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| Looking for Alaska | 
| Author: John Green
Publisher: Puffin
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy New: $3.74
You Save: $4.25 (53%)
New (43) from $3.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  79 reviews
Sales Rank: 19023
Media: Paperback
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0142402516
EAN: 9780142402511
ASIN: 0142402516
Publication Date: December 28, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Never read. Remainder Mark. Excellent reading copy.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Great book for teens or adults April 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was my introduction into the real world of YA literature. When I took a job as a YA librarian last summer I was completely unprepared. I has never even heard of Meg Cabot! (For Shame.) I picked up a couple of books for the younger teens. They were nice. Interesting enough. They were not what YA lit is about, though. I learned that when I read Looking For Alaska.
My library director asked if I'd read it. She had not, but had heard it was good. What an understatement. I could not put the book down. Well, until the climax when I put it down for 2 days to recover. The characters are so real. They reminded me of people I actually went to school with. There was embrarassing sexual situations in the book that were all too familiar. The best compliment I can give is that the whole book was so real. It has left me with no other thought than that. REAL.
Very intriguing. February 26, 2008
I loved this book. First of all it's a short read. I have gotten two of my friends to read it in the past week and they both loved it. It's amazing because you don't see many of these types of books written by male authors. John Green gives new life to this type of literature and I am excited to read An Abundance of Katherines next.
 Great. February 25, 2008
This is a fantastic book that I reccomend for teens and young adults. Witty and original, it is a great novel.
powerful and gritty February 16, 2008
Green's novel gives us a truly memorable cast of characters, each with their own distinct voice and personality. That in itself is rare enough in YA fiction. He then mixes them together in boarding school life, throws in some family trauma (though I do ask: why is it the scholarship students only who seem to have emotionally difficult backgrounds?), lots of sarcasm, a tradition of pranks-- and leaves us to sort it all out. His "countdown" device of chapter/section headings makes the reader all too aware that some tragedy is coming their way, inextricably, but all are blind to it. That, in itself, is a lesson. The count back up shows us that there is time for healing, but that healing is a working-through, a process, and that we should not take adolescent grief lightly.
In fact, we should not take any adolescent emotion lightly. These are not superficial raging hormones. Yes, this may be a time in which the characters feel things particularly intensely, but Green shows us that this intensity has its own depths. Certainly, there are a few shallow people at the time of the tragedy, and Miles, our narrator, points them out. But Miles and his group are not shallow, and they are determined to make meaning out of tragedy; they are still young enough to believe that death must intrinsically have discernable meaning (witness Miles' obsession with last words).
This is a powerful book, one that will slam you in the solar plexus. Miles' group may not be popular, but don't expect perfect behavior of them; smoking, sex, and swearing are integrated into daily life. Vitality blooms and surges on every page, and when that vitality is cut off, we find our countdown-countup plot.
Liked it a lot February 15, 2008
I really didn't know what to expect of this book and that blindness made me enjoy it so very much, I'm not a good reviewer but I can tell you that this is a great book, a page turner that can be easily be read only in one or to days because you just don't want to stop reading. Most girls have some Alaska in them and the story and its feelings are told in a way that you can't help to relate.
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