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Title: Looking for Alaska
Author: John Green
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 5/5
Why I Read It: I loved Green’s other novels, so I had a hunch I’d like this one too.

Summary: 16-year-old Miles leaves his comfortable but friendless life in Florida to go to boarding school in Alabama. His roommate Chip quickly adopts Miles as a friend and introduces him to a girl who lives down the hall—Alaska. Beautiful and brilliant, Alaska flirts with Miles and he falls for her. But it could never work, and they both know it.

Review: This is my favorite novel from Green.

On the surface, the book offered up plenty to make me laugh. Here, Miles just found out his new school, Culver Creek, has a basketball team:

I hated sports. I hated sports, and I hated people who played them, and I hated people who watched them, and I hated people who didn’t hate people who watched or played them. In third grade—the very last year that one could play T-ball—my mother wanted me to make friends, so she forced me onto the Orlando Pirates. I made friends all right—with a bunch of kindergartners, which didn’t really bolster my social standing with my peers. Primarily because I towered over the rest of the players, I nearly made it onto the T-ball all-star team that year. The kid who beat me, Clay Wurtzel, had one arm. I was an unusually tall third grader with two arms, and I got beat out by kindergartner Clay Wurtzel. And it wasn’t some pity-the-one-armed-kid thing, either. Clay Wurtzel could flat-out hit, whereas I sometimes struck out even with the ball sitting on the tee. One of the things that appealed to me most about Culver Creek was that my dad assured me there was no PE requirement.

But the soul behind Miles’s story, behind his love for Alaska—that’s what made me fall for this book. My heart ached for Alaska right alongside his.

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

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