Looking For Alaska by John Green

“I Go to Seek a Great Perhaps”

Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called a “Great Perhaps.”

Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.

Looking For Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another. A modern classic, this stunning debut, marked #1 international bestselling author John Green’s arrival as a groundbreaking new voice in contemporary fiction.

“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”

This was my first John Green experience…. and I LOVED it. Looking For Alaska reminded me a lot of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in Rye that I read in highschool, AKA the only book that I really enjoyed reading in school. That is probably why I read this ENTIRE book in one sitting. I wish that I had read this year ago, as I can’t even image how much more awesome this read would have been if I was reading it as a teen and having that instant connection. A definite must read for all high schoolers.

This quote from the book where Miles is describing Alaska, pretty much sums up me and this book.

“So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.”

John Green managed to pull all my emotional strings and make my cry like a little baby. I fell in love with Miles. I fell in love with Alaska. I even fell in love with Takumi.

“What the hell is that?” I laughed.

“It’s my fox hat.”

“Your fox hat?”

“Yeah, Pudge. My fox hat.”

“Why are you wearing your fox hat?” I asked.

“Because no one can catch the motherfucking fox.”