Book #2: The Fault in our Stars by John Green

Sometimes I don't read books that are currently popular because I'm afraid I won't like them and then people will think I'm a book snob. But when my friend Chauncey tells me that a currently popular book is good, I usually read it. (The same goes for Aaron, unless vampires are involved. I may never forgive them for that). I read about this book several times, but it seemed so terribly, awfully depressing that I couldn't make myself read it. I feared falling into a really dark place where I could only cry and think about dying. This is an irrational fear because I don't know that I've ever actually been to a dark place like that, but it doesn't seem, well, fun.

Random thought: I often think about dying, but not in a scared, sad way. I find myself wondering what people will say about me when I'm gone. Sometimes I frame the decisions I make that way - "Later, when I'm dead, will this be something I'd be happy for people to share about me or not? Like, when they're telling Stormy stories, is this something that people who like me will share?" That's probably weird. Maybe I should keep weird things like that to myself.

Anyway, Chauncey's recommendation for this book was something like, "It's good. You'll tear through it in about six hours and you won't wish you had that six hours back."  I was sold.

And he was right.

The Fault in our Stars is beautiful, awesome, amazing, and lots of other superlatives. The narrator, Hazel, has terminal cancer. Her life has been prolonged by a miracle drug, but she knows she's dying relatively soon. Her voice is sarcastic, sometimes bitingly so, and honest almost to a fault. At a cancer kid support group she meets Augustus Waters and her life changes forever. She comes to understand her family, her illness, and herself better because of him.

There is a point in the book when Augustus and Hazel are talking obsessively about a book they both love, and for a moment I thought they were a little pretentious. But as I better understood the characters, I became sentimental about their pretentiousness and loved them more.

I started this Monday night and finished it tonight (Wednesday). This book is sad. I cried (sobbed?) during several scenes. But it is not depressing. Somehow it is an uplifting story about life even though it's about death. And it's really, really good.