Review: Paper Towns

I have read many books in my nearly 17 years of being alive, though I love nearly every book I have ever read, very few books have actually made me stop and think about the way I live my life. Among  these few books are Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and Paper Towns by the brilliant John Green.

It is Paper Towns that wish to talk about today.

"I spy with my little eye a great story"

If I was to have a dinner party I would most defiantly invite Mr John Green.

Lets start with book summary: 

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life–dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge–he follows.
After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues–and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.

END OF SUMMARY.

My Rating (1-10): 8.5

My love for this book is a extreme one. It is full of memorable beautiful quotes and has characters that are easy to relate to. Even Margo Roth Spiegelman supposedly a enigma has qualities very much alike my own. Margo has this strange sadness though she seemingly has everything that makes her become such a mystery, I think this makes her relatable because though we may live a happy life us ourselves may not be happy. Let's face it, no one is ever 100% happy and content with themselves, we always strive for the next best thing and when we get it there is something new that we want just beyond our reaches, we are never happy with what we have.  

" A paper town for a paper girl… The truth is that whenever I went up to the top of the SunTrust Building—including the last time with you— I didn't really look down and think about how everything was made of paper. I looked down and thought about how I was made of paper. I was the flimsy-foldable person, not everyone else." 

Alike many of us, Margo felt alone in the world. An outsider. A misfit who would never fit in.

And Quentin Jacobsen, is the most drastic opposite to Margo as possible. "Q" is a plainly average guy, he is not a popular but he is also not a loser. He more or less just exists. He is a narrative voice of the book. John Green's masterful humor shines through Q making every page a pleasure to read. But it is not just Mr Green's humor that shines through his amazing words of wisdom do to. His words so perfect they literally make my heart ache.

Among the many heart warming and tear jerking quotes are,

“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”

A phrase used by Q about Margo. It reminds me to never look at someone as better then me or to have to high a expectation of someone as the reality can be disappointing and your impossible expectation could be equally impossible to achieve.  Q came to realize this too as he says ;

“The fundamental mistake I had always made - and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make - was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.” 

Another quote; 

"Once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable...But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it's only in that time that we can see each other, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs."

Is yet another message from the wise John Green. I would decipher this to mean that we only start to see once another when our weaknesses start showing. Like the walls we build to defend ourselves from others start to fall down and we can finally be the person we are hiding behind the walls.

And it was these quotes above, among others, that made me change my perspective on life.This book has taught me that if you want to get to know someone you really need to care about them. Its only when you care enough to start to notice their weaknesses in their walls that you can tear them down and see them for who they really are. And it's taught me that though someone may seem so superior to me that we are all the same, we are all just human beings, no one is a heavenly figure and we should not stand them on pedestals. (This also means that no one is "out of your league" so Ian Somerhalder... I'm coming for you!)


Thank you for taking your time to read my blog. 

Please tell me if there are any other books you would want me to review.

This has been 

Aka Megan. 


Over and Out.