Paper Towns by John Green

When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night - dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows her. Margo's always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she's always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they're for Q. 

Printz Medalist John Green returns with the trademark brilliant wit and heart-stopping emotional honesty that have inspired a new generation of readers.

Published October 16th 2008 by Dutton Juvenile

10 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT PAPER TOWNS

1) Dear John Green,

 You had me at, “Maybe all the strings inside him broke.”

2) Meet the characters:

Quentin: Nerdy, Alternative and Hipster. Basically, every John Green character.

MaRgO:  She capitalises random letters because otherwise it’s not fair to the other letters.

She is mad as a hatter and odd as a bat.

In Ben Starling’s words,"She's the kind of person who either dies tragically at twenty-seven, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, or else grows up to win, like, the first-ever Nobel Prize for Awesome."

Also, the show Revenge should drop Emily or Amanda or whatever and follow Margo because hell hath no fury like Margo scorned.

Radar: Nerdy, Obsessed with Omnictionary which is a site like Wikipedia and LOOK, IT EXISTS. http://www.omnictionary.com/index.php/Main_Page

 Oh, and owns the largest collection of Black Santas EVER.

Ben: Funny Ben is Funny.

3) Pop Culture references.

Example: "The last time I was this scared," Radar says, "I actually had to face a Dark Lord in order to make the world safe for wizards."

Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and Wilco make a special musical appearance.

And THE BELL JAR! THE BELL JAR! MY The Bell Jar. 

Also, Emily Dickinson.

4) The entire novel is weaved along with Walt Whitma’s Song of Myself from his book Leaves of Grass.

5) This book followed major themes of Perception and the Mirrors vs Windows concept.

6) Urban explorers.

7) Quentin is the book version of every character Jesse Eisenberg and Adam Brody have ever played. ( Except Zuckerberg in The Social Network. He would fit too, if he were ever so slightly dumbed down. :P ) And if nothing else, that in itself is enough for me to love the movie.

8) The novel is divided into 3 sub-parts, each providing insight into a major metaphor.

So we have The Strings, The Grass, and The Vessel.

And the only thing I like more than awkward, hyperintellectual, neurotic guys (Read: Woody Allen, Jesse Eisenberg, Adam Brody) is METAPHORS. I can eat metaphors for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

9) I loved this paragraph.

“Here’s what’s not beautiful about it: from here, you can’t see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is. It’s not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It’s a paper town. I mean look at it, Q; look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning thing. All the thing paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too.”

10) THE ROAD TRIP. THE BLOODY ROAD TRIP. It was all types of awesomeness and coolness and I can forever fangirl over the road trip. And honestly, it made me wonder why I haven’t read any books on road trips before. Picked up On The Road by Jack Kerouac the very next day. Any other recommendations? 

I don’t know how a book filled with pranks, clues, mystery, beer and naked graduation manages to be philosophical, but this one does.