Book #39 Looking For Alaska by John Green
“You can say a lot of bad things about Alabama, but you can’t say that Alabamans as a people are unduly afraid of deep fryers.”
This is almost a male version of the Basic Eight. Not plot wise (so I’m not giving anything away), but in the witty pretentious-but-we-know-so-it’s-not-as-damning clever high school tone. Although it did have plot elements that I kept hoping for in “Prep”. There were your usual sterotypes, but presented in a more humorous way than most. For example on portraying the feminist: “But Takumi doesn’t know how to iron, either. And when I asked Alaska, she started yelling, “You’re not going to impose the patriarchal paradigm on me!”
And, embarassingly enough, there was one scene which caused me to literally fall out of my chair onto the floor laughing. And that scene is the exact reason that even though I think it’s one of the best teen novels ever – that I won’t be recommending it to a lot of customers.
