Paper Towns by John Green || #reviewfriday

This is another one of John Green's books turned into a movie, and I wonder if I should've gone for the two hour movie rather than the two day book reading experience. This doesn't seem to bode well. However, I don't entirely regret reading the book, as I probably would have skipped right through the movie as Q and his friends went on a wild goose chase.

Title: Paper Towns

Author: John Green
Genre: Young Adult, Coming of age

Before we begin, let's take a look at where the title came from.

[Fictitious or fake entries are deliberately incorrect entries in reference works such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, and directories. There are more specific terms for particular kinds of fictitious entry, such as Mountweazel, trap street, paper street, paper town, phantom settlement, phantom island, ghost word and nihilartikel. (Souce:Wikipedia)]

So,in a line, this story is about Quentin 'Q' Jacobsen trying to find his childhood crush Margo Roth Spiegelman after she runs away from home. There are intricacies and subplots in the novel, and the chase is beautifully crafted, but the book was a rather  lackluster read. And I really don't know what to point out that caused my disinterest. 

Perhaps it was the philosophic tint (more like a full blown out paint job) to the book. Margo (mostly referred to as 'Margo Roth Spiegelman' throughout the high school hallways and in Q's mind) and her word vomit (yes, word vomit) on 'paper towns' and 'paper people'-- the idea of being flimsy, weak, and one-dimensional; the way she went about escaping the 'paper'-ness of the world; all of it did  not make her a like-able character for me. I thought of her as being flighty, immature, and selfish. By the time Q's perception of her as Margo Roth Spiegelman, the most amazing being to grace the earth, toppled; I could not help but think, 'I told you so'.   

The graduation parties, the prom, the different kinds of parents, all of these were the same old ideas that did not offer anything new. Well, except the world record for hoarding the most number of black Santas,

Final words: all in all, not a satisfying read. If you are the kind of person that enjoys a lot of philosophic 'bark and no bite' (because I did not see any action to substantiate all that speech) then this book is for you, but unfortunately, not for me.

Rating: 1/5