ThE fAuLt In OuR sTaRs

In college I hated/despised/sort of looked forward to the always inevitable assignment in each theater class that would require us to pay money to go to see a show in the city and then write a review on it. I hated and despised it because sometimes it just wasn't a show I wanted to see. Although to counter that hatred ... I have to admit that even the shows I wasn't necessarily looking forward to always brought me some sort of joy in the end. I despised these assignments because it required me to spend money I didn't have to see a show I might not like or didn't desire to see in the first place. Finally, I kind of looked forward to these shows because any time you get to see theater is a blessing and some folks aren't so lucky to be exposed to the arts or have access to great artistry. 

The reason I bring this up is because my college professors (whom I remember fondly ... or not so fondly ...) always told us to take notes during the show so we wouldn't forget any important details (which I never did) and then to write the review the moment we got home so it would be fresh in our minds (which I never did). To review something immediately after seeing it or reading it is to have your feelings and reactions fresh in your mind to be transported through your body, out your fingers, and onto the page for someone to read and judge or converse with you on. Here's what happened with the bestselling young adult novel The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. This 2012 novel has been a hit since it came out and has been recommended to me by many people. I've put off reading it.

Let's face it ... who really wants to read a novel about a kid with cancer unless you want to cry (I mean c'mon, we can all guess how this is probably going to end, right???); I mean who wants to read a book that you just KNOW will probably make tears run down your face in rapid succession??? It's like the people who purposely seek out ridiculous movies that they know will end in someone dying (e.g. The Notebook, Steel Magnolias, A Walk to Remember, The Last Song, Moulin Rouge, Titanic, Forrest Gump, Love Story, etc.). Wait a minute ... let's look at those movies. Isn't it true that sometimes the best love stories are the ones that end in death? Well guess what, we can add The Fault in Our Stars to this list. Oh don't be surprised, you know someone is going to die in it the moment that someone who recommends it to you goes "Oh my God, you're so gonna cry at the end!" ..... FYI let's just remark upon that fact that Nicholas Sparks novels also usually end in someone dying. 

Okay my movie example tangent is done, but let's return to this all-star novel. I'm going to be honest with you, I was excited to read it, but when I started reading it I hated it. It reminded me of some of my favorite books and TV shows from when I was a "kid," for example, the Sloppy Firsts series, Dawson's Creek, The Princess Diaries, etc. It's about a group of kids who think they're too smart to relate to the people around them, and who also think that they've experienced too much in their probably too short lives to handle. The only difference between this kids and the Dawson's Creek characters, or Jessica Darling and Marcus Flutie from Sloppy Firsts, is that these kids in this book have cancer. These children and even their parents come off as somewhat pretentious and witty, but it's all understandable, right? I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to be an adult with cancer, but to be a kid? Dealing with puberty, school, parents, zits, boyfriends/girlfriends, cars, etc. .... oh and cancer. No. I get it. It didn't change the fact that for me I wanted to tell our main character, Hazel Grace, to cool the pessimism. Is that fair of me? No, but here's my reasoning. 

I do not have cancer, nor have I ever had cancer. However, I am one of the most bitter, pessimistic jerk-offs in the world, and yes there are moments where I find my quick and witty retorts quite clever. I have had things in my life go terribly wrong and yes, I've experienced some painful stuff. When I let my negativity infect the environment around me, and I blamed it on my past, one thing I hated is when people said "well at least you're not dealing with ________," or "someone might have it worse _________." I wanted to tell them the quote that "saying someone can't be sad because someone else may have it worse is just like saying someone can't be happy because someone else may have it better." We can't judge others' pains by our own. Here's my point with this. I am not comparing myself to the main character Hazel Grace or her friends, but I am saying that I wanted to reach out to this young girl and say "yes your life is hard, I get it ... I'm not going to tell you it could be worse, but I will say don't let it turn you into an asshole." So back to the point ... I started off not liking the book. Being smart with your retorts doesn't lighten up your crappy attitude. AND if you are likely to have a short-lived life ... why live it so angrily? But again ... what do I know? 

This book is about a girl and a boy. It's a love story. Based on my given examples above we can assume someones gonna die, right? Right. Here's the catch. Hazel Grace has terminal thyroid cancer and her lungs are shot, so she has to walk around attached to an oxygen tank. That sucks. Her mother forces her to get out of the house and go to a support group (that I would probably hate just as much as Hazel does ... stupid cheesy bastards trying to make it all okay), but anyway, at this support group one day Hazel meets a boy named Augustus Waters. Here I had my dislike of the book grow. Could we pick more pretentious names? AUGUST WATERS? AUGUSTUS. Have you ever met anyone named Augustus in your whole entire life? Well I haven't. Anyways, here's the thing. The character's got a special name because he turns out to be an incredibly special guy. His cancer left him an amputee without a leg. He and Hazel form a bond that can only be described as one that is just as unique as they are, and stronger than most real-life relationships I've seen. 

Hazel turns out to remind me again a lot of myself. She'd rather stay in the house with her horrible TV-addicted affliction and watch consecutive reruns of Top Chef or America's Next Top Model. Me too lady! And as previously mentioned she has an air of "I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what's cool." So as the book progresses her bitterness stops rubbing me the wrong way, and I start to really like her teenage, cancer-ridden, angsty little self. As much as I hate to admit this, I also feel tremendous amounts of pity for her; I thank my lucky stars I don't have to lug around an oxygen tank with me and I can indeed breathe in with healthy full lungs. Does it make me a bad person? Perhaps. However, as she gets to know Augustus Waters I feel myself envious of this slow-burning young life developing between two young kids - star-crossed lovers. Hence the title enters in ... "the fault in our stars." Again ... we know that someone is going to die, and Hazel is positive that she's a grenade that will ruin the lives of anyone who comes to close to her, including Augustus and her parents. I understand her isolation, I feel for her sadness, and god damn it I wish she just didn't have to deal with all the crap. She is all too aware of the side-effects of death and dying; something that young people shouldn't even fathom. Her stars doomed her from the start, but it made her a heck of a person with a broad understanding of living life and how to live it or hide from it. She grows in this book tremendously and you can't help but come to love her journey from angry little hermit crab to the young woman filled with love and passion that she becomes. 

I hope this makes sense. When I get passionate about literature or film I tend to rant. I am ranting, but I am passionate about this book I hated initially and then came to adore. Hazel is not just a angst-ridden teenage cancer inflicted girl. I learned that she was kind and addicted to the same TV shows I like. She contemplates why eggs are considered strictly breakfast foods. She comforts her friends who slowly lose themselves to the diseases that take over their bodies. She falls in love. She remarks upon "cancer perks" and goes to Amsterdam with a boy who just like her is incredibly poetic and who thinks too much. Her story is beautifully tragic. They constantly discuss a world in which they'll never live in and lament over things they might never experience. 

In Amsterdam the two (plus Hazel's mother) prepare to meet the author of a book they both love. This was Augustus' wish (a cancer perk). As they drive into town their cab driver informs them that "Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin." 

As Hazel gets ready to go out to eat with Augustus, her mom pushes her into a sundress and remarks upon how their dinner together will be romantic. Hazel remarks that "One might marvel at the insanity of the situation: A mother send her sixteen-year-old daughter alone with a seventeen-year-old boy out into a foreign city famous for its permissiveness. But this, too, was a side effect of dying: I could not run or dance or eat foods rich in nitrogen, but in the city of freedom, I was among the most liberated of its residents." 

At their dinner the two drink champagne - it is compared to bottled stars. 

I hated this book because I hated Hazel. I hated the negativity I saw inside her and I was so tempted to say "Could it be worse?!" I swallowed it down. I didn't want her to have the negativity I carry with myself. I wanted her to not get bogged down in the shitty-ness of her situation, but I learned throughout her journey that she has every right to feel the pain of her wounds. Hazel fell in love; slowly she learned that isn't a grenade and that she is not going to destroy people who get close to her. She will make their lives richer even if they can only have her for a short period of time. On her last day in Amsterdam she leaves us with wisdom: "You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice ..." 

Hazel leaves her negativity and recluse living for a life of love, heartbreak, hard lessons, and bottled stars. Eventually her stars dictate that tragedy take over, but she still endures and teaches lessons to those around her including me. As Stephen King said, "You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is judging you." Yes, I ended up crying my eyes out alone in my bed by the end of the book, and I realized that I was quick to judge someone who had every right to express her pain in a negative way. She didn't need me to save her, instead she allowed me to go on a journey with her filled with the inevitable end always in mind, but with laughter and love throughout. Give this book a read. You'll quickly want to drink bottled stars with Hazel Grace and the ridiculously named Augustus Waters. They remind us that everything is going to be "okay."

Reading is the Best Medicine

So yesterday I started reading the teen novel The Selection, and then I finished The Selection.Then last night I opened up its sequel, The Elite. Guess what? I crawled into bed at around 8pm with Scott - he caught what I've got - the sore throat/fever/I feel like death sickness. I had The Elite finished by midnight.

I love reading teen novels! They're quick reads for me, which is nice considering that once the school year starts I hardly have any time for reading anything fun, and they remind me a bit of what it's like to be a teenage girl ... wanting to find your true love, hungering for adventure, and being able to believe enough in the impossible to allow yourself to be transported into a somewhat cheesier world than your own. But certainly a world that is sometimes more interesting. 

I enjoyed The Elite a lot more than The Selection. In this second novel we get into more of the history of this made up country and the politics run a bit deeper. Our main girl, America, starts to care more about the job of becoming princess than her love for the prince, Maxon. She genuinely worries that she won't be able to handle the job properly and constantly seeks approval from her loved ones. America becomes the obvious change that Illea needs ... the becomes to hope of the people, the thorn in the king's side, and the beaming light of hope for the people in the lower castes. All at the same time she's fighting to prove to the prince that she does love him and fights to keep him as his true personality and deep secrets are slowly revealed. The prince becomes someone we may not like as much as we did before as we see his mask slowly come off, but in the end America realizes that for all his flaws she still has the desire to love him and is ready to fight to become "The One," the future Queen, and the future of Illea. Yes it's cheesy, but it's incredibly enjoyable and I devoured it. 

Apparently I was not the only reader to comment on how this book is a hybrid between The Hunger Games and The Bachelor. Other critics have also made the observation, and it becomes even more clear in this book. It's definitely got some similar themes that make it a super entertaining read. There's the political unrest of the people, the caste system, the theme of hunger and what it drives people to do, justice, the main character being a female who likes to fight for justice and thus piss off the elite, and then there's a competition where multiple women fight for one man, and yes that's completely anti-feminist and archaic, but those themes and issues are also explored. In fact, in The Elite, there are rebel groups attacking both the palace and the girls in the selection's families trying to end the selection because these rebels notice that it's wrong to basically sell your daughter to the monarchy to become Illea's property all for the "love" of one man. It's definintely worth a shot reading. Again ... unlike The Hunger Games, this does not strike me as something that would interest any boys, but it could be a good read for young girls, and could even start up some thought-provoking questions for those young girls. Would you join a competition of 35 girls to fight for a prince's love? Would you openly oppose the monarchy in front of your entire country, risking your life and your possibilities for love, if it meant that you would be saving your best friend? Would you publicly announce that you want to eliminate the caste system in a room full of the elite? Would you fight for justice? When stuck in love ... where do you go? Why do you think the entire history of a nation is hidden from its people?

The book is sweet. As one of America's maids points out to her little sister, "love is beautiful fear." Love is a complicated emotion that serves as the center for many of the stories we love as readers. "You know that you've found something amazing, and you want to hold on to it forever; and every second after you have it, you fear the moment you might lose it." I feel this everyday about the love I have for Scott. To lose that love would be worse than losing a limb, and probably more painful. It's even more painful for America who sees her love with other girls everyday, and then she sees her past love, her first love, who she isn't allowed to be with. She feels like she's losing it all. Pile on top of that the politics involved in her life, and you've got a pretty chaotic situation. America and her first love, Aspen (who is now a solider in the palace), are rarities for their country. They were a five and six pulled out of their monotonous lives and placed in the palace ... and now the two of them have opportunities to change their world that they never dreamed of. 

I'm incredibly excited for the third book in the trilogy to come out in 2014. We'll see if America does indeed end up with Prince Maxon - the boy with whom she must build up trust again with, or if she ends up marrying Aspen, her first love who was a caste below her, now risen up to caste two as a soldier. Will she become princess? Will she be happy? Will she change the world? 

September is the Perfect Time for Reading

So it's been a while. I finished reading the third installment in the "Game of Thrones" series, A Storm of Swords, yesterday. I have to say that this might have been my favorite so far out of the three books I've read of the A Song of Ice and Fire series. It was heartbreaking to lose some characters that I loved and cared about, and enjoyed reading about. Their story lines were exciting and controversial and now they're gone. Although I'm sure they'll only be replaced by new invigorating characters that arouse our interest and keep us reading about this fight for the iron throne.

On Friday I came down with a sickness that has left me feverish, tired, and with a terribly painful sore throat and hacking cough. In one day I finished yet another book, The Selection by Kiera Cass. This reminds me of a teenage romance version of The Hunger Games. Granted I have yet to read The Hunger Games series, but they are sitting on my desk awaiting my attention. I have, however, seen the movies. The Selection is a Harper Teen Romance and New York Times Bestseller. It's way above something my fifth graders could read, and boys will have no interest in it whatsoever, but I enjoyed the quick brain break from my usual reads. It was enjoyable and lovely. At 327 pages it was a quick read for me but it was really enjoyable. Not overly complicated and something I remember reading when I was teenager. Similar to The Hunger Games it focuses on a society in a restless state that is highly based on social status. In this world everyone belongs to a caste, and any caste that is 5 or below struggles to survive. Our main character, America, is named after a country that fought to stay united. You see, in this teen novel the United States of America have been dismantled due to severe bankruptcy and constant attacks from foreign countries looking to be paid back. 

After the U.S. was able to fight back and win some independence no one wanted to go back to a name that represented a country that fell, and so the U.S. gets renamed and becomes a monarchy. Here is where our heroine, America, comes in. She is in caste 5 which is reserved for artists (musicians, dancers, painters, etc.) and is generally poor as it is only three caste levels away from the bottom. America, being of age, enters into a competition known as "the selection," a competition featuring 35 young ladies fighting to win the heart of the prince, Maxon.

America originally does not want to enter this competition as she is in love with a young man named Aspen, but herein lies her problem: Aspen is from caste 6, a caste below her. Her parents want more for her, and unfortunately so does Aspen despite the love the two share for one another. Either way, heartbroken and terrified, America goes on to move into the palace and enjoy some steady meals and some pampering, and it helps that her parents continue to receive compensation for as long as she stays in the competition. America is originally hesitant and disliking of the prince, but as she gets to know him her heart opens to possibilities that she had never before considered. Who will she end up choosing ... a young prince who adores her, or a man that she fell in love with years before in a backyard tree house? Does America have what it takes to leave her caste and join the elite? Only time will tell as this is only the first book in a trilogy. I have the second book which I'll be reading now, and the third is due out sometime in 2014.

This teen romance novel is a combination of "The Bachelor" combined with some slight political unrest, similar to Hunger Games, but with less fighting to the death. The girls fighting for Maxon's hearts are regularly filmed and featured on TV, and yes public opinion does matter, as well the different girls' political and social affiliations. Can social status be pushed aside for love? This is a fun novel geared toward teenage girls who dream of Cinderella-esque scenarios. For us adults, it's a quick and endearing read.