Paper Towns by John Green (reviewed by Emily TenCate)

If you're anything like me, if I told you that the novel Paper Towns by John Green detailed the lives of a gamer and a popular girl in their last month of high school, you would be bored (or at least pretty skeptical) already. If I told you the novel also included romance, beer, and mischief, you'd groan and mutter, "Typical," and you'd probably cross the book off of your list without a second thought. Paper Towns is, indeed, about all of these things. But it's also about something more, and, in fact, that's the whole point of Paper Towns: it's impossible to sum something up if you only look at its components. To understand something, you really need to have seen the whole.

Paper Towns points out in excruciating detail that we (especially as high schoolers) only see people by parts. Take Margo Roth Spiegelmann, for example, the enigmatic sort-of-protagonist who is usually summed up (incompletely) as queen bee of the high school. When you get to know her, though, she's actually a marvelous prankster, with a head full of plans and stories and metaphysical theories about life. Take Quentin (also known as Q), an avid gamer and the boy-next-door, whose undiscovered inner hero only surfaces when Margo goes missing. Take "Bloody Ben", another obsessive gamer, whose whole life is defined by one embarrassing incident.

Throughout the book, these people discover that everyone has three dimensions. (Well, mostly everyone; the drunk jocks in this novel are as senseless and two-dimensional as ever.) They learn that you have to read people the way you read poetry: you can't understand the meaning if you only read and understand a couple of lines. You have to understand the poem as a whole before you can really say what it's all about.

And if you think philosophy is too boring and you'll never read this book, never fear, because Paper Towns is also deliciously, unexpectedly hilarious! And when I say hilarious, it's not just funny, it's laugh-out-loud ridiculous. It's intense, engaging, and (though this is coming from a senior in her last couple months of high school), completely understandable... well, maybe all except the part about naked graduation. Read it; you won't regret (or forget!) it.

--
OH EMILY, WHAT A GREAT REVIEW OF ONE OF MY FAVORITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME. I can only express my feelings about Paper Towns as such - <3 <3 <3

If you haven't read anything by John Green, you need to fix that ASAP, so click here to see if Paper Towns (or anything else by John Green) is on our shelves.