I sent John Green a message on Tumblr thanking him for writing The Fault in Our Stars on his Tumblr where he answers questions about The Fault in Our Stars. I didn’t think he would answer it because it wasn’t a question, but he did, and his response was gracious and compassionate and perfect.
I still can’t get over the fact that he answered my little thank you note, or the fact that he was so wonderful about it.
She refused to be bored, chiefly because she wasn’t boring.
Zelda Fitzgerald
I just finished reading Paper Towns by John Green yesterday, and as expected, I adored it. John Green is a wonderful, talented novelist, and Paper Towns did not disappoint. And because John Green is awesome and I suck at writing book reviews, especially for books I really loved, I thought I would share some of my favorite Paper Towns quotes with you. Spoilers ahead.
“And thus commenced a brief conversation with myself.
Me: But the rats.
Me: Yeah, but they seem to stay in the ceiling.
Me: But the lizards.
Me: Oh, come on. You used to pull their tails off when you were little. You’re not scared of lizards.
Me: But the rats.
Me: Rats can’t really hurt you anyway. They’re more scared of you than you are of them.
Me: Okay, but what about the rats?
Me: Shut up.”
“Chuck Parson was a person. Like me. Margo Roth Speigalman was a person, too. And I had never quite thought of her that way, not really; it was a failure of all my previous imaginings. All along–not only since she left but a decade before–I had been imagining her without listening, without knowing that she made as poor a window as I did. And so I could not imagine her as a person who could feel fear, who could feel isolated in a roomful of people, who could be shy about her record collection because it was too personal to share. Someone who might read travel books to escape having to live in the town that so many people escape to. Someone who–because no one thought she was a person–had no one to really talk to.”
“The town was paper, but the memories were not.”
“What a treacherous thing is it to believe that a person is more than a person.”
“When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”
I’ve been reading this book for almost a week now. I’m about six chapters into it, and to tell you the truth, I just don’t like it. I mean, I keep reading it because I want to like it, but I don’t. I keep guessing the plot twists before they happen and figuring things out before the characters do, and it’s just a real letdown. However, there have been some genuinely creepy moments, and the pictures are very eerie and strange. But even so, I think I’m going to have to give up on it. I feel a bit guilty, but I just don’t think I can finish it.
“I want. . . a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved.”
–Shana Abe
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the bloggers over at the Broke and the Bookish. Book bloggers from all around create lists based on the chosen topics, and post links to the host blog to share our love of books. This week we’re looking at our top ten books on our spring TBR lists.
Whether I will actually manage to read any of these books in the spring is something I can’t tell you. I’ve been slacking somewhat on schoolwork, so for the next month, I’ll be paying for it, which means even less time to read for fun than normal. And with that, I am off to bed because school starts back tomorrow.
Laurie Halse Anderson wrote this poem about the response she’s gotten from readers about her novel, Speak. She read it on the tenth anniversary of the release of her novel. The poem is mainly composed of fragments from letters sent to Ms. Anderson. This poem is extremely powerful and made me weep the first time I heard it.
“…I think I have this idea that I can do anything by writing. Like I can be myself if I write letters… Like I can change things, punish people, fall in love, and find myself, all by writing the right words.”
–Jaclyn Moriarty, The Year of Secret Assignments
“This was the time in her life that she fell upon books as the only door out of her cell. They became half her world. She sat at the night table, hunched over, reading of the young boy in India who learned to memorize diverse jewels and objects on a tray, tossed from teacher to teacher—those who taught him dialect those who taught him memory those who taught him to escape the hypnotic.”
–Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient, page 7
There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature.
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Steel Magnolias & Sweet Tea 