Parenthetical.net

Ok, what you all need to know up front is that John Green is coming to my school on Friday! Squee!! …Um, I mean: I will conduct myself with appropriate teacherly maturity, and will not be a ridiculous fangirl at all. (Hey, what can I say? YA authors are like movie stars I actually get to meet!)

On to Paper Towns, which I enjoyed… but Abundance of Katherines still wins. Ultimately, Paper Towns is just too similar to Looking for Alaska: geeky boy is madly in love with Magical Mystery Girl, who totally expands his world. When she disappears, he goes on a journey to discover her secret, which teaches him that even Magical Mystery Girls are just people after all (and sometimes kind of bitchy ones, at that).

(Can you find me some Magical Mystery Boy books in which the geeky girl comes to the same conclusion? In other words, um, not Twilight?)

My favorite part of Paper Towns was also my favorite part of Alaska and Katherines: the main character’s relationships with his friends. Friendship is a major theme in novels with female protagonists, but boys tend to work alone, or else have friendships that go unexamined. Green does a spectacular job of making boy friendships just as awkward and vital and beautiful as girl friendships, without making me suspect that the “boys” are secretly just girls with boys’ names.

Also, PT made me crack up all over the commuter train — huge points to any book that can make me forget my dour fellow commuters enough to, y’know, LOL. John is a hi-larious writer, and I have high expectations for his in-person hilarity as well. Uh, no pressure.