John Green = Overrated

As you know the only genre I really like is fantasy, so everything else I read is pretty much because other people have read them, and I want to have decent conversational topics. I've moved on to John Green's works- and no, he doesn't write stuff like Twilight or Fifty Shades (proving to you I read more than terrible romance/erotica). He writes... young adult fiction, I guess it'd be called? That's kinda vague, isn't it. Well from what I see he writes about teenagers in their teenage angst.

I read through Looking for Alaska quite quickly- and it's about this girl called Alaska Young who is supposedly "Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy". I expected this delightfully charming character- but sadly I have to say I haven't liked a female character since Elizabeth Bennett. I thought Alaska was quite bland for what she was supposed to be, and I found her to be a bit of a whore, and a bit of a moody bitch. I guess her moodiness was meant to be part of her character, but she certainly wasn't charming. The protagonist did say she had large boobs... I mean, I guess that's charming enough, but I didn't except that to account for being clever and funny. The only thing I liked about her was her name- Alaska Young is a beautiful, exotic name. That was pretty much it.

For the entirety of the novel, I felt as if the author tried to grasp at grand themes but lacked the literary prowess to back it up. I mean themes aside, it is really important for the actual words themselves to leave an impact. They didn't have to be fancy or complicated- I just wished they were more impressionable, because right now I can't really remember anything much of the novel. I was thoroughly confused why the protagonist professed to loving- like, actually loving, Alaska. I mean I guess to him she was charming, but as a reader I thought it was more teenage stupidity than love. Like I would believe Bella loved Edward Cullen, but I was not entirely convinced that Miles Halter loved Alaska Young.

The people who recommended John Green to me said that his works were beautiful and tragic and that it captures the essence of life. I'd love to disagree. It's tragic to a degree but it's only a very small, very personal tragedy. Usually you would expect these things to invoke more emotional responses than the broader tragedies- and by that I mean you would probably be sadder about your dog dying than about hearing that Typhoon Haiyan ripped more than 5000 people apart. Except- using my own metaphor, I failed to feel sad when my dog died, because it turned out it wasn't even my dog, and it wasn't really a dog.

As for his works being "beautiful"- well that is subjective, but I can see why people would say it's beautiful. The things it's trying to say, the underlying messages- they're certainly worthy of praise, but I thought the delivery was just sub-par. Green seemed to try to do too much at once, and in that short of a novel he didn't seem to do much at all. I know I can't just expect every author to be F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I thought it'd be something better than what I found.

So far I've only read Looking for Alaska, and you might say I'm being unfair because it's like his earliest work and I shouldn't judge an author by one book. Well tell me what you remember about J. K. Rowling apart from Harry Potter. Authors tend to write the same stuff, because going from writing poetry to non-fiction to literature is hard. I've read most of Jane Austen's works and I can safely tell you they are pretty much all about the same shit. Most of Tolkien's works are in fact based on Middle Earth, and I'm pretty convinced that John Green doesn't write much about anything outside teenagers and their teenage angst. 

That said, a copy of The Fault in Our Stars is on its way, and apparently it's the best thing John Green has ever written. I'm not entirely convinced that it's as heart-breaking as people say it is, because I suspect it only magnifies the feelings of the overly-sentimental, but I will do my best to read with an open mind. I will admit that I thought "Alaska is a stupid whore" the very page she was introduced, and I didn't really like the protagonist though I felt a little sorry for him. 

Anyway, my conclusion is that John Green is vastly overrated- and while I see the merit of his works being included in an English curriculum, if I were a student I'd probably wish the author never learnt to read and write. I do feel sorry for the people who have to study and analyse this stuff- to praise the author on anything other than theme would be the biggest lie ever, and sadly essays never end well with 1 body paragraph on theme. It's all my opinion, anyway, and it's not something I'd actively dissuade people from reading... I just don't think it's as good as people claim it to be.