John Green.
Youtube channel: Vlogbrothers.
Youtube channel: Crash Course.
Titles I've written about:
Looking for Alaska (2005) (v. short—deserves a re-visit):
It's a fantastic book—the characters are complex and can be confusing, but it just makes them seem more real. There's a little bit of everything in it—drinking, smoking, sex, comedy, tragedy. Miles is the one telling the story, so we're only getting his understanding of the events as they unfold. There's quite a bit of room for interpretation. It reminded me a bit of A Separate Peace.
An Abundance of Katherines (2006):
Fantastic. As much as I loved and appreciated Looking for Alaska, I enjoyed An Abundance of Katherines more. It's a book I'll go back to. And one that I'll recommend often.
Paper Towns (2008):
Okay, first of all, thumbs up. No reservations at all. I loved Q, I loved Radar and Ben. Well, Ben drove me crazy but I felt like he was a real person driving me crazy. I loved Lacey. Margo Roth Speigelman was a bit more slippery. I had mixed-at-best feelings about her, but because Q cared, I cared. And I cared a lot. The entire second half of the book had me biting my nails and worried. Paper Towns is melancholy, laugh-out-loud-funny, downright sad, often hopeful and always thoughtful.
The Fault in Our Stars (2012):
You know what got me about The Fault in Our Stars more than anything else? What made me, on more the one occasion, laugh out loud even while I was bawling? It wasn't the witty banter or the poetry or the philosophizing or the mullings-over of mortality. It was Hazel's empathy.