"'Swing Set Needs Home,'" I said.
"'Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,'" he said.
"'Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children,'" I said.
Having lent out both of the novels I own by him last week to people*, I figure that now is a great time to talk about John Green's books. Because why be practical about this 'reviewing' process when I could follow my impulses and be vague and obnoxious instead? Particularly since, you know. He and I are now bestest buddies in the whole wide world.
* I did that a month ago. Yes. This has taken a month to write. Writing blog stuff is hard, okay? And no. They haven't given the books back. Impatience goes here.
Note before I get too deeply into this that I'm going to be exerting a lot of effort in staying somewhat focused on the book, since I find many things about John Green fascinating. Keeping in mind that I usually am content to analyze authors from afar while enjoying their work rather than engage with them in any real sense, I find it both awesome and a bit problematic that Green is so damn accessible to his readers/fans, and I can't help but wonder how that changes the reading process. I want to draw the easy comparison (which, therefore, probably wouldn't be accurate at all) to a Letters/Rilke scenario, but on a much larger scale and through much more immediate mediums. (And also regarding non-authory things.) There's also my personal hobby horse of proclaiming popular YA fiction as important social indicators for a culture and a good way to track the trajectory of societal norms, which is something I always want to rant about... (Even if John Green is less inclined to. I forgive him though. Because we're BFFs and all.)
But, instead. Books. Let's talk about his books. Because I've read two of them and I like them a great deal. For the sake of making things slightly easier for myself, I'm going to stick with The Fault in Our Stars, since I finished that one most recently and I like it more. (Sophisticated analysis, to be found right here ladies and gents.)
That excessive preface out of the way...
I started reading The Fault in Our Stars knowing that it was about a sixteen-year-old girl, Hazel Grace Lancaster, with terminal cancer who falls in love.
