you will go to the paper towns

i'm emily, and this is my collection of book reviews.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe might just be my all time favorite book. I’ve lost time of how many times I’ve read it, and it’s usually my go-to book for when I need to grab something off the shelf and pass the time. This time, I got stranded in South Station for an extra two hours when my train home got delayed, so I read this from start to finish in that time.  The description on the back cover of the book reads: “Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is the now-classic novel of two women in the 1980s: of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women - of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth - who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present - for Evelyn and for us - will never be quite the same again… “ The way that it’s told - skipping from the present time, the 1980s, where Evelyn Couch is listening to Ninny Threadgoode retell tales from the town of Whistle Stop, Alabama, to past decades in Whistle Stop that revolve around characters such as Idgie Threadgoode, Ruth Jamison, Grady Kilgore, Sipsey, Onzell, Big George, and Smokey Lonesome - isn’t overwhelming at all like some books tend to be. They blend together easily, with chapters separated by weekly bulletins from a woman named Dot Weems who wrote for the Whistle Stop Gazette between the 1920s and when Whistle Stop became a ghost town in the 1950s.  There are strong themes throughout the book that include the idea of aging (Ninny is well into her 80s as she tells Evelyn her stories, and it  becomes increasingly apparent as the book wears on that her mind is losing its sharpness), friendship (between Ninny and Evelyn, between Idgie and Ruth, between Idgie and Grady, and between most of the townspeople in general), African American culture and treatment in the 1920s (the Ku Klux Klan is featured several times, and parts of the book follow Sipsey, the African American cook for the Whistle Stop Cafe, and her family), and murder (Ruth’s abusive husband returns for her and Sipsey, in order to protect Ruth’s baby, murders him with a skillet).  One of the major themes of the book is the relationship between Idgie and Ruth. It is never explicitly stated in the book that the two of them are in a relationship, but it isn’t difficult to read between the lines and see that they are. There are points in the story where Ruth’s son, Buddy Jr., refers to Idgie as his mother without question, and everyone in the town seems to accept their relationship without question. This is unusual for this time period, but Flagg pulls it off without any skepticism or suspension of belief. It’s easy to see that they’re just two people in a relationship dealing with everyday problems.  Some of the quotes that I highlighted are as follows:  “I wonder how many people don’t get the one they want, but end up with the one they’re supposed to be with.”  “You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.”  “The ones that hurt the most always say the least.” “No matter what you look like, there’s somebody who’s gonna think you’re the handsomest man in the world.”

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe might just be my all time favorite book. I’ve lost time of how many times I’ve read it, and it’s usually my go-to book for when I need to grab something off the shelf and pass the time. This time, I got stranded in South Station for an extra two hours when my train home got delayed, so I read this from start to finish in that time. 

The description on the back cover of the book reads: “Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is the now-classic novel of two women in the 1980s: of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women - of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth - who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present - for Evelyn and for us - will never be quite the same again… “

The way that it’s told - skipping from the present time, the 1980s, where Evelyn Couch is listening to Ninny Threadgoode retell tales from the town of Whistle Stop, Alabama, to past decades in Whistle Stop that revolve around characters such as Idgie Threadgoode, Ruth Jamison, Grady Kilgore, Sipsey, Onzell, Big George, and Smokey Lonesome - isn’t overwhelming at all like some books tend to be. They blend together easily, with chapters separated by weekly bulletins from a woman named Dot Weems who wrote for the Whistle Stop Gazette between the 1920s and when Whistle Stop became a ghost town in the 1950s. 

There are strong themes throughout the book that include the idea of aging (Ninny is well into her 80s as she tells Evelyn her stories, and it  becomes increasingly apparent as the book wears on that her mind is losing its sharpness), friendship (between Ninny and Evelyn, between Idgie and Ruth, between Idgie and Grady, and between most of the townspeople in general), African American culture and treatment in the 1920s (the Ku Klux Klan is featured several times, and parts of the book follow Sipsey, the African American cook for the Whistle Stop Cafe, and her family), and murder (Ruth’s abusive husband returns for her and Sipsey, in order to protect Ruth’s baby, murders him with a skillet). 

One of the major themes of the book is the relationship between Idgie and Ruth. It is never explicitly stated in the book that the two of them are in a relationship, but it isn’t difficult to read between the lines and see that they are. There are points in the story where Ruth’s son, Buddy Jr., refers to Idgie as his mother without question, and everyone in the town seems to accept their relationship without question. This is unusual for this time period, but Flagg pulls it off without any skepticism or suspension of belief. It’s easy to see that they’re just two people in a relationship dealing with everyday problems. 

Some of the quotes that I highlighted are as follows: 

“I wonder how many people don’t get the one they want, but end up with the one they’re supposed to be with.” 

“You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same.” 

“The ones that hurt the most always say the least.”

“No matter what you look like, there’s somebody who’s gonna think you’re the handsomest man in the world.”

John Green’s debut novel Looking For Alaska is one that I have read many times previously but found myself coming back to it when I began my sophomore year of college. Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of his, and I’ve read, owned, and adored every book he has ever written, so I may be slightly bias when I say that his writing is phenomenal. However, because of my tendency to lean towards his works when I need something to occupy my time (Paper Towns, the book that this Tumblr gets its title from, is written by him and is one of my all-time favorite, if not favorite, novels), so it was natural for me to grab one of his books off of my shelf and open it.  The description on the back cover of the book is as follows: “Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the “Great Perhaps” (Francois Rabelais, poet) even more. He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, 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, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. After. Nothing is the same.”  The story is broken up into two parts. In the first, Miles “Pudge” Halter leaves home to attend Culver Creek MIddle School, where he meets his new roommate, Chip “The Colonel” Martin, and The Colonel’s captivating friend, Alaska Young. The more Pudge learns about Alaska, the more he falls in love with her, despite the warning signs that come in the form of her already having a boyfriend, her pushing him away, and The Colonel himself telling him to be wary of Alaska. Pudge dates another girl but his focus is always on Alaska, and eventually she goes missing after a night of drinking, which segues into the second part of the story. Pudge and The Colonel discover at the same time as the rest of their Culver Creek classmates that Alaska was killed in a car accident, and the rest of the novel is spent exploring the impact that her loss leaves on Pudge, The Colonel, and some of their other friends. The second part is broken down by months and days, which makes the time seem to pass by even more slowly and gives the grieving process even more of a way to leap off the pages and onto the readers so that they feel like they’re in the story.  The book is filled with imagery, metaphors, and allusions, which Green manages to work in subtly enough that it doesn’t overpower you but obviously enough that a skilled reader will pick up on it. The characters are smart and relatable, but maybe just a bit too much for typical high school juniors; I found that I had more in common with them as a college sophomore than I ever did when I was in high school. The plot pacing is excellent, building you up with this story of friendship and a boy lusting after a girl he’ll never get and then punching you in the gut with the fact that she wasn’t perfect at all and that she actually dies. It’s a touchy subject, but Green manages to handle it very well.  One could argue that Alaska Young is the literary version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (a female character that exists solely to help their male counterpart out of their brooding shell and to learn to embrace life), and, to an extent, she may be. She does have the eccentric personality and the quirks, although her need to be unabashedly girly is questionable. Pudge is drawn out of his shell by her and his entire life ends up being changed for the better from having known Alaska, but there are many other layers to Alaska’s story that invalidate her as just being a static character there to support Pudge’s storyline. In fact, the story is set up to view Pudge as the main character when Alaska serves as the focus point for most of the novel and is the catalyst for all of the main events and actions of the characters surrounding her. She is not without her flaws, and even states at one point in the novel that she is a deeply unhappy person. One of the big reveals at the end of the book has to do with the fact that she watched her mother die as a child, and no typical MPDG has dealt with that, since that involves character development, which a MPDG generally lacks. Overall, the book is one of my favorites, and I would recommend it to anyone that I could, and I often do. Some of the quotes that I highlighted as I read are as follows:  “Imagining the future is kind of a nostalgia. You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining the future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”  “If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.”  “People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn’t bear the idea of death being a big, black nothing, couldn’t bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn’t even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn’t bear not to.”  “I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. When adults say that teenagers think they are invincible with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we are never irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”  “Thomas Edison’s last words were: “It’s very beautiful over there.” I don’t know where that is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.”  (book cover credit to thefeelingofwalkinginthegrass) 

John Green’s debut novel Looking For Alaska is one that I have read many times previously but found myself coming back to it when I began my sophomore year of college. Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of his, and I’ve read, owned, and adored every book he has ever written, so I may be slightly bias when I say that his writing is phenomenal. However, because of my tendency to lean towards his works when I need something to occupy my time (Paper Towns, the book that this Tumblr gets its title from, is written by him and is one of my all-time favorite, if not favorite, novels), so it was natural for me to grab one of his books off of my shelf and open it. 

The description on the back cover of the book is as follows: “Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the “Great Perhaps” (Francois Rabelais, poet) even more. He heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, 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, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.

After. Nothing is the same.” 

The story is broken up into two parts. In the first, Miles “Pudge” Halter leaves home to attend Culver Creek MIddle School, where he meets his new roommate, Chip “The Colonel” Martin, and The Colonel’s captivating friend, Alaska Young. The more Pudge learns about Alaska, the more he falls in love with her, despite the warning signs that come in the form of her already having a boyfriend, her pushing him away, and The Colonel himself telling him to be wary of Alaska. Pudge dates another girl but his focus is always on Alaska, and eventually she goes missing after a night of drinking, which segues into the second part of the story. Pudge and The Colonel discover at the same time as the rest of their Culver Creek classmates that Alaska was killed in a car accident, and the rest of the novel is spent exploring the impact that her loss leaves on Pudge, The Colonel, and some of their other friends. The second part is broken down by months and days, which makes the time seem to pass by even more slowly and gives the grieving process even more of a way to leap off the pages and onto the readers so that they feel like they’re in the story. 

The book is filled with imagery, metaphors, and allusions, which Green manages to work in subtly enough that it doesn’t overpower you but obviously enough that a skilled reader will pick up on it. The characters are smart and relatable, but maybe just a bit too much for typical high school juniors; I found that I had more in common with them as a college sophomore than I ever did when I was in high school. The plot pacing is excellent, building you up with this story of friendship and a boy lusting after a girl he’ll never get and then punching you in the gut with the fact that she wasn’t perfect at all and that she actually dies. It’s a touchy subject, but Green manages to handle it very well. 

One could argue that Alaska Young is the literary version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (a female character that exists solely to help their male counterpart out of their brooding shell and to learn to embrace life), and, to an extent, she may be. She does have the eccentric personality and the quirks, although her need to be unabashedly girly is questionable. Pudge is drawn out of his shell by her and his entire life ends up being changed for the better from having known Alaska, but there are many other layers to Alaska’s story that invalidate her as just being a static character there to support Pudge’s storyline. In fact, the story is set up to view Pudge as the main character when Alaska serves as the focus point for most of the novel and is the catalyst for all of the main events and actions of the characters surrounding her. She is not without her flaws, and even states at one point in the novel that she is a deeply unhappy person. One of the big reveals at the end of the book has to do with the fact that she watched her mother die as a child, and no typical MPDG has dealt with that, since that involves character development, which a MPDG generally lacks.

Overall, the book is one of my favorites, and I would recommend it to anyone that I could, and I often do.

Some of the quotes that I highlighted as I read are as follows: 

“Imagining the future is kind of a nostalgia. You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining the future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” 

“If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.” 

“People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn’t bear the idea of death being a big, black nothing, couldn’t bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn’t even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn’t bear not to.” 

“I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. When adults say that teenagers think they are invincible with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we are never irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.” 

“Thomas Edison’s last words were: “It’s very beautiful over there.” I don’t know where that is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.” 

(book cover credit to thefeelingofwalkinginthegrass)