Paper Towns by John Green

In early 2007, I stumbled upon John and Hank Green’s now-complete Brotherhood 2.0 video blog (or vlog). (They now have a new vlog/blog at Nerdfighters.com.) To be honest, I had never heard of either of them before their project, but their vlog posts were painfully funny and a welcome diversion from my piles and piles of graduate school work.

Here are two vlog posts of John Green reading a draft of Paper Towns way back in 2007: Paper Towns, Part 1 and Paper Towns, Part 2. (And don’t worry, they’re not spoilers.)

In December 2007, Brotherhood 2.0 ended. Eventually, I stopped thinking about the Green brothers and Paper Towns until Melissa Walker posted on her blog in October about Paper Towns and this fantastic video of people with their new copies! (Thanks for the reminder, Melissa!)

Paper Towns was definitely something to be excited about. It’s a fantastic realistic story wherein the protagonist learns more about himself than the person he is searching for. I would put it in the Catcher in the Rye—Perks of Being a Wallflower—Be Good—Tell Your Sister category of bildungsromans that are and would be appealing to young adults, 20-somethings, and YA literature fans like myself.

John Green balanced the right amount of emotionality without becoming sappy, existentialism without becoming too abstract, and humor without becoming insincere. I was thoroughly impressed, and I look forward to reading more of John Green’s work. 4.5/5

Have you read this book yet? What do you think of it?