Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Publisher: Penguin Group
Dutton Books
Page Count: 305
Young Adult novel
Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life – dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge – he follows. After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues – and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer Q gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew.
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I want to first talk about the actual book and title of the book itself before getting into the book itself. Paper Towns is written in parts which include chapters, until you get to part 3, part 3 is written as hours instead of chapters. Having books written this way is a unique way, I think.
In part one we are introduced to the characters, and then we follow Margo and Q on this road trip, an adventure together we see taking place almost right away. Of course that is after we meet all the characters. Anyway, the road trip is not just your regular road trip, it is an adventure that includes breaking and entering and revenge. Several times when reading about what they were doing and the places they went, I thought to myself how cool it would be to be on a road trip with them . If I was younger I may be all into it but for them it seemed like a lot of fun. Their road trip wasn’t just your average road trip doing crazy stuff, it was a road trip for revenge. The journey is not what I thought, it was not a fun adventure of breaking and entering, and pranks there was more to it that Q did not realize right away.
In part 2, after the road trip with Margo , something happens, that takes the readers on another journey , but this time its a journey with Q to try and figure out what has happened to Margo, and why? We see that Margo is missing but no one seems to be too concerned, everyone seems to think oh she will come back, she is okay etc, but Quinten thinks otherwise because there things that he has found out about Margo that lead him to believe that she may have killed herself. We get a chance to see just how good Miss Margo is at leaving clues on where she is going. Q’s journey to find out what has happened to his friend Margo is really what this book is about. Several questions arise, did she kill herself? , where did she go? ,and why? Here in part 2, we see a major theme of this book. We see that everyone sees Margo differently. To Q, she is the girl he has loved all of this time. To Ben, she’s just a self-centered brat who is looking for attention. To her parents, she is the wayward child turned adult who isn’t their problem anymore. In a way I feel bad for Margo. No matter what though friends stick together, and we see that here, when Q’s friend take on the journey to find Margo with him. We also get to see what this Paper town is called! We journey to Agloe with Quinten and his friends. When I got to that part of the book I was like Finally, its about time.
Part 3 of Paper Towns is pretty good, it mainly focuses on the continuation and journey to find Margo. Quinten and his friends finally reach Agloe!!! finally!!! I can’t say much more about this because then I will be spoiling it. The ending was good though just disappointing for me.
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I wondered what a paper town and why the book is called Paper Towns. While reading part 1 of Paper Towns, I got an idea of what a paper town is, it is normally what we call a fake or made up area, fake streets, fake people etc. Paper towns in this novel is actually a metaphor, this so called paper town is an actual town, not a fake a one, but a real one that was created by map makers, kind of cool huh. I thought so. A paper town is described in part 2 of this book, we see what exactly this paper town is, as well as what Margo meant by a paper town. Reading the meaning of how a paper town comes to exist and why its called that is awesome, I thought it was brilliant, and I actually learned something. I never knew such a thing existed and that these map makers ( cartographers) really exist. These map makers create fictional landmarks, streets and other things onto their maps. The everyday person, like myself would be oblivious to a paper town. Thanks John Green for explaining it to me in this book!
There so many things that made me laugh when reading this book, but the biggest one of all is Radar’s parents with their 2500 black santa’s who does. Haha who does that!!!!! Besides that hilarious part of the book, there were a few quotes that I just loved. Here they are:
- “The town was paper, but the memories were not”
- “It’s not my fault my parents own the worlds largest collection of black santa’s”.
As many of you can tell, I am a huge fan of John Green . This is the third book of his that I have read. I highly recommend everyone reading his books. They are awesomely written and brilliant. Each book has is written in a way that everyone can relate too in some way or another. They are full of adventure, lessons, and lessons we can all learn from. There is always something we can take away from when reading these books, I know I can! This is just such a good book.
Bookin' Me Crazy 