Craving

I’ve been craving for something for a while now. I don’t quite remember when it started, I don’t even remember what triggered it, I just remember craving for it. I wanted to read. 

And not just read because I needed to, we have a little too much of that in med school, but read because I wanted to. I wanted to go back to my younger days when me and my sister would use our cellphones to keep reading well into the night because my parents had scolded us twice already about keeping the light on in our room way past bedtime on a weeknight. I wanted to cry myself to sleep again; as I did when Joe broke Laurie’s heart in words even a little girl couldn’t imagine ever being used in normal conversation. I wanted to laugh out loud again even with no one in the room; as I did when I pictured a beautiful Titania falling for a very donkey-looking Bottom with a naughty Puck in the background. I wanted to wince in indignation then go back a few pages hoping to change the story; as I did whenever I picked bad endings for goosebumps-choose-your-own-adventure. I wanted to be experiencing someone else’s life without leaving my own, as I did when I joined Alex Cross’ mysteries, or relating to Liz and Jessica’s growing-up-issues, or thrust into the world of the Sandman himself. I could go on vividly explaining what I was craving for with actions and their related fictional characters, but I might start to sound crazy or pompous. So basically, I was just craving for a good read.

And I tried, boy did I try, looking for something good to read. I have a few – nay, a lot – of unopened books at home that I was under the impression would be really good reads. I even started reading through some of them, doctors in particular was hard to put down, but for one reason or another, I stopped reading midway and got lost in my too busy or more important stuff to do routine.

So I was really glad I decided to open Looking for Alaska. A book that a friend highly recommended, but I was only half listening. Sorry! But I did read it, and I loved it. It got me reading again, for one reason or another, and it even gave me headaches – apparently my ophthalmologist says that I’m a rare case, because I was able to hide my condition for so long, at first glance nothing was wrong with my eyes, but apparently after closer inspection, he even exclaimed “How did you survive first two years of med with these eyes?!” haha, I really do not know.

Anyways, back to the book.

A friend had said “Tell me about it when you’re not raving about it anymore, tell me about it when you’re sad, when it's the last thing that you could relate to. Maybe then, I’ll believe you.” He was right. And I tried to sit calmly, and wait for the non-relatable time, so I can give my objective judgement of the book.

But I realized, what would the point be then? A simple recommendation of a book? I’m not a book connoisseur, nor can I pass off as one. The way I read, watch, absorb, learn, is by integrating me into the piece – a little selfish and shallow I know, but its what adds color to the story, and how I begin to understand it, how it can contribute to me becoming a better person. You don’t have to believe me, that’s the beauty of it.

An even closer friend said to me “Tell me about the author, the circumstance at the time, and the reason for this writing, that's how you can gauge if it really is a good book.” She was right as well. And to a certain degree, I did look at the book’s background (at the bottom is a vlog of the author talking about the censorship of the book).

But that was how they read their books -- and I super love, respect and look up to them for it, but it wasn't how I had read this book.

Another friend simply asked “What’s it about?”

It’s actually about a normal-boring young person, who decides he no longer wanted to settle for the boring life and sought out "the Great Perhaps”, and he does. He finds it in Alaska, this amazingly described girl who was the complete opposite of himself – daring, lived life to the full, spontaneous, interesting.

“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.” 

Don’t be fooled, its not a love story, nor is it some kind of messed up romanticized infatuation, he does not get the girl. Instead, the girl gets him thinking, about life, love, lust, and hope. And the girl isn’t as perfect as she seems either, which is what I loved about the book, apart from the honest language used and parallel thinking involved with a few of the characters, the development of the characters and their relationships with each other makes it enough for a good read.

But because Im not very good with words. 

Leave the good writing, to the writers. 

And the judging, to the critics.
The reading, we can do.

“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”

“It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn’t the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.” - John Greene, Looking for Alaska

XOXO,Joanie