Penguin Minis: Looking for Alaska

by John Green

Book Overview

"Will slip equally well into a pocket as a Christmas stocking." - The Wall Street Journal , " What to Give, " holiday gift guide. Introducing Penguin Minis #1 bestselling author John Green like you've never read him before. - Featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC's "The World," Real Simple, BuzzFeed, Bustle, and more John Green's critically acclaimed debut, Looking for Alaska , is now available as a Penguin Mini edition. Complete...

Customer Reviews

Pretty good.

Good, book wouldn't say amazing.

Made me sob a

Amazing

Has a great plot line, just very poorly executed.

John Green’s writing style is absolutely irritating, the way he writes Romanian accents is nothing short from irritating and that’s just the tip of the iceberg in this book. It’s so poorly written all throughout the book you’ll find yourself going back and rereading the same sentence three and four times trying to decipher it. I’ve had Read a good amount of books however this is probably the worst one I’ve read. I would recommend don’t waste your time.

One of my favorites!!

Loved this book. I could not put it down.

Love love love!!!

My all time favorite book. Read it all the time and or still has the same emotional effect as the first time around. Beautifully written!!

Wonderful read!

This book was AWESOME! Once I picked it up I couldn’t put it down! Read the whole book in a 24 hour period. I love John Green, I think this is one of his best books yet!

Meh

I know that this is one of John Green’s more beloved books, but I found it incredibly boring. I get it’s a darker subject so it’s not gonna be filled with laughter or anything, but it just dragged on. I tried to read it twice and both times I stopped half way through.

Great book

I read this book the first time and I had to buy it because I knew it'd be a book I'd read more than once.

My favorite Book Ever!

I cried, laughed, and then cried some more. John Green is a great writer and very knows how to pull on the heart strings of teens. You must read this book!

John Green is amazing!

This is my favorite John Green book. It's so perfect.

Amazing!!!!

This book teaches so many things, not only the feeling of being lost but the truth behind grief. Its amazing how it describes how 3 different religions can be so different but still so similar. Loved how each character thinks for their own and the way they see "the after life". Truly inspiring.

Oh, My God, John Green

Okay, so this book is amazing. I loved the quotes (I completely marked up my copy with highlighter), I loved the characters, I loved that there was nothing cookie cutter about this book. I laughed until it hurt, and I cried so hard that I thought I was going to fall apart, and I got so angry at some parts that I threw my book across a room. It was amazing. A must read.

I love this book!!!!

This book is esitially about a lot of messed up kids bumbling their way through a private school. The story centers on a Boy named Miles who memorizes last words, Miles decides that he needs a change from his boring and pointless high school creaer so far so he dicides to venture into the "Great Perhaps" and look for grander meaning at a bording school. There he meets Alaska Young a sexy and screwed up girl who opens up Miles eyes to the world and strips him of his innocence. She finds him his first girlfriend, gives him his first real drink, gets him hooked on cigretts, and is his first love. What makes this book so good is that it's actually about smart kids going through high school who's only thoughts aren't what there wearing to prom, but instead about the world and who they are and what they're living. The author dosen't try and turn teenagers into air-heads or children, but instead examines what's actually like to be 17. The confison with the world and what it wants of you, the diser to rebel, and the feelings of responsiblity that you are just truly growing into.

A brilliant YA debut with an authentic voice about life lessons in a boarding school

Green's debut YA novel follows a year in the life of high school junior Miles Halter, a friendless Floridian who begged his parents to enroll him in the Culver Creek boarding school. Miles dreams of starting anew at his elite Alabama prep school, of finding Francois Rabelais's "The Great Perhaps." At school, he falls in with a prankster of a roommate, the Colonel, and the sassy, sexy, messed-up Alaska Young. For an unforgettable 128 days, Miles learns life lessons in love, loyalty, friendship, literature, and poetry, as well as experiences the thrill of a first girlfriend. When tragedy strikes Culver Creek, Miles is forced to undertake an even closer examination of his own character and relationship with his friends. This is an outstanding coming-of-age novel that has already proved to be a favorite teen read. It doesn't resort to a cop out of a "happily ever after" ending, but the characters each seek closure on their own terms. The characters are well-drawn, witty, and full of individual quirks and spunk. Green even manages to bring in the reality of cigarettes and alcohol without a preachy or over-glorifying tone. This novel has won the Teen's Top 10 award as well as the Printz Award, and Green is well on his way to YA superstardom. I'm looking forward to his next novel.

Don't do what I did...

...and read this book in one sitting. Okay, it's short and incredibly good, which makes it easy to bolt down. But then you are going to feel like an idiot for not savoring the pleasure, and you're going to be bleary as hell the next day (if you finish it at 4 in the morning, like I did). This book deals with the Big Ones: suffering, loss, and grief, but it does so with such compassion and humor that the net impact is uplifting. Even the principal turns out to be a human being. There are no cardboard cut-out characters here. Be aware that the kids in this story do what kids actually do (smoke, drink, and have sex). If that bothers you, read it anyway. There are more important things in life than observing proprieties and pretending that bright kids aren't exploratory. You don't have to approve of these characters. It is enough to love them and learn from them.

A Senior Perspective

Somewhere between searching for the secret to winning at Texas Holdem in Doyle Brunson's SUPER SYSTEM II, A COURSE IN POWER POKER, and envying a 101 year old lady boat captain in Jimmy Buffett's A SALTY PIECE OF LAND, I found John Green's Young Adult Novel, LOOKING FOR ALASKA. I kept looking at the alluring cover of ALASKA on my night stand and decided that POWER POKER could wait and rushed through A SALTY PIECE. If you have a child going to boarding school soon, goes there now or has gone there, as my son did, you must read LOOKING FOR ALASKA. If you want to understand the loneliness, happiness, mischief, joy, sorrow, sadness and a few other emotions of a teenager, you must read LOOKING FOR ALASKA. If you are convinced your teenager will not mature until much later, you better not read ALASKA. If you are concerned about the experiences that your teenager might have, do not read ALASKA. If you are a teenager, read this book! Need help with a pair of Aces? Simple - see Doyle. Got Margaritaville on your mind? No problem - Jimmy is your man. But if you want to come of age with an extraordinarily endearing group of kids, read this book. My son tells me it is being touted as Young Adult Fiction. I don't know about that. I can only tell you that at 64, I am a younger man for having read it.

not fluff; not heavy-handed like Spike Lee

In "Looking For Alaska," Green explores the themes of friendship, loss, and coping. The main character, the initially maladjusted and melancholic Pudge, tries boarding school as a means to finding a better life, inspired by such boarding school notables as James Joyce and JFK. He makes friends, has adventures, and experiences the highs and lows of an engaged life. The friends are fiery, nerdy, inspiring, and foreign-- a hodge-podge of endearingly genuine outsiders. Pudge is self-effacing and reflective. Consequently, his delivery of events is wryly charming. The book moves Pudge through many firsts (kiss, drink, etc), growing extroversion, love, grief, hatred, and philosophy. Fear not: This is not simply a novel of ideas and emotional stages, because it has enough pranks, smoking, drinking, breaking the rules, and scorning the "cool kids" to provide a beautiful counterpoint to earnest soul-searching. John Green has proved himself to be no lightweight, and in doing so, he has also adroitly avoided being heavy-handed. My favorite quote is pure philosophizing though: (Page 218) "Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless." An excellent mimesis of angst and regret! "Looking for Alaska" is such a celebratory jugendsbildungsroman that I heartily recommend it to those that can laugh retrospectively at their own awkward youthful firsts; to those that have ever questioned authority and found it as potentially fallible as the rest of human endeavor; to those that enjoy well written literature.