Summer reading – The Fault in Our Stars

NPR.org has posted a list to feed my obsession with reading young adult novels. Oh, I read books for grown ups too, but I always find that I enjoy the ones written for young adults the most. So, NPR has creating a list of the top 100 young adult novels, based on a reader poll and some careful judging. All of my favorite books are on it - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, His Dark Materials series, a bunch of books by Tamora Pierce, and others that I haven't read as many times, but I do remember them vividly - like Flowers for Algernon.

I decided that since I like the books on this list that I have read, I should definitely work my way through the ones I haven't (unless they have vampires in them.) I started out by reading "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green, which is fourth on the list. He appears on the list several times, yet I've never heard of him before.

"The Fault in Our Stars" is about a 16-year-old girl with terminal cancer, so I knew it would be sad. But it was surprisingly funny in many places. It deals with some big topics, but doesn't make the protagonists out to be heroes. In fact, part of the point of the book is that these kids want to make some kind of impact on the world before they go, but there's simply not enough time. Which ends up being true for a lot of us with many more years in our lives than these characters.

I might take some time tomorrow to check out the local library's selection regarding these books, and start working my way through the ones they have available.

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