really loved when Ed Sheeran came on stage with you and sang Everything Has Changed, maybe don't date him just yet. I don't think the world can take another really good break up album with lots of acoustic guitars and it definitely isn't going to handle two. And, last thing - I promise, please don't make that face again, the next time Adele wins an award you wanted... because we all know what you're thinking. And it makes the lyrics to this song look really ironic.
xxx

Don't Forget To Be Awesome...

When was the last time you read a book from cover to cover? The last time you read your way into a whole new universe, barely pausing to take a breath between chapters, the relationships and characters becoming as familiar to you as the people in the next room?

For me, it was over the last three days in which I read my way through Looking For Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines, both by the amazing author and youtuber John Green. While I consider myself a huge fan of John Green - Crash Course World History pretty much saved my life right before my exam on the Crusades, and god knows what I would have written about in my English Literature exam without having watched his multiple and brilliant videos on The Great Gatsby (thanks, basically) - it occurred to me the other day that I had only read one of his books.

Despite the fact that, in my opinion, if you cried as many tears as I did while reading The Fault In Our Stars, then you don't really need to read any other JG books to call yourself a number one fan, I decided, seeing as I was at the moment of this realisation, actually in a bookshop, with a giftcard burning a hole in my purse, looking at a sign announcing: "Buy One, Get One Half Price!" I decided that the universe was probably trying to tell me something.

So I bought the aforementioned LFA and AAOK, took them home, got back from work the following day and then had precisely no human interaction until I had finished them both. (Okay, I'm exaggerating slightly, I did have to, like, talk to my family and other people who were physically in my house or otherwise un-ignorable) but I literally could not put these books down.

I read TFIOS in November last year, around the time I read The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, and absolutely fell in love with it. This may be one of the reasons I didn't read any of the other available JG books for so long - the worst thing about discovering an amazing author is always the fear that the one book you loved so much happens to be a fluke and the rest of their body of work is nowhere near as good.

However, this was not the case this time. Although LFA didn't quite live up to the expectations I had for it (but to be fair they were pretty - extremely - high) once I had got into the characters and the story I found myself laughing, crying, full-on sobbing at one point, and basically just experiencing the emotional rollercoaster along with Pudge, The Colonel, Takumi, Alaska and Lara. The entire book is a whirlwind of excitement, drama, love, and the kind of high-school experience everyone (secretly) wishes, aside from the obvious exception, they could have had. Read it - I promise you won't regret it for a second. Cheesy as it may be: it will change the way you see the world.

AAOK was, surprisingly, just as good as the other two books, but in a way that snuck up on me. Colin and Hassan, Lindsey and Katrina, The Other Colin and his friends, not to mention Hollis and all 19 of the Katherines, are characters you believe in, laugh with, cry over and eventually matter to you in the way that makes you sad when you have to put the book down and realise there's no more story left. (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WRITE A SEQUEL, JOHN GREEN.) I felt that the power of the message hits you harder in AAOK, maybe because you don't expect it as much. The book appears, at first and in its many laugh-out-loud hilarious moments, to be more of a comedy than TFIOS or LFA, both of which are pretty much sob-fests for a good 75% of the pages, but surprisingly its just as poignant and touching as you would expect any good read to be. Read this one too - unless laughing and crying your way through a roadtrip, a mystery, a broken heart, a disastrous pig hunt and 19 crushingly disappointing relationships doesn't sound like a good idea to you (you freak.) And don't worry, understanding maths isn't in anyway essential to understanding the story, which revolves around the hopeless, but permanently hopeful, child "prodigy" Colin.


Never stop writing stories John Green. I now have to go and buy his other two books (Paper Towns and Will Grayson, Will Grayson) just to see if he can maintain this streak of writing incredible, heart-breaking, hilarious and unforgettable novels. Is it just me who wants to live in a world where these wonderful, unique people are real? I want to camp out in a forest with Alaska, explore Gutshot, Tennessee with Colin, and fly to Amsterdam with Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters. The actors have been cast for The Fault In Our Stars movie, my heart is already waiting to be crushed into a zillion pieces all over again and all I need now is for Kaya Scodelario to be given the role she was clearly born to play... (no prizes for guessing - could there be a better Alaska Young?)

To be honest, all I have to say to anyone, who, like me, is putting off the point when they have to admit to themselves that its time to read another John Green book is to promise them they won't be disappointed. Whether you choose to go on a road trip and attempt to convert love into an algorithm (confusing maths thingy) or go to a school where pranks are a way of life and the only crime is getting caught, discover rooms with books for walls and strawberry wine buried under the fields, whichever incredible world you choose to enter, the one thing you won't be is disappointed.

As John Green says: "Books belong to their readers," and TFIOS, LFA and AAOK now belong to me the way that I Capture The Castle, The Great Gatsby and all the Harry Potters do, earning their place as My Favourite Books.