John Green The Collection

 Fifty years ago, when I was around the target age for books like [a:John Green|1406384|John Green|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1353452301p2/1406384.jpg]'s [b:The Fault in Our Stars|11870085|The Fault in Our Stars|John Green|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1632632557l/11870085.SX50.jpg|16827462], such books were awful things designed mostly to warn young readers about the evils of drugs. I've had no interest in reading young adult fiction but this book is an exception for two reasons. First, the author and I went to the same college. He graduated nineteen years after I did, but it was one of those small Ohio colleges that makes you feel a mild connection to anyone who went there. Second, the second main character, Augustus, has the same form of cancer that I do. He even had the same leg amputated though in his case it was when he was a child; mine was when I was in my late fifties.
 Writing about terminally ill teenagers is not a new idea. [a:John Gunther|68809|John Gunther|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1235985796p2/68809.jpg]'s [b:Death Be Not Proud|486298|Death Be Not Proud|John Gunther|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440036906l/486298.SY75.jpg|1321803] was published in 1949. In the 1970s, terminally ill young people became a staple of made-for-TV movies following the great success of [a:Erich Segal|15516|Erich Segal|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1202419115p2/15516.jpg]'s hugely successful [b:Love Story|73968|Love Story (Love Story, #1)|Erich Segal|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388812297l/73968.SY75.jpg|816372] and the movie it was based on. (Both came out in 1970.)
 Fault is a good book and even old sourpusses like me, more prone to think teenagers are no good than to sympathize with them, found the narrator, 16-year-old Hazel, a likeable and sympathetic character. There are a few choices I'd have advised Green against, like using all caps as often as Hazel does and, especially, descriptions of video game playing of any length, which dates a book fast for the young and alienates the old, but those are minor drawbacks overall. I would've avoided bringing Christianity into it as specifically as Green does as a means of broadening its appeal and its message, but Green is a Red Stater. The writing is simple enough that I, a very slow reader, breezed through it in three days, but it's not dumbed down. The characters make literary references any parent would be proud to see their kids get.
 If you find The Fault in Our Stars on you kid's shelf, reading it would be a good way to spend a few hours.
Excerpt:

 I woke up in the ICU. I could tell I was in the ICU because I didn't have my own room, and because there was so much beeping, and because I was alone: They don't let your family stay with you 24/7 in the ICU at Children's because it's an infection risk. There was wailing down the hall. Somebody's kid had died. I was alone. I hit the red call button.
 A nurse came in seconds later. "Hi," I said.
 "Hello, Hazel. I'm Alison, your nurse," she said.
 "Hi, Alison, My Nurse," I said.
 Whereupon, I started to feel pretty tired again. But I woke up a bit when my parents came in, crying and kissing my face repeatedly, and I reached up for them and tried to squeeze, by my everything hurt when I squeezed, and Mom and Dad told me that I did not have a brain tumor, but that my headache was caused by poor oxygenation, which was caused by my lungs swimming in fluid, a liter and a half (!!!!) of which had been successfully drained from my chest, which was why I might feel a slight discomfort in my side, where there was, hey look at that, a tube that went from my chest into a plastic bladder half full of liquid that for all the world resembled my dad's favorite ale.

For those of you living in a cave without access to internet or television, The Fault in Our Stars is about 2 teenagers living with and dying of cancer. It's sad. Not sad enough to make me cry, shockingly, because I love to cry at sad books and movies. Out of Africa makes me sob hard enough to throw myself on the couch wailing. But I digress.

If you don't know the story, I refuse to spoil it for you. Just read it. It's pretty good. And I have read the criticisms that Hazel and Augustus don't talk or act like typical teenagers. It's because they aren't. They are dying, they are a little bit hipster, and they have been forced to look their own mortality in the eye and deal with it. I can't imagine what that would feel like at 16, and I would bet neither can you. Their witty banter and interesting conversations are what kept me from the eye rolling, honestly. The part that bugged me most was her father. Please stop crying about everything around your daughter. Man up, dude. She's the one dying. It struck me as incredibly selfish.

TL:DR. Cancer sucks, and this book is sad.

Numerosas personas me habían recomendado este libro y esperaban con ansia que me atreviera a hacerlo, pero no fue hasta hace apenas unos días que accedí a hacerlo. Nunca me había parado a leer un libro de John Green y, aunque no ha pasado a ser de mis favoritos, he de reconocer que se trata de un autor verdaderamente inteligente. Me sorprende la capacidad que tiene, no sólo para provocar sentimientos encontrados, sino para hacerte reír en las primeras páginas del libro. El libro se hace verdaderamente ameno y fluido y, si eres una persona sentimental, acabarás llorando en alguna parte sin lugar a dudas. Sus personajes están perfectamente trabajados, aunque Hazel puede resultar extraña de entender cuando se cierra en banda a sus propios sentimientos. En definitiva, una obra tratada con mimo y esmero, llena de frases preciosas y que te harán plantearte el valor tanto de la vida y del amor, que ha conseguido granjearse un puesto privilegiado en mi estantería por sus giros argumentales.
http://www.letrasenlasnubes.blogspot.com.es/

There's not enough good things I can write about this book. It feel sincere. It feels true. Yes, it's sort of a cancer book. But it's not a book about dying. It's a book about living. About feeling. About being a decent person regardless if you are a great person that is going to be remembered for ages. It is a book about being a grenade.

"I'm like. Like. I'like a grenade, Mom. I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?"

I feel like I missed something in the book, like it was not finished and parts were omitted, but perhaps that's because I munched on it in a few hours on one Saturday morning. Perhaps on the second read (which will come one day I am sure) I might raise it to 5 stars. Until such time...