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Kendaljay
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
Posts: 1493
Location: DFW, TX
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 Posted: Jul 03, 2012 8:56 am Post subject: July Book Club Discuss: The Fault In Our Stars |
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Here's where we will discuss our July book as/after we read it. :)
July's book choice is The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Of course, this isn't school, we don't have a set deadline to turn in our papers, so don't feel pressured! :) We can always continue the discussion after the month and I hope that this will encourage more people to join us in reading fun in the next few months!
There are a few minor rules/guidelines that should be followed (please let me know if you think anything should be added):
1. Read the book :) If you decide you don't want to read that month's book, no problem. Join us next time!
2. Join in the discussion, post links/pics/whatever about the book if you want.
3. Place spoilers in white; preface with something like "Spoilers thru Chapter 5", just in case you are ahead of others. I think you can post freely after the 15th or so? Does that sound okay?
4. Keep the discussion respectful, voice your opinions but don't bash others for theirs. Don't turn it into a "Twilight vs Harry Potter" argument lol...
Also, I will post August's voting around the 12th probably.
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Kendaljay
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
Posts: 1493
Location: DFW, TX
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| Posted: Jul 05, 2012 10:48 am Post subject: |
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Okay, I started this on Tuesday evening and finished it Wednesday evening. It was really really good (but not 5 stars good) and really really sad. I've only read one John Green book before this one, An Abundance of Katherines (my review here), but I was obviously aware of all the hype concerning TFIOS, since I recommended it here. :) So I knew it was going to be a sad book and yet, I wanted to read it anyway. That's kind of an odd thing...why do we want to read something so sad that will most likely make us cry and think about things that we normally wouldn't want to? Kind of rhetorical question, kind of not.
Here's my thoughts on other things, in no particular order (with spoilers for the entire book, so read at your own risk!):
Hazel: very grown-up for her age of only 16. Spoilers: I loved the fact that she was thinking of her parents and how they were going to handle things after she was gone. And how excited she was for her mom to be going back to school. I cried in the part where she heard her mom say she "wasn't going to be a mom anymore." I loved how she told off Van Houten. /end
Augustus: Apparently, Green's books all have a "Manic Pixie Dream Girl", ie the quirky girl who likes to fix people and make dreams come true. I guess I haven't read enough of his books yet to see that much. I kind of did in Augustus here...he was cool (putting unlit cigarettes in his mouth, which I'm sorry, would still be nasty) and talked fast and about super intelligent things (they both did) but was still sensitive. Spoilers: I got spoiled that he was the one who died from my Twitter feed Tuesday. I was pretty upset and had to put the book down for a while lol. /end
An Imperial Affliction: spoilers: I really wanted this to be a real book, like I'm sure most people did and I'm sure he meant it that way too. I even went and googled it. The idea of writing about a book within a book is interesting. Where does the line get drawn when you are talking about how people should interpret a "cancer book" when you yourself are actually writing a "cancer book"? It got pretty confusing for a while. /end
Van Houten: spoilers: I know he was supposed to be a "bad guy" and mean and evil and such, but I just felt sorry for him. It was pretty obvious he had someone close die and was destroyed by it. I just felt sorry for him. He couldn't function anymore and couldn't get close to anyone, even these 2 kids who had a deep, personal connection to his writing. /end
Okay, those are the things I thought of off the top of my head. I'm sure I'll be back with more. Anyone else started it yet? Looseymama, you want to discuss now? :)
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snoopy
Joined: 07 Apr 2004
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Location: SF
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| Posted: Jul 05, 2012 11:00 am Post subject: |
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I just put this book on hold at my library, but there are 134 people waiting for this book ahead of me. Maybe I'll read it July 2013! ;)
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Kendaljay
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
Posts: 1493
Location: DFW, TX
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| Posted: Jul 05, 2012 11:17 am Post subject: |
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Oh my gosh, Snoopy! That's crazy! I lucked out and found it at Half Price a few months ago and snatched it up.
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LooseyMama
Joined: 07 Apr 2004
Posts: 5541
Location: Bloomington, IN
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| Posted: Jul 05, 2012 8:18 pm Post subject: |
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Snoopy, I hope your library has a BUNCH of copies of the book so all those people don't have to wait forever! Maybe you should buy a copy and then after you've read it, donate it to the library? ;)
| Kendaljay wrote: |
| why do we want to read something so sad that will most likely make us cry and think about things that we normally wouldn't want to? |
The physical act of crying out an emotion is good for us, whether we're consciously crying out our *own* emotions or some stand-in. I have a fabulous butchy friend who, whenever life is bearing down on her and she's feeling like she needs a good cry (but can't just...cry), she rents Old Yeller. By the end of the film, she's gone through half a box of Kleenex and as the credits roll, she's feeling much better about her own life.
Now, regarding your first spoilered/whited-out comment, I had kind of the opposite reaction you did. My response was more like her mom's, actually. If my kid was dying and was worrying about ME, that would break my heart even more. It is SO not a kid's place to be responsible for their parents' feelings. BTDT--as a kid--and it sucks puttyballs. I try to be super-conscious to make sure my kids understand that my feelings about anything, including about them, are *my* thing to deal with, not theirs.
Your Augustus spoiler wasn't a surprise to me. I don't have the book in front of me to be able to tell you when I saw that coming, but by the time of the reveal, I wasn't shocked. Saddened, yes, but not shocked.
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| An Imperial Affliction |
Me, too! Sorta. When I thought about it, though, I decided that a whole entire book with *that* tone would be really ... grating. He could be so freaking pompous with all that! But I agree with you about the novelty of a book-within-a-book. I mean, it's been done before, often enough that there's at least one website devoted to fictional books. But it's still cool! Or maybe it's even more cool to me because of the website!
Re: your Van Houten spoilers: I didn't feel *too* sorry for him. I mean, yeah, a terrible thing happened to him many years ago. And probably the bags and stacks of fan mail kind of added salt to his wounds, not to mention this real-life girl showing up *dressed* as his dead daughter. But still, man, man-up! A broken heart does not HAVE to translate to alcoholism and overall asshholeness for the rest of your life, especially in the face of two young dying fans! I don't want to sound like a total bitch because yes, I do honor and respect the fact that people do require different lengths of time to adequately grieve ... I guess I just don't have a ton of patience with people who allow their grieving to become an excuse for lifelong alcoholism or addiction.
And now here's a new thread for you so I'm not just throwing in my opinions about what you posted. And I don't *think* I'm going to white this out as a spoiler because it happens so early in the book. I was really struck by Hazel's response to Augustus saying she was beautiful. I know that part of the plotline later suggests that a chunk of that was related to his dead ex-girlfriend, but still, before we knew that, the talk about beauty really struck me. Can people who're accustomed to being around dying/very sick/swollen/chemo-responding bodies actually shift their perceptions of physical beauty? Or was he primarily responding to her inner/personality beauty, and being nonchalant about the effects of the treatment?
I have now been around two women I deeply loved as they have gone through radiation and/or chemo, gotten crazy-bloated, lost their hair and whatever radiance they'd previously exhibited. I loved them through all of that. The first was my mother, who died in 1988. She was never beautiful, not even as a young woman, but she was my mother and I loved her deeply. The second was my fairy godmother, who *was* (in a non-traditional sort of way) quite beautiful, certainly stylish and comfortable, and (she admitted herself) was fairly vain. So the changes she saw in the mirror during the last months of her life caused her a lot of emotional damage and distress. She had changed SO MUCH as she neared her death/transition that she insisted that there be no visitation related to a funeral. (She tried actually to deny us all a funeral/memorial service at all, but she got overruled on that one.) I was close enough to her and one of her caregivers, so I was allowed to be with her near the end, much later than many other people who loved her were allowed to be. And I don't know if it's a part of me that honors her or a part of me that denies reality, but the memory of what she looked like in those last weeks has faded away significantly, even though that was only three years ago. Still, even though the picture in my mind has faded, the emotional impact of how she looked has not (or not much, in comparison, at least).
And then, not long before I read this book, I ran across some photos of my Mom at a party, from when she was in the midst of one of her chemo rounds: I could tell because her face was severely swollen. And because I came upon it unexpectedly, the shock of THAT face was so abruptly different from the face I carry in my memory ... it stunned me and I recoiled. It broke my heart a little more, all over again, seeing it, even though she's been dead now more than 24 years.
I'm not especially proud of the fact that I recoiled from a picture of my own mother, but I'll admit that it's true. And it made me wonder if teenagers, in the flux of teenage hormones on top of all the chemo in their veins, can somehow see through all of that to see the beauty in one another.
What do you all think about that? You're all much closer to that powerfully-hormonal part of your lives than I am. (Welll, I've got powerful hormones, but they're moving in a different direction than yours, alas!)
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snoopy
Joined: 07 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Jul 05, 2012 9:29 pm Post subject: |
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| LooseyMama wrote: |
| Snoopy, I hope your library has a BUNCH of copies of the book so all those people don't have to wait forever! Maybe you should buy a copy and then after you've read it, donate it to the library? ;) |
They have 25 copies, so hopefully it won't take too long. I already have a slew of books to read first though. But I like the idea of buying a copy and donating it when I'm done.
Carry on!
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Kendaljay
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
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Location: DFW, TX
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| Posted: Jul 07, 2012 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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Re: Beauty
Loosey, I don't think you should feel guilty about recoiling at your mother's picture. It seems acceptable to me that you have pushed that idea of your mother being sick to the back of your mind in favor of better times. My grandfather died when I was in 9th or 10th grade and was in a hospital for a good 2 years before that. But I don't remember that part. I remember him whistling constantly to get on my grandma's nerves and winking at us as he did it. I remember riding in his orange pickup truck and him fixing us toast with peanut butter and syrup. And my grandma (his wife) has been cancer-free for 3 years now, I think. Even though she has to wear a wig now and is a little shaky and stuff, I still see her as she was 10-12 years ago. Like, I don't even see that stuff when I look at her.
Okay, so that was a long way to say I think beauty can be seen in anyone, anytime. ;) I think in the case of this book, Augustus first saw his dead girlfriend, which shocked him into looking closer. But after that, I think he did see the beauty in Hazel. I don't know that a healthy teen would have been able to see that. I think they wouldn't have been able to get past the "sick" part. But for someone who has been thru that themselves, yeah, I think they were capable.
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applesauce
Joined: 02 Apr 2008
Posts: 300
Location: Toronto
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| Posted: Aug 10, 2012 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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I just finished the book tonight! I had many of the same reactions already mentioned. I have a chronic illness and a lot of chronically ill people around me, so it was pretty dang heart-breaking at times. Sweet though. And yes yes yes I wish The Imperial Affliction were a real book so I could read it and see what all the fuss is about!
I didn't feel much compassion for Van Houten, he had the means to overcome his grief...remember what Hazel said about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
I'm much older than 16 and I don't have a terminal illness, but I sort of think I'd like to live a bit more like Hazel. Grace Under Pressure and all that.
How bizarre to travel from the US to the Netherlands for just a few days! But it's plausible in this context I guess.
It was a sweet, easy read that stirred me up. I really enjoyed reading it and would recommend it but will rate it 3/5. |
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Lassi
Joined: 07 Apr 2004
Posts: 1327
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| Posted: Aug 11, 2012 10:50 am Post subject: |
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It's been a while since I read it, but I'll join it :)
I really enjoyed the book, however, with all the build up, I was expecting to love it the same way I loved Looking for Alaska (which is one of my favorite books). It hit me in a similar way, but it didn't feel as real for me:
I found the whole book within a book thing to be quite contrived, to the point of being distracting at times. I didn't like Van Houten's character much. I agree with you Loosey, I just thought his whole loss coming out as alcoholism and being a total asshole was frustrating. I also thought that it was pretty cliche.
That said, I really loved the characters, especially Hazel. Her relationship with her parents was so heartbreaking.
I love John Green as an author and, even though this is not my favorite of his books, I really enjoyed it. He gets the kids at my school fired up about reading and makes them proud to be nerdy/weird, which is something I really respect. When the book came out, the kids at the school where I work were soooooo excited. I love that he communicates with his fans so well through his blog and the fact that he signed every copy of the entire first run...I just love the way he makes an effort to connect with young readers. Anyway, reading the book was a great experience since a bunch of students were reading it at the same time and running into the library throughout the day to ask me what page I was on, so we could talk about the book and how much it made us cry! |
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LooseyMama
Joined: 07 Apr 2004
Posts: 5541
Location: Bloomington, IN
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| Posted: Aug 11, 2012 7:46 pm Post subject: |
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I have become a little embarassingly obsessed with John Green (not in a scary way, just in a big, big fan way, I promise).
You guys should totally check out the Vlogbrothers videos on YouTube, and the educational videos (which are remarkably fun) that John and his brother do there.
And then you should check out NerdFighters.com ... its kind of a younger, nerdier/somewhat less crafty Glitter-ish place. The vibe is *very* Glitterlike. And I love their mission ... to "increase awesome and decrease worldsuck" and DFTBA--Don't Forget To Be Awesome!
Did you know that one of the Olympic gymnasts is a NerdFighter and flashed the NerdFighter symbol AT the Olympics, on the BBC (and presumably, worldwide)? Dang, we need an Olympian to do the Glitter secret scissors-symbol thing!
And then I found John's blog where he answers questions about TFiOS ... and the Tumblr where you can submit questions, too. Obviously, both those sites ... probably all these sites ... have spoilers, so don't go there until you've finished reading.
And didja know that Hazel is sorta kinda based on a real girl, named Esther? Check out that blog link (just before the Tumblr link) and read through the first set of general questions
Okay, maybe I'm a little over-the-top here in my fandom, but I thought I'd share. (Is anybody else feeling this fan-y?)
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Lassi
Joined: 07 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Aug 11, 2012 9:26 pm Post subject: |
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| LooseyMama wrote: |
| (Is anybody else feeling this fan-y?) |
Yes, totally with you on this one! I saw John Green at a YA book author panel back in 2006 and fell kinda head over heels :) I just love his message/presence for young people. |
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Kendaljay
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
Posts: 1493
Location: DFW, TX
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| Posted: Aug 13, 2012 9:06 am Post subject: |
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He is pretty awesome, I'm following him on Tweeter. I've watched several of his vlogs, I think the Harry Potter ones were where I first heard about him and his brother.
The Nerdfighter at the Olympics was really cool, we should totally have a G*er there next time! Lol...and I had just read the Q&A about TFIOS last week, it's funny you posted it.
And in case you haven't noticed, I didn't do an August book, because it looked like interest was dwindling down. But I'm still reading and definitely love to talk about reading, so anyone can feel free to start a thread! One specific book or in general; I'll be there. :)
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snoopy
Joined: 07 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sep 25, 2012 1:19 pm Post subject: |
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I just got my copy from the library! Hopefully gonna crack into it today or tomorrow.
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LooseyMama
Joined: 07 Apr 2004
Posts: 5541
Location: Bloomington, IN
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| Posted: Sep 25, 2012 4:09 pm Post subject: |
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| snoopy wrote: |
| I just got my copy from the library! Hopefully gonna crack into it today or tomorrow. |
If I didn't have so damn much to do right now I'd get it from my library again and read it again with you!
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Kendaljay
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
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| Posted: Sep 26, 2012 8:41 am Post subject: |
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Yay, Snoopy! Let us know what you think when you're done. :)
I still haven't reviewed it for my blog, I am so far behind!! Arg....
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