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What do you think of John Green's books?



What do you think of John Green's books?

Absolutely amazing!
46
18%
Pretty good
57
22%
Overrated
38
15%
I hate them
1
0%
I haven't read any
113
44%
 
Total votes : 255


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Mon Jun 23, 2014 1:58 pm
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Demeter says...



John Green is the best-selling author of novels such as The Fault in Our Stars and An Abundance of Katherines. The most recent update concerning his work is of course the film adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars, which came out earlier this month.

Have you read any of John Green's books and if so, what did you think of them? If you've read them all, which one is your favourite? Don't hesitate to answer the poll even if you've only read one of his books.

I've only read Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars. While I was thoroughly entertained throughout both of these books, I didn't actually think they were as amazing as many people make them out to be, and I wasn't a huge fan of his style of writing. However, I'm still going to see the TFiOS film, if only to see what the buzz is about!

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Mon Jun 23, 2014 2:45 pm
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StealTheWorld says...



I really liked TFiOS and Looking for Alaska. Although Hazel, Gus, and Isaac just aren't really relatable to me.

Whenever a character spoke, I just kept thinking, "What teenager speaks like this?"

But yeah. The plot line and many scenes were well-written, in my opinion.
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Mon Jun 23, 2014 3:33 pm
ExOmelas says...



I love his books but I'm fairly biased considering I've been a nerdfighter for years and love his YouTube videos. I've never heard anyone talk like Gus, my friend Fiona has sort of adopted Hazel's way of speaking and I think I talk quite like Isaac. I love those characters so much :-)

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Mon Jun 23, 2014 3:34 pm
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Morrigan says...



John Green is very good at writing.
*puts on ray bans*
I was reading John Green books before they were bestselling, and I think that the lack of hype was nice. While they're quite good, and nice to read, everyone fangirling about them gets old fast and turns me into a devil's advocate quickly.
The characters aren't supposed to be realistic, as John Green idealizes his characters. Anyone who says they're realistic needs a better grip on reality, in my opinion.
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Mon Jun 23, 2014 3:54 pm
elysian says...



I've never read any but I am most certainly planning on it.
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Mon Jun 23, 2014 4:00 pm
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Gravity says...



John Green is an amazing author, I just feel like his character personalities are all the same or very similar. For example, in each of his books he has the main male character (Gus, Colin, Quentin) then their best friends (Isaac, Hassin, Ben) and then the girl they love (Hazel, Katherine, Alaska) and then something sad or suspenseful happens and it ends. I just wish he would switch it up a bit.
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And prayers and proclamations

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Mon Jun 23, 2014 4:10 pm
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Cole says...



He's overrated.

Warning: Rant Ahead.

I think I might be a fan if it weren't for three things:
Firstly, the fandom.


I feel that, in particular, The Fault in Our Stars is severely overrated. Hundreds of readers are devouring it and are discussing it, and studying it in book clubs/circles, both of which would be forgivable if it weren't for all the frenzy about it being "the greatest romance in literature."

Really? The greatest romance? Have these people ever picked up a novel besides The Great Gatsby and Twilight?

What's so appealing about the book and its themes? Is it the doomed romance? Is it the struggling lovers? Is it the sense of humanity? Or is it fate? Because these babies (a select few of many) either beat The Fault in Our Stars to it, or did it better:

Spoiler! :
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
Wuthering Heights (Bronte)
Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
Quo Vadis (Sienkiewicz)
Gone with the Wind (Mitchell)
Jane Eyre (Bronte)
Pride and Prejudice (Austen)
Frankenstein (Shelley)
The Violent Bear It Away (O'Connor)
The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)
The Awakening (Chopin)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
East of Eden (Steinbeck)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway)
Light in August (Faulkner)

I'm not saying modern literature has to exceed the radiance of the classics (even though many contemporary authors have written work that has matched them in brilliance). But, seriously! Quit acting like it is the best dog-gone book ever written. I want to see this kind of hype among young adult readers over literature that, although old in comparison to The Fault in Our Stars, is arguably more powerful, heart-wrenching, moving.

Secondly, his purple prose.

Green's writing is grossly pretentious and unrealistic. Plenty of the prose and dialogue made me roll my eyes so wide that I'm pretty sure they got stuck a couple of times.

Like, this quote from Augustus:
I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasures of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout out into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor is returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I'm in love with you.

Yeah. A seventeen-year-old kid said this in a casual conversation. Like, seriously?

My third issue? It's probably the cancer thing.

While I admire Green for giving a voice to the often underrepresented youth in our society and for lifting the veil of silence surrounding cancer and other terminal illnesses, I have to say that The Fault in Our Stars left a bad taste in my mouth.

Being in a medically ill-fated family myself, children and teens suffering with various disorders, cancers, defects, and other agonizing conditions is a very real, tender reality for me. When my brother was undergoing a bone marrow transfusion to cure him of an incredibly rare, life-threatening genetic defect of the immune system, I became close with families in the hospital whose children were eventually destroyed by their sicknesses. Furthermore, cancer has become a deeply bitter thing for me to deal with due to the recent passing of my great aunt to sarcoma, who was virtually another grandmother to me.

I am aware that Green wrote this novel because he was closely involved with a children's hospital and because he had a young friend with cancer. Regardless, I think The Fault in Our Stars romanticizes cancer and terminal illness. The book is a doomed love story between two kids who are going to die from cancer, which I think involuntarily lends cancer a kind of tragic beauty. I think it's very similar to various pieces of Young Adult Literature romanticizing suicide or self-harm. Green is very honest about the grittiness of cancer many times in the book, but overall, framing cancer in this way is upsetting to me. It hits too close to home, jabs its fingers into many still-tender bruises.

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Mon Jun 23, 2014 4:14 pm
Lava says...



All of what @magpie said. (I totes get the reading before cool thing and then blargh.)

That said, I liked LfA and his other books. I think this was a let down for me.

While they are overrated, I think the other books are pretty good.
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Mon Jun 23, 2014 5:46 pm
deleted5 says...



I've only read the Fault In our stars which was pretty good! Might get a hold of a few others some other time :3
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Mon Jun 23, 2014 6:09 pm
tinny says...



I enjoyed Looking for Alaska and TFiOS to lesser extent, but Paper Towns irked me too much.

I think he's a good writer, but I find his characterisation poor and his novels are rife with manic pixie dream girls (or boys, in the case of Gus). There are enough books out there based on a girl that comes along and turns our main male characters life upside down and teaches him how to live, I don't need to read any more.
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Mon Jun 23, 2014 6:20 pm
WillowPaw1 says...



I've only read The Fault in Our Stars, because everyone else was and I'm just like, Why not? My friends reccomended, so I read it. And I kinda went, "meh." It wasn't the best. It wasn't. But it wasn't the worst, either. It was good.

It was so unrealistic, though, and that was probably the issue. They were talking all sophistic-like and everything, and I'm sitting there confused at why they're talking like they were.

Overall, I thought it was good. I don't like the name Augustus though. :3
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Mon Jun 23, 2014 6:25 pm
FatCowsSis says...



I COMPLETELY FORGOT HE WROTE TFIOS!!!!!

I LOVE THEM!!!!!
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Mon Jun 23, 2014 6:39 pm
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GoldFlame says...



The Fault in Our Stars was good. Thing is, I'm afraid to insult it, because ... well.

I hear my peers exclaiming things like "After Augustus died, I couldn't read another word; I was sobbing my eyes out; I physically couldn't."

Hopefully they're exaggerating.

Character Development

Almost as flimsy as Twilight. I'm saying this because I think Augustus was supposed to be lovable and desirable and the ideal boyfriend and whatnot, but I saw him as precisely the opposite. Pretentious. Not in the good way, either.

When his health deteriorated, I only grieved out of empathy; I pitied him, I pitied Hazel, despite knowing they didn't want to be pitied. But Hazel--she had potential. She was cool. Independent. Then John Green poured her into Augustus. It's like she's the mold, the template, the base, take your pick, he uses for all his characters.

The cherry on top? At the end, Augustus writes in his letter to Van Houten:

But Hazel walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.


It'd be heartstring-tugging if there was any indication of this whatsoever. At this point, it's like, wow, John Green's desperate. Or he doesn't know how un-humble his characters sound.

Speaking of Van Houten:

"PETER!" Lidewij shouted.

"You are a side effect," Van Houten continued, "of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives. You are a failed experiment in mutation."

"I RESIGN!" Lidewij shouted. There were tears in her eyes. But I wasn't angry.


I was horrified, and rightly so, because Van Houten's a jerk. But Lidewij has been working for him for a long time, and the pay's great, and she liked him, initially. It just ruined the whole thing, her resignation. Just something tossed in there to create extra drama.

Foreshadowing

Augustus was going to die. That much was obvious as soon as I met him, and then John Green kept throwing it in our faces, this foreshadowing. Him gasping in pain. The fight with his parents.

If it were more subtle, I'd forgive him; I just--blech.

My opinions, anyway. I hope they weren't too harsh; The Fault in Our Stars was pretty good, after all. It just needs some revision. (God, I feel like a monster.)
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Mon Jun 23, 2014 11:01 pm
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TaliaSankEden says...



This is not in any way to offend fans of John Green. It is harsh, so if you are easily frustrated by differing opinions, I would not suggest you continue. I would, however, like to point out that I sincerely enjoy John Green as a person and have the utmost respect for him. His YouTube channel is hilarious!
I read TFIOS, and while I found it pretentious and somewhat unrelatable, I enjoyed it. Paper Towns, however, made me want to gouge my frickin eyes out with rusty forks. I read it after hearing that it was to be made into a film starring the guy who played Isaac (Nat Woolf?) because I liked him as Isaac. I was less-than-satisfied. The plot was thin, the characters wholly unrealistic, and the style of writing again very pretentious. Having enjoyed TFIOS, I thought I'd enjoy Paper Towns as well. I've never felt so wrong or jilted. Margo was unlikable, Q was uninteresting, and the supporting characters were annoying. Perhaps it would be good for some, but I absolutely HATED it. I don't plan on reading anymore of John Green's novels.
I dunno. Maybe others of you think differently, but I feel that John Green's books are overrated and popular due to hype rather than quality. Sorry! :(
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Tue Jun 24, 2014 1:36 am
Snoink says...



I saw his vlogs! He's funny and gives a lot of good advice out to aspiring writers!

I read a chapter of TFIOS in a bookstore a couple of months ago, but decided it was not quite my cup of tea. BUT. Had I read it as a teen, I probably would have been a lot more enraptured by the whole thing.
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