TITLE: Looking for Alaska
AUTHOR: John Green
NARRATOR: Jeff Woodman
PUBLISHER: Brilliance Audio, Inc.
PUBLICATION DATE: October 21, 2008
FORMAT: Unabridged audiobook
LENGTH: 7 hrs and 15 mins
GENRE: Young Adult, Realistic Fiction
Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words - and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.
Looking for Alaska brilliantly chronicles the indelible impact one life can have on another. A stunning debut, it marks John Green's arrival as an important new voice in contemporary fiction.
This book totally caught me off-guard! It wasn’t at all what I was expecting, and that’s okay.
The story is about a 16-year-old boy named Miles Halter. He’s a bit of a loner in school, and he convinces his parents to let him go off to Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama (he’s from Florida). It was the same boarding school that his father attended, as well as his paternal uncles and their kids. He is in search of the “Great Perhaps” which, to me, means some monumental life-changing event. I assumed the quest had to do with losing his virginity, but I was wrong!
At the start of each chapter, the book counts down the days “before” Miles’ “Great Perhaps.” This countdown method that Green employed is very clever, because it builds anticipation and suspense. I do not want to reveal what the event was, but it wasn’t what I thought that it would be. It took me by surprise, and I like when an author can do that! I also really liked Miles as a character. He is just your regular teenage boy. He experiments a bit with drinking and smoking but, overall, he is a good kid. I also liked his dorm-mate, Chip Martin, and I loved how Green depicted Chip's relationship with his mom.
With the sexual content and description of oral sex, I am not surprised that this book was the most "challenged" book of 2015. Personally, I would not feel comfortable with my teenage daughter reading this until she was a bit older. I think this book is better suited for the upper-end of the YA age range, say 16+. Now, having said that, I found that particular scene hilarious and I thought that Green handled it very well. The naivete of the two characters was very sweet.
Memorable quote:
"...if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane."
Green is a new-to-me author, and I am definitely looking forward to reading more of his work! I think that I will try The Fault in Our Stars next.
Jeff Woodman is also a new-to-me narrator, and I really enjoyed him! His pacing was excellent, and the tone of his voice is very easy on the ears. He handled the various different vocalizations between characters very well, and I love it when narrators are able to do that. I will definitely look for other audiobooks that he has narrated.
MY RATING:
Design by Parajunkee Design
I don't usually listen to fiction on audiobook, I find it hard to follow - but since I have already read Looking for Alaska, maybe this would be a good one to try. Glad to ear you enjoyed it! And I totally agree about the mature content, and I love how he wrote it.
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