For the past weeks instead of downloading new music for my suck-y playlist, I burned my time searching for ebooks. Yep, you read it right. I once loathe ebooks cause my eyes can't handle it but I guess when you are just so excited about something, you tend to resort even to the last possible way just to indulge on what's itching you. And worse, in just a snap I learned to love and appreciate ebooks!
But this isn't exactly about ebooks. This is about these 2 books who made me feel like a Highschool-er again -- Looking For Alaska and The Fault In Our Stars both by John Green. They are more like 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (which is now a motion picture I still haven't watched), if you've read it. These are mainly about teenage explorations and realizations. What I love the most about these two books is that it's philosophical. It's not your average teenage drama, rather it's about how people of young age are trying, in their best possible way, to fathom the complexities of life and their place on it.
Been searching for this book since I first heard about it and like 'The Perks...' I had no luck purchasing it (it's either out of stock or they have never heard of it--which is weird). This is about a boy seeking for his own 'Great Perhaps' hoping he'll find it while in a boarding school away from his family and detached from his high school history of having no social life. It is divided into two section, the 'before' and 'after' Alaska was gone which has a totally different tone and mood. It's good but not really good. Hahaha. I mean, I kind of got a little off when I got to the ending. I didn't even realized that was it. For me, it lacks closure given the tone of the second half. It wasn't even open-ended. I just really felt heavy for those characters left with so much questions about what really happened. Or maybe it's just how the author aimed it to be-- for them to forgive and accept what happened no matter how abrupt it can be.
Fave quotes from Looking For Alaska:
“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”
“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) 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.”
"What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five
minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding
pain feels particularly instantaneous.”
“At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved.”
And because I like books with great quotes, I stumbled upon another of John Green - The Fault In Our Stars. And I liked this better. It actually made me close to tears (no spoilers :]). It reminded me of 'Tuesdays With Morrie because it's mainly about embracing death -- this time from the point of view of someone who, all their lives know pain, and understands that "pain demands to be felt" (John Green, The Fault In Our Stars). This story is moving and profound. A love story between 2 teenage cancer patients who fell in love with each other amid their chase to extend their numbered days.
Fave quotes from The Fault In Our Stars:
"I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute that buys them an hour which is the hour that buys them a year."
"Pain demands to be felt."
"Some infinities are bigger than other infinities."
"You gave me forever within the numbered days."
“The marks humans leave are too often scars.”
"Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
“My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.”
Noticed I didn't review the two books thoroughly as I don't want to be a spoiler. I thought I can't make a good review if I am not to go into details and that's spoiling already. So why don't you read it and make the judgment? They are worth your time, I'm sure :)
