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~The last two episodes of Nikita have been underwhelming. At this point I'm not sure if I'm going to continue watching next season.
~I love my new phone. I am already ridiculously attached to it. I haven't charged it for three whole days and it still has 2/3 of it's battery left. Amazing.
~I was asking my friends for some ideas for lj posts and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nimblnymph asked about books that schools should teach. Now, if I was hypothetically in the hell that is teaching high school English, one of the books I'd have my classes read (after The Hunger Games) would be John Green's Paper Towns. What I loved about that book (and I'm going all on memory from almost a year ago so if I get some details wrong feel free to correct me) is that its main theme is the construction of identity (which is hugely relevant to most teenagers) and the realization that people are more complex than you realize. My favorite moment in the book is when one of the secondary characters is talking about getting together with a character who is in some ways your typical A-list highschooler and he says, basically, that dating her is amazing but it also has facets that are less pleasant because once they started dating she stopped being the perfect girl he had in his head but became a real person with issues and quirks of her own.
Plus, Paper Towns' plot involves a mystery with clues from Whitman's Leaves of Grass and would be a great reward for having to slog through reading that poem.
~I love my new phone. I am already ridiculously attached to it. I haven't charged it for three whole days and it still has 2/3 of it's battery left. Amazing.
~I was asking my friends for some ideas for lj posts and
nimblnymph asked about books that schools should teach. Now, if I was hypothetically in the hell that is teaching high school English, one of the books I'd have my classes read (after The Hunger Games) would be John Green's Paper Towns. What I loved about that book (and I'm going all on memory from almost a year ago so if I get some details wrong feel free to correct me) is that its main theme is the construction of identity (which is hugely relevant to most teenagers) and the realization that people are more complex than you realize. My favorite moment in the book is when one of the secondary characters is talking about getting together with a character who is in some ways your typical A-list highschooler and he says, basically, that dating her is amazing but it also has facets that are less pleasant because once they started dating she stopped being the perfect girl he had in his head but became a real person with issues and quirks of her own.Plus, Paper Towns' plot involves a mystery with clues from Whitman's Leaves of Grass and would be a great reward for having to slog through reading that poem.
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A couple weeks ago I finally went on a John Green spree and read (almost) all of his books.
Looking For Alaska was good but I felt that Alaska was too much (and I'm sorry, I cannot for the life of me remember the trope name for this) the magical (not in the sailor moon way) girl who makes the life of the normative male lead interesting. While I think Green was trying to deconstruct that trope, I don't think he quite managed it.... until Paper Towns, which was funny and epic and had a magical (not in the sailor moon way) girl who had relationships and issues of her own. In fact, where I think Paper Towns shines is in the complex friendships and relationships of the teenagers.
I actually copied a page of the book and taped a line to my bedroom mirror. ("It's so hard to leave – until you leave. Then it's the easiest goddamn thing in the world.")
I tried to read An Abundance of Katherine's but I found the main character terminally boring.
Looking For Alaska was good but I felt that Alaska was too much (and I'm sorry, I cannot for the life of me remember the trope name for this) the magical (not in the sailor moon way) girl who makes the life of the normative male lead interesting. While I think Green was trying to deconstruct that trope, I don't think he quite managed it.... until Paper Towns, which was funny and epic and had a magical (not in the sailor moon way) girl who had relationships and issues of her own. In fact, where I think Paper Towns shines is in the complex friendships and relationships of the teenagers.
I actually copied a page of the book and taped a line to my bedroom mirror. ("It's so hard to leave – until you leave. Then it's the easiest goddamn thing in the world.")
I tried to read An Abundance of Katherine's but I found the main character terminally boring.
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I makes me incredibly sad that John Green is already married. I want a hot, smart, geeky guy with glasses for my very own!
(And seriously, I just figured out that the hot guy with the glasses who makes the hilarious video posts is John Green, aka that YA author whose books have been on my reading list every since I read Let It Snow. I tried to go to a YA conference where he was speaking but it would have cost $150 and taken up an entire Saturday of my dead week. Had a known he was a nerdfighter, things might have gone differently.)
A smattering of youtube clips behind the cut to provide illustration:
( *covets* )
(And seriously, I just figured out that the hot guy with the glasses who makes the hilarious video posts is John Green, aka that YA author whose books have been on my reading list every since I read Let It Snow. I tried to go to a YA conference where he was speaking but it would have cost $150 and taken up an entire Saturday of my dead week. Had a known he was a nerdfighter, things might have gone differently.)
A smattering of youtube clips behind the cut to provide illustration:
( *covets* )
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