To be honest, I had no intention to read Looking for Alaska. It just sort of fell into my lap. Not wanting to turn down an opportunity, even if it was an opportunity to read a book I didn't really want to, I accepted the offer and took it upon myself to read it.

The whole Before of the book was rather disappointing. I had formed a completely converse understanding of what the book was going to be about. Therefore, since it failed to fulfill this image, I was upset.

What I find interesting, though, is that one of my friends, who had already earlier read the book, agreed that it wasn't what you would expect it to be like. Quite clever, right? Or just annoying... Another intriguing point is that contrary to my conclusion this friend of mine found the After to be boring rather than the Before. She told me this when I was Four Days from getting to the Day. So I was positively surprised when I realized that I enjoyed the book more After. This makes me wonder what causes the difference in our perceptions. Was it the nature of Alaska Young? Or just the admittedly excessive repetition in the events of the After part? Or maybe that Before you had no idea what was going to happen making you wonder what the point of it all was?


I would like to give the book some praise too. In my opinion not numbering, but naming the chapters was a smart trick. I, for one, was constantly wondering what we were counting down to. A sneaky way to build up suspense kind of on the outside of the actual story. Foreshadowing I suspect.


In a non-literary sense I want to point out how cool the idea of last words is, and how it is cool that John Green actually did a bunch of research to gather all the last words in the book. Also I think it wasn't intentional by the author, but I couldn't help noticing that like Augustus Waters in another book by Green, Miles -Pudge- ponders whether all dead people could be remembered. Fascinating -both the question and this hidden allusion I found.

So, to wrap up my thoughts, I am going to make a needlessly complicated statement. (Because I still have very contradictory feelings towards it all).
I think I thought I didn't like the book (while reading it), but afterwards I actually might have enjoyed it or at least the questions it evoked and am going to reamain perplexed  by this outcome.
I am not sure that even I have the slightest thought what I just typed, but that was kind of what I was going for so please pardon me.

Did anyone else encounter equally confusing thoughts?
-Anna