{"id":665,"date":"2011-11-30T06:00:01","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T14:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=665"},"modified":"2011-11-28T11:58:21","modified_gmt":"2011-11-28T19:58:21","slug":"mark-reads-looking-for-alaska-one-hundred-eight-through-ninety-eight-days-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2011\/11\/mark-reads-looking-for-alaska-one-hundred-eight-through-ninety-eight-days-before\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘Looking For Alaska’: one hundred eight through ninety-eight days before"},"content":{"rendered":"

One hundred eight days before it happens, Dr. Hyde gives Miles some wisdom, Miles studies with Alaska over fries and learns about her name, and then he finally gets in trouble with the Eagle. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Looking For Alaska<\/em>.<\/p>\n

one hundred eight days before<\/strong><\/p>\n

I still like Dr. Hyde. And I have to agree with Miles here: he suddenly seems sad<\/em>, and I can’t really put my finger on it. It’s possible that Dr. Hyde is just happy that someone is<\/em> paying attention, even if not all the time, and he just wants to foster Miles’s interest while he can.<\/p>\n

My guess is that Miles is going to defend Dr. Hyde at some point against other students.<\/p>\n

one hundred one days before<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh god, can I just tell a story about McDonald’s to everyone? Look, I’m vegan, y’all know that. I am not telling you this story as some sort of tome against the evils of fast food. If they made readily-available fast food that was vegan, I would eat it all of the time and would not care one bit. This is not about that. But as Miles sat down to study with Alaska over McDonald’s french fries<\/em>, I remembered my own history with that restaurant and IT HORRIFIES ME.<\/p>\n

So let me start off by saying that while McDonald’s does sort of disgust me these days, I come from an extremely poor background. My mom had to feed myself, my twin brother, my younger sister, and my father and herself on a budget that now seems impossible. I don’t know how she did it. Well, I sort of do, I suppose, and that’s the point of this. My mom had to feed us and make us feel full with very little money, and she did whatever she could. When my brother and I started running, our appetites skyrocketed. This presented my mother with an interesting conundrum: without spending more money, how could she match the thousands of calories we were burning all of the time?<\/p>\n

It was in those days that McDonald’s introduced those sales where hamburgers were 29 cents and cheeseburgers were 39 cents. I don’t remember what days they were sold on–Wednesdays? Saturdays? Either way, they regularly fell on days when we either had a long distance practice, running ten-to-fifteen miles at once, or on a day when we had a meet. And on those days, after we ran or raced, she’d take us to the McDonald’s drive-thru and she would order ten hamburgers or ten cheeseburgers.<\/p>\n

Each<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I want you to savor that thought. I just checked a recent McDonald’s calorie chart: a hamburger is apparently 250 calories, and a cheeseburger is 350 calories. And I would eat ten of them and barely<\/em> feel full. Also, it’s really important to remember that we would take them home and put other<\/em> toppings on them. Sometimes it was ranch dressing! Sometimes I felt “healthy” and I put lettuce and tomato on them. Oh, and you also have to account for the 500-calorie large french fries I’d eat, too. Which means on some days, I would eat over 4,000 calories.<\/p>\n

I won’t deny that on a base level, this was actually delicious to me. But it was a way of later understanding why my mother did this. How else could my mom feed my brother and I enough for $10? I knew this after I dropped out of college and found myself in the same predicament (and I was a vegan at that point, too). When you have an extremely low budget for food, you go straight for what tastes at least acceptable and what will fill you up the quickest. That’s what I did for years before I was able to regularly afford whatever food I wanted instead of what I needed<\/em> just to avoid feeling hungry.<\/p>\n

Only somewhat related: last week, I had a vegan Big Mac and it was fucking fantastic.<\/p>\n

I don’t know how relevant this story is to Alaska’s study session, but I just really wanted to tell it because I CAN BARELY EAT TEN OF ANYTHING<\/em> AT THIS POINT IN MY LIFE. Oh, to have the days back when I could eat 4,000 calories and not want to die.<\/p>\n

one hundred days before<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s weird that I never thought to ask why<\/em> Alaska was named that way. I think I’d initially assumed it was a nickname, but I had no evidence to support that. I guess I just didn’t question it. Unsurprisingly, one of her parents was what she described as a hippie (or, rather, “something of” one), and her name came from an unorthodox source: herself. Yep, Alaska’s parents let her name herself at age seven. Which\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6you know? That’s actually really, really awesome in a way. Yes, she could have picked a foolish name and hated it a year later, but it’s not often you get to see parents trusting their children quite like that. Plus, I quite like her rationalization for choosing the state of Alaska as her namesake:<\/p>\n

“Well, later, I found out what it means. It’s from an Aleut word, Alyeska<\/em>. It means ‘that which the sea breaks against,’ and I love that. But at the time, I just saw Alaska up there. And it was big, just like I wanted to be. And it was damn far away from Vine Station, Alabama, just like I wanted to be.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s a poetic and appropriate view of what I’ve seen of Alaska. In her group of friends, she is\u00c2\u00a0<\/em> that which the sea breaks against, and I think we will only continue to see this as the book continues on. These patterns are starting to emerge, and another one I noticed before rears up here again: Miles cannot resist being kind of gross and obsessive about Alaska. I like that she calls him out on it in her own way while at the same time not denying that there might be some bizarre, inexplicable chemistry between the two of them. That<\/em> I don’t get, honestly, but attraction is pretty hard to figure out anyway. I know that Miles is<\/em> enamored with Alaska, and he is absolutely horrific at trying to hide it or keep it to himself. Have some tact, dude! Don’t space out and stare at her or imagine that it’s the perfect moment to make out with her. IT’S WEIRD.<\/p>\n
But I’m also worried that Alaska’s portrayal by John Green falls a bit along the lines of some familiar characterizations for women characters, but I’m unsure whether to address that now or later, especially since I could be putting my foot in my mouth by the time I reach the end of the book. I’m not totally on board with this idea that she’s this fickle, mood-swing-heavy woman who commands the attention of everyone around her so that the men in this story can grow and develop at her expense. But, again, I think I’ll hold on to this until later when I get more of Alaska’s story.<\/p>\n
ninety-nine days before<\/strong><\/p>\n
Well, this was inevitable, wasn’t it? Miles, now a smoker (admittedly a light one), was bound to get caught. I hadn’t noticed it until I read this chapter, but he isn’t the slightest bit cautious about smoking at all. I think he just got used to the idea that he, the Colonel, and Alaska could do whatever they wanted. And who was going to find them hiding down by the lake? It wasn’t exactly the most obvious thing in the world. But at the same time, it wasn’t the polar opposite, and that’s why I think the Eagle found them so easily.<\/p>\n
He mentions seeing the group in “Jury” the next day, and I imagine that this is a form of punishment of some sort for students. Perhaps it’s an disciplinary board as well. Either way\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6look, I’ll just say it. The Eagle weirds me out. There’s something about his stoic and determined nature that is creepy to me. He’s so calculating<\/em> about his own actions, and I don’t know why he’s like that.<\/p>\n
ninety-eight days before<\/strong><\/p>\n
Of course, once I read the first scene involving the Jury, the characters in this book suddenly made a lot more sense. For something so brief, it’s enlightening. First of all, it’s a logistical help: now I know that the Jury was used for offenses that don’t deserve suspension. It’s a student-run board, which\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.well, that could cause problems, or it could be amazing. I don’t find out either, though, at least not this first time.<\/p>\n
I do discover that this marks the seventh<\/em> time in which Alaska has been caught smoking, and that Takumi, the Colonel, and Alaska all take the Jury quite seriously, the guys even going so far as to dress nicely for it. Again, the Eagle’s persistence and dedication toward discipline is unnerving. I know that it’s his job to run things, and run them smoothly, but what good comes from calling Chip a coward? Why does he make a point to say that Miles and Takumi are acting out an “aw-shucks routine”? Why does he single out Miles at the very end of the hearing to tell him not to abuse his privileges at the school? I’m guessing he believes that Miles has fallen in the wrong group, perhaps, that he’s destined to only doing terrible things with these three students. What else have the original trio done to gain the ire of the Eagle?<\/p>\n
I AM INTRIGUED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One hundred eight days before it happens, Dr. Hyde gives Miles some wisdom, Miles studies with Alaska over fries and learns about her name, and then he finally gets in trouble with the Eagle. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark … 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-665","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\/665","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=665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}