Saturday, April 11, 2009

Looking for Alaska--and Easter stuff

Breakfast was waffles and sausage and coffee--with a side of about a dozen hard-boiled eggs.

(We'll be coloring eggs for Easter activities later today, but first we've got to attend the Easter Egg hunt at our church.)

Last night I stayed up a while--after dozing on the couch--to finish reading John Green's Looking for Alaska. I liked the book, though I've never attended a private school in Alabama. There is a private academy in my hometown (though it is not a boarding school). It (like so many other academies in the South at that time) was created during the Civil Rights era to circumvent the school segregation efforts of the Supreme Court.

So, that is my closest connection to the setting of the school that is the setting of Looking for Alaska. I do understand--a bit--the unrequited feelings of the main character. But my pinings didn't lead in the same directions as they did in the book.

LfA reminded me a lot of A Separate Peace, though set in a different era and in a different region. Certainly Green's novel was much more modern than Fowles' book, but I felt similar themes of passing childhood and secrets confronted. (Nothing dramatically amazing there, since I think these are common themes in much of the YA literature.)

So, I'll stop trying to be a literary critic and simply say I enjoyed the book quite a lot. I look forward to reading Green's second book--which will be coming up once I whittle down some of the books I've borrowed from friends and need to finish and return.

More later?

*****

(7:58 pm)

Sorry friends, but (other than this) no further updates today.

I realize that since we are going out of town tomorrow after the Easter services, I need to project ahead a few days in order to keep the streak going.

Yes, that's right. We are actually going on a small Spring Break vacation--and it doesn't involve a family destination! Shocking, but true.

We'll be enjoying the spring bloomings and improving weather in the Hocking Hills area about an hour east of Columbus. We've rented a small cottage and I don't think there will be Internet access. So, WWYG?! will be pre-written for a few days.

See you (more liveish) when I get back.

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