Back in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge – 2000s
Published 2006
Trigger Warnings – Smoking/ Drinking/ Death and Suicide References/ Sexual Content
4/5 John Green wrote one of my favorite novels — An Abundance of Katherines which I read in the late Aughts. I also picked up The Fault in Our Stars around the time of the screen adaptations release. Yet, I never read Green’s first novel, Looking for Alaska until 2022 for the Back in the Day Stellar Reading Challenge (SRC). Click here for details on this SRC. I read Looking for Alaska with my ears, read by the incomparable Wil Wheaton.
“Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . .
After. Nothing is ever the same.”
The fact that I read An Abundance of Katherines years ago aside, I soon recognized Green’s writing style. I considered Looking for Alaska the older brother of An Abundance of Katherines. I cared about Miles Halter A.K.A. Pudge and his friends, felt concern for Alaska Young in particular. As someone maybe a decade older than these kids at Culver Creek Boarding School, I recognized the elements of dorm living and even the pranks. This seemed late Nineties, early Aughts. Pay phone usage by characters brought bake what all people had to do to reach someone; this predated cell phone ubiquity. Yet, the teens feeling invincible among other attitudes seemed timeless, as though this book might take place in any decade since 1900. Overall, I found Looking for Alaska to be well written and true to life. The Before/After, made for emotionally tough reading for me. Also, not to blame Green or this work, I stopped and started reading Looking for Alaska more than once due to a waiting list for this book. Yet, I recommend Looking for Alaska to any reader seeking something of a bygone era.
Quotes come from book flaps/cover and are featured on color blocks.
Starry Night Elf 