So today I had an adventure

But this post is not about my adventure.  It is about where my adventure took me, and to the goal of my venturing.  Namely Barnes and Noble and The Fault in our Stars.  So this afternoon I decided that I couldn't take it anymore, that I wanted my book right now, so I took the bus to the bookstore and bought a copy of it (I got a purple J-scribble).  That leaves my tally of copies bought, in whatever form, for whatever purpose, at four.  Anyway, so I've read it twice this evening/night; the first time for plot, the second time for everything else.  And let me just say that it is a beautiful book.  Like luminous and transcendent and heartbreakingly sad, but in a beautiful way.  "Sad is happy for deep people" sort of way.  I'm just kind of meditating on it, letting the words and phrases and ideas seep into me right now.

And oh my word.  There are a couple times where he references some metaphor, or object with metaphorical resonance that has appeared in his other books, and it's just so amazing and interesting to see how they fit into TFioS, or how they've evolved since first appearing in print.  It's interesting.  And I like it.  I really like it.

As a side note to this:  Sometimes I hate telling my friends about some book or movie or something that I found and fell in love with and called amazing and all of the other superlative adjectives.  Because maybe it isn't the thing for them, and then they will read or watch or listen or whatever, and go "well, that was good, but it wasn't life changing like you promised me."  Well, TFioS isn't life changing (to me. At least I don't think so, unless it is in this sense: "Even if it’s a dumb story, telling it changes people just the slightest little bit, just as living the story changes me. An infinitesimal change. And that infinitesimal change ripples outward —ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter —maybe less that a lot, but always more than none.")  It isn't life changing, it isn't my favorite book.  (I don't know what is.  I can't even give you a list of the top ten.  I could probably give you a list of authors.  John Green, Robin McKinley, Dianne Wynne Jones, Eva Ibbotson, etc.).  But it is beautiful, and it is a story that has truth in it, though I am unsure of how many of the ideas contained in it are true, because I haven't spent enough time thinking about it.  It is about love, and also about living.  It is about a lot of things, and also a very narrow set of things.  It is a good book.  It might even be a great book.  It has metaphors, and themes, and beautiful sentences, and quotable lines that will be quoted and misquoted as they are lifted from the mouths of characters on the page and placed into the mouth of the author.  It has all of these things.  And I, for one, do not regret any of the money, time, and brain power I have spent on it.