Looking for Alaska

John Green presents a unique perspective in his debut book, Looking for Alaska. His work focuses largely on the impact one person’s life can have on another.
In the book, the protagonist is a young man by the name of Miles Halter. Miles has an obsession reading with autobiographies and memorizing famous last words. He has become bored with his safe home life and transfers to a boarding school called Culliver Creek in the middle of Alabama. There, he meets his new roommate, a quirky punker boy who goes by ‘The Colonel,’ and her. Alaska Young is the most beautiful, funny, clever, messed-up girl he’s ever met. One night, a conversation about famous last words brings them to Alaska’s personal favorite: “Damn it! How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?” What is the labyrinth, and how will Miles ever decipher the maze that is Alaska?
On the whole, I found the book to be wordy, easily predictable, and a bit dull. At parts it’s as though you’re reading regurgitated information as dialogue is repeated for the fifth time. The plot drags on slowly, with high-points every few chapters or so. Points of humor in the beginning lose their comedy, as they become moral metaphors farther on.
However, the concept of a person affecting another as deeply as portrayed in this book is an engaging concept, and really one of the books redeeming factors. All in all, it’s a good book to read if you’ve got nothing else to do.