{"id":662,"date":"2011-11-28T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2011-11-28T14:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=662"},"modified":"2011-11-25T11:17:52","modified_gmt":"2011-11-25T19:17:52","slug":"mark-reads-looking-for-alaska-one-hundred-twenty-six-one-hundred-twenty-days-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2011\/11\/mark-reads-looking-for-alaska-one-hundred-twenty-six-one-hundred-twenty-days-before\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘Looking For Alaska’: one hundred twenty six \/ one hundred twenty days before"},"content":{"rendered":"

One hundred twenty-six days before it happens, Miles gains a newfound respect for religion (and one specific teacher) on his first day of classes. The colonel learns why Kevin and his friends are so angry with him and Miles as well. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Looking For Alaska<\/em>.<\/p>\n

one hundred twenty-six days before<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ok, I’m way into this. Way into this. The thing is, this book is rather slow and I don’t think it’ll speed up much until things get closer to the\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.well, I don’t know what the thing<\/em> is that this is leading towards. I can’t even guess. Can I just assume it’s the prank? Well\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6I’ll probably get in trouble doing that. So let’s not.<\/p>\n

Novels need a good set-up sometimes to deliver the emotional goods. This is not like The Hunger Games<\/em> trilogy, which often jumped right into the action in the first couple chapters. I like a slow build BUT YOU ALL KNEW THAT ALREADY. The pieces that John Green is moving into place seem somewhat important for the time being, but I think I’m okay just enjoying the experience.<\/p>\n

I wonder if what Green writes about in Looking For Alaska<\/em> is at all familiar to those of you who don’t live in America; I know that I was still able to find a whole lot that was relatable to me in Harry Potter<\/em>, despite that many tropes, stereotypes, or narratives were borrowed or lifted from the British schooling system. Does this seem foreign or strange to you as you read it? How much different is this process from what you came to know as a student? (Well, you could still be<\/em> a student, too, obviously!) As I’ve said many times before, this is not much like public high school at all to me. Instead, it mirrors my freshman year of college in nearly every detail, from class structure, to initial perceptions of classes, to the social anxieties of being the only person from your school around, to what impressed me about certain professors. What’s weird to me is that everything about my experience running up<\/em> to being in college was so horrifically atypical. That’s not to say that everything about being in a school system like Culver Creek is what I went through. But I expected college to be so drastically different for me since I was doing it all entirely by myself, with no family or friends to rely upon.<\/p>\n

I guess that I just worried that I was too<\/em> different or too poor to enjoy college, that I would be left out of too much because my high school experience was nothing like anyone else’s. LOL NO ONE CARED. And that’s sort of what is so great about it: the professors generally don’t give a shit. Your dorm buddies don’t give a shit. Your horrific schedule doesn’t give a shit. (WHY DID I TAKE TWENTY-ONE UNITS MY FRESHMAN YEAR<\/strong>) I don’t mean that that sort of schooling was soulless and without empathy; I made a lot of great friends and some of my favorite people I’ve ever met were my professors. Like what Miles experiences here, there’s a much different expectation than what high school was like; there is far less hand-holding. All of my classes barely introduced anything at all, choosing instead to delve into the text, into discussions, or into long-winded lectures about things I barely understood at first.<\/p>\n

(Side note: I had a 4.37 GPA in high school and also aced every college class I took. Except<\/em> Marine Biology. For some goddamn reason, that 8am class on Mondays and Wednesdays destroyed me beyond belief, because I failed it twice<\/em>. And even the third time around, I barely got a C. And it wasn’t that it was uninteresting or boring. The professor was fantastic<\/em>, and we constantly WENT ON FIELD TRIPS. But something about a class that early in the morning, combined with the fact that our class size was around 200, and the fact that the first two times I picked a lab partner who NEVER SHOWED UP TO ANYTHING, caused me to horrifically fail. And look, now I wake up at like 6 or 6:30 every morning. EIGHT IN THE MORNING REALLY ISN’T THAT EARLY. I don’t know how else to explain this.)<\/p>\n

One of the main things we learn in this “chapter” is that the violence against Miles the previous night was also handed out to the Colonel: the culprits peed in his shoes<\/em>. Wow, what an incredibly effective way to ruin something forever. Sorry, don’t care how many times they were washed; I’d never wear them again. I’m not sure what this all means quite yet; why are Kevin and his friends so upset at these two? The Colonel is dedicated to getting to the bottom of this, and tasks Miles with identifying the other two boys who attacked him.<\/p>\n

It’s here where Miles meets Dr. Hyde. He’s my Dr. Roberts, and he was the first professor I had that made me enjoy lectures. Well, enjoy them, sure, but he also ruined them forever because no one could ever hold a lecture quite like he could. I mean, seriously, read this again:<\/p>\n

“And in my classes, I will talk most of the time, and you will listen most of the time. Because you may be smart, but I’ve been smart longer.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
BLESS THIS MAN FOREVER AND FOR ALL TIME<\/em>. I mean right<\/em>. I love that it’s like this inherent statement of how important experience is. Also, I always liked professors who just laid out all their cards on the first day.<\/p>\n
There’s a small interaction between Alaska and Miles at the end of this chapter; the two already have a bizarre and slightly strained relationship. The dynamic is odd because Miles is clearly way too attracted to her, and Alaska definitely enjoys Miles’s company, but it’s all just to an extent. Is Miles trying too hard? Maybe not yet, but he’s getting there, and it doesn’t help that Alaska is being dismissive of how Miles feels about being teased. He’s still the outsider to this group, and even though they’ve (sort of) taken him under their wing, he’s still not quite a part of it all.<\/p>\n
Hmmmm.<\/p>\n
one hundred twenty-two days before<\/strong><\/p>\n
My mom taught me how to iron when I was twelve. Which is extremely weird in hindsight only because she then<\/em> believed that the iron was too dangerous for me to use unsupervised the entire time I lived with her, so after she taught it to me, I never did it alone until I moved out of the house. WEIRD.<\/p>\n
“And when I asked Alaska, she started yelling, ‘You’re not going to impose the patriarchal paradigm on me<\/em>.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
DEFINITELY WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH HER<\/em>.<\/p>\n
I now feel funny having stated that Alaska and Miles have an odd dynamic to their friendship. That’s because Chip’s relationship with Sara is a million times worse, and something that I will just straight-up state that I do not understand. I acknowledge that I’ve only had two boyfriends in my entire life, that I’ve only been out and dating for nine years, and that I’m relatively inexperienced when compared to others in terms of volume. That doesn’t bother me; I started later than most people because I was in the closet in high school and I never had a high school romance. Plus, I have a whole lot of social anxieties and fears that generally keep me away from dating unless I feel particularly<\/em> good about another dude, and that’s also<\/em> rare. I wouldn’t say I’m picky; I think I set the bar high. One of the most important things to me is that I need to be able to get along with a person on a most basic level. I spend enough time yelling into the void that is the Internet as it is. I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone (or even date<\/em> for that matter) if I am constantly fighting with them.<\/p>\n
I honestly don’t know any queer couples that act like this and it seems to me to appear mostly in heterosexual pairings. Obviously, my perspective is limited, but I know straight couples who bicker and fight like Chip and Sara do here, and I know NO NON-STRAIGHT PEOPLE WHO DO THIS. I thought that this was first meant to be a cute sort of thing: the couple argues about almost every little thing, but it quickly escalates to Chip going way, way, way too far when he just gives up on not going to the opera. Yes, both these people are pretty irritating, but Chip seems rather stubborn about the way he acts. I mean\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6okay, why are these two together? Chip makes a reference to how often the two fight, so is this a regular thing or am I reading too much into it? If two people are having this sort of constant <\/em>fighting, why\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.well, I suppose now I’m heading into uncharted territory. I think I just don’t get relationships at all. I DON’T UNDERSTAND THEM. I mean\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6seriously, I sound like a child. MOMMY AND DADDY HOW ARE BABIES MADE WHY DO PEOPLE HUG I DON’T GET IT.<\/p>\n
The plot does thicken because of this: Chip finds out from Sara that others believe Chip was the one who ratted out Alaska’s roommate and her boyfriend, getting them kicked out of school for sexy times. This seems rather impossible; Chip appears to be someone who takes the code for non-ratting quite seriously. So\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.why would he do this? What evidence could they have? Or is it like Chip says, and they’re actually framing him?<\/p>\n
I AM INTERESTED IN THIS PLOT. VERY INTERESTED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One hundred twenty-six days before it happens, Miles gains a newfound respect for religion (and one specific teacher) on his first day of classes. The colonel learns why Kevin and his friends are so angry with him and Miles as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[125,23,123],"class_list":["post-662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-looking-for-alaska","tag-john-green","tag-mark-reads","tag-mark-reads-looking-for-alaska"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}