A Metaphor

I guess I seem to be failing at this whole book a week thing. Week 26 of the year and I have unfortunately read only 16 books! Of course exams took 7 of those weeks where I went cold turkey which thus led to me reigniting my addiction last Friday finishing 2 books and starting a third all in one day! 3 of those 10 missed weeks disappeared into a void of having taken longer than I had anticipated reading certain books. But now, here I am, after having taken a break, writing my 4^th blog post in 2 weeks! Is this where I am allowed to say ‘GO ME!’? I have planned certain books to take away on holiday, I have borrowed various others from friends and family, and I have a growing pile of 17 books on my bookshelf ready for me to go full steam ahead and make a dent in the list of 52 books I have to read this year. So here goes, book number 16;

Paper Towns – John Green

Firstly may I say that John Green is one of those authors that can just write so beautifully and fluently on a page that it can honestly feel like you are there in the setting amongst the characters’; I read ‘The Fault in our Stars’ last year and ‘Looking for Alaska’ is another must read for me this summer, the way he builds upon characters and back stories to create a life amongst the short chapter of the characters so called ‘life’ is just impeccable and admirable. For me, John Green is one of those authors that truly make me believe that my writing could never match to his standard therefore I may as well just give up whilst I’m ahead!

If any of you have not been following the craze of the new film release of this book then let me fill in the gaps for you. Margo Roth Spiegelman and Quinten Jacobsen are the protagonists of this story. Margo, the typical rebellious girl, hottest wannabe girl in school, dislikes her parents and has a knack for doing things she shouldn’t…. especially as she has a track record of running away but leaving decipherable clues in her leave. Quinten, the cute nerd guy that goes unrecognised by the girls including the rebel that he’s grown to love as her bedroom window has always been adjacent to his. One night she strings him along in one of her marvel moonlit plans and when he goes to find her at school the next day, she’s gone, having left deciphering clues behind that only he would recognise to find her.

Being perfectly honest with you, I’m not usually massively keen on mysteries and clue led books because we all know it's going to be miraculously solved one way or another in the end, but something about Green’s story gripped me from page one. Maybe it was the romanticist in me that hoped she would fall in love with her hero in the end, maybe it was the admiration of true friendship that having grown up with her, Q would never give up on her, and maybe it was the suspense of wondering what could possibly happen with each turning page and wondering what I could learn. For example, never have I ever seen someone use Pavlov’s dog theory in such a casual manner…*drinks*.

On another note though John Green did leave his imprint on me as with the other 16 books so far this year; the idea of paper towns. Paper girls needing a string, a guidance, paper towns looking amazing from a distance but you can’t see the rips and the broken paint from afar, the idea that nothing ever really matters when everything matters. I suppose we are in paper towns but in a different sense, each of our paper towns are compiled into pages and pages of our own books. Diary pages, poetry, art, books that are us. Our life is a paper town compiled together with chapters and chapters that even if we do dig a hole and bury it, we will never fully go away from it because it’s a part of us. This right here is me, sitting in my paper town room, as a paper girl, drawing something extraordinary of my own life to make it something special as I hope you are too. As Green quotes Emily Dickinson;

‘Forever is composed of nows’

And I completely agree. The now when you decide to do your homework and do your hardest for your exams, the now where you decide to do something small but meaningful for your partner or parent to keep showing them you love them, the now when you take a moment to step into the sunshine and appreciate what you have rather than waiting until winter to complain that English weather is crap, the now when you decide to exercise so you feel healthier and more energised...The now when you decide to see the positives in your life and turn away from the negatives and create your forever, now.