Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
A deeply affecting coming-of-age story, Looking for Alaska traces the journey of Miles Halter, a misfit Florida teenager who leaves the safety of home for a boarding school in Alabama and a chance to explore the "Great Perhaps." Debut novelist and NPR commentator Green perfectly captures the intensity of feeling and despair that defines adolescence in this hip, shocking, and emotionally charged work of fiction.
Miles has a quirky interest in famous people's last words, especially François Rabelais's final statement, "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." Determined not to wait for death to begin a similar quest, Miles convinces his parents to let him leave home. Once settled at Culver Creek Preparatory School, he befriends a couple of equally gifted outcasts: his roommate Chip -- commonly known as the Colonel -- who has a predilection for memorizing long, alphabetical lists for fun; and the beautiful and unpredictable Alaska, whom Miles comes to adore.
The kids grow closer as they make their way through a school year filled with contraband, tests, pranks, breakups, and revelations about family and life. But as the story hurtles toward its shattering climax, chapter headings like "forty-six days before" and "the last day" portend a tragic event -- one that will change Miles forever and lead him to new conclusions about the value of his cherished "Great Perhaps."
(Summer 2005 Selection)
“It’s hard to be funny, you can’t really plan on—you don’t know what will land with people…. absurdity just exists constantly in the world that we live in. And to my mind, the humor comes from the way different people traverse absurdity, how they try to normalize it, or how they freak out because they […]
Every year the Office for Intellectual Freedom, a branch of the American Library Association dedicated to fighting censorship, compiles a list of the books that have been banned or challenged by parents, schools, or libraries. When you look at these lists through the years, you begin to see patterns in the type of content challengers […]
Tenet Partners today announced that Barnes & Noble was named the number 1 retailer in a study of the Top 20 Most Powerful Back-to-School retail brands. Tenet Partners is a leading brand innovation and marketing firm, and its annual study of approximately 10,000 consumers and business decision-makers found that Barnes & Noble has the highest […]
John Green got the world’s attention with The Fault in Our Stars, as new readers discovered what his fans already knew: Green writes some of the most warmhearted, insightful fiction in young adult lit. His heart-tugging books are the perfect blend of funny and sad, specific and universal, with characters that are relatable, articulate, and weird […]
There are two kinds of people in this world: There are the people who love Black Friday (the hustle and bustle and holiday cheer), and the people who don’t (the parking, the crowds, the constant fear of being trampled for standing too close to the last half-price flatscreen). If you are one of the former, […]