"Looking for Alaska" and "Paper Towns" by John Green

Paper Towns                                                    Looking for Alaska
John Green                                                       John Green
2008, 305 pgs                                                  2006, 221 pgs
Library Purchase                                              Kindle

"Looking for Alaska" Book Summary from Goodreads
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 the "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 stunning debut, it marks John Green's arrival as an important new voice in contemporary fiction

"Paper Towns" Book Summary from Goodreads
When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night - dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows her. Margo's always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she's always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they're for Q.

Printz Medalist John Green returns with the trademark brilliant wit and heart-stopping emotional honesty that have inspired a new generation of readers.

My Summary

Parallels abound in these two books. I wish I had read them at least a few months apart – I still would have noticed, but I don’t think it would have been quite as distracting.  I read “Looking forAlaska” a few weeks ago on a Saturday and really enjoyed it. I read “Paper Towns” a few days later and it felt like I was reading the same characters. Miles=Quentin, Alaska=Margo, Colonel=Ben, etc. I also wish I had written my review for “Looking for Alaska” before reading “Paper Towns” because now it’s impossible to separate them in my mind. So here are just a few bullet points of what I liked

• John Green’s characters have dimension – hobbies that are interesting and not typical, real conversations, and annoying habits.
  • Miles in “Looking for Alaska” memorized famous people’s last words.
  • Alaska/Margo/Colonel planned elaborate pranks that required planning and were really funny.
• Both books made me laugh out loud. I want to put quotes in here, but I don’t want to ruin the reading experience for anyone else.
• The boys (not the main character) fixation with Prom in “Paper Towns”. It was funny to think guys really cared.
• “Paper Towns” made me think about how much of what I see in other people is just a reflection of myself. “Looking for Alaska” make me think about life/death – which seems cliché to write that in print, but didn’t feel that way to read it
• The chants/cheers the Colonel led at the Basketball games in “Looking for Alaska”. AWESOME!
• Both books have moments that point out where girls are being objectified.

My Rating

So how to rate these books? I think I would have given “Looking forAlaska” a 7 or 8 on Saturday. But I think if I had read “Paper Towns” first I’d have given it an 8 or 9, but since I read it second and it was SO similar to “Looking for Alaska” my enjoyment was probably closer to a 6-7.

First of these two that you read – 8.5 out of 10 stars
Second that you read - 7 out of 10 stars