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kathyscheitz's review against another edition
hopeful
lighthearted
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
booksfinity's review against another edition
4.0
This set has three books:
1) Fault In Our Stars-
Individual Rating- 4/5
Woah! Amazing book. You literally fall in love with this book. The plot is well set and you instantly gather interest in it. I bet if you are a big fan of romantic books, you are not going to stop reading this. You would feel like completing the book in one go. At the same time, this book is very emotional. I used to believe how can books make me cry but the lines written by John Green touches heart and I bet a tear would surely roll down your eyes.
.
2) An Abundance Of Katherines-
Individual Rating- 3.5/5
This is a different kind of book. Its about two friends, one who is a prodigy, Collin and his friend Hassan. Honestly, the book does get boring after a few pages but, it is fun to read.
.
3) Will Grayson, Will Grayson-
Individual Rating- 3/5
This book is fun and good for casual reading. There are two Will Grayson(s) and it makes it very confusing to understand the story but it does end very well.
.
.
Overall Rating- 4/5
1) Fault In Our Stars-
Individual Rating- 4/5
Woah! Amazing book. You literally fall in love with this book. The plot is well set and you instantly gather interest in it. I bet if you are a big fan of romantic books, you are not going to stop reading this. You would feel like completing the book in one go. At the same time, this book is very emotional. I used to believe how can books make me cry but the lines written by John Green touches heart and I bet a tear would surely roll down your eyes.
.
2) An Abundance Of Katherines-
Individual Rating- 3.5/5
This is a different kind of book. Its about two friends, one who is a prodigy, Collin and his friend Hassan. Honestly, the book does get boring after a few pages but, it is fun to read.
.
3) Will Grayson, Will Grayson-
Individual Rating- 3/5
This book is fun and good for casual reading. There are two Will Grayson(s) and it makes it very confusing to understand the story but it does end very well.
.
.
Overall Rating- 4/5
lpm100's review against another edition
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.0
Book Review
3 stars
*******
Unfortunate overuse of the words "sitzpinkler"/"Jew-fro."
*******
There is a fine line between crafting readable fiction, and creating a storyline that is so supremely improbable that it defeats the purpose of trying to use it as a vehicle to explain something--and this book is tending very much toward the latter direction. (Another book that I just recently reviewed, "The Autobiography of an ex-Colored Man," was one such book that was trying to tell us something but....)
1. First things first: if you want to read a road trip+bildungsroman book, I would sooner recommend Gary Paulsen's "The Car."
2. Second is that this is the third of John Green's books that I have read (the other two were "Looking for Alaska" and "The Fault in Our Stars") and "Looking for Alaska" also won a Michael Prinz award.
Incidentally, that book was just as ... strange as this one.
"The Fault in Our Stars" was a good and memorable book, and yet: it won no such award.
And so, that is telling me that "Michael Prinz Award" is shorthand for "unrealistic adolescent fiction that has unsavory / unlikely/unrelatable characters." (Kind of the same way that Oprah's Book club books are predictably trash.)
*******
-This could have been a story about overparented children, but it just didn't seem to develop into that.
-It could have been story about children with social development issues. (And in that case, the fact that the protagonist was a genius was merely incidental. Contrary to popular belief: most children of high intelligence are well adjusted. Also: because there are so many fiction books that have been written about people with social development problems, the gimmick of a boy genius is not enough to save the cliche.)
-It could have been a Milan Kundera book for children. (There are a lot of elements of existentialism-lite. Ess muss sein/ Ess konte auch andersein.)
Practically, the book has a sort of "revenge" feel:
-A morbidly obese Arab with man breasts makes out with the hottest girl in a town. (Revenge of the fat boys.)
-A scrawny nerd with the Jew-fro gets the girl over a muscle bound football player. (Revenge of the nerds.)
-This guy who is super smart.....well he has social/emotional difficulty so he's not "really" happy. (Revenge of the idiots.)
-The girl who gets mistreated by her rakish but handsome boyfriend gets some self-respect and leaves. (Revenge of the spurned girlfriends. And I don't think anybody who lives in the Real World / might have seen "The Last American Virgin" really thinks that abusive men are ever without women. Or, that there is a certain fraction of women that cannot get enough of abusive men. If this book had been accurate, the Spurned Girlfriend would probably have doubled down on the Bad Guy Boyfriend and would have spent so much additional time fellating him that his skull would have caved in by the end of the book.)
At the end of the day, I'll just have to dismiss this as yet another among a million forgettable bildungsroman that has been written--but with a lot of neat factoids and a couple of good quotes:
1. (p.207): "And the moral of the story is that you don't remember what happened. What you remember *becomes* what happened."
2. (p.212): "You can make a theorem that explains why you won or lost past poker hands, but you can never make one to predict future poker hands. The past, like Lindsay had told him, is a logical story. But since it is not yet remembered, the future need not make any sense at all."
Verdict: Not recommended for my kids. No morals-of-story to be taken away.
3 stars
*******
Unfortunate overuse of the words "sitzpinkler"/"Jew-fro."
*******
There is a fine line between crafting readable fiction, and creating a storyline that is so supremely improbable that it defeats the purpose of trying to use it as a vehicle to explain something--and this book is tending very much toward the latter direction. (Another book that I just recently reviewed, "The Autobiography of an ex-Colored Man," was one such book that was trying to tell us something but....)
1. First things first: if you want to read a road trip+bildungsroman book, I would sooner recommend Gary Paulsen's "The Car."
2. Second is that this is the third of John Green's books that I have read (the other two were "Looking for Alaska" and "The Fault in Our Stars") and "Looking for Alaska" also won a Michael Prinz award.
Incidentally, that book was just as ... strange as this one.
"The Fault in Our Stars" was a good and memorable book, and yet: it won no such award.
And so, that is telling me that "Michael Prinz Award" is shorthand for "unrealistic adolescent fiction that has unsavory / unlikely/unrelatable characters." (Kind of the same way that Oprah's Book club books are predictably trash.)
*******
-This could have been a story about overparented children, but it just didn't seem to develop into that.
-It could have been story about children with social development issues. (And in that case, the fact that the protagonist was a genius was merely incidental. Contrary to popular belief: most children of high intelligence are well adjusted. Also: because there are so many fiction books that have been written about people with social development problems, the gimmick of a boy genius is not enough to save the cliche.)
-It could have been a Milan Kundera book for children. (There are a lot of elements of existentialism-lite. Ess muss sein/ Ess konte auch andersein.)
Practically, the book has a sort of "revenge" feel:
-A morbidly obese Arab with man breasts makes out with the hottest girl in a town. (Revenge of the fat boys.)
-A scrawny nerd with the Jew-fro gets the girl over a muscle bound football player. (Revenge of the nerds.)
-This guy who is super smart.....well he has social/emotional difficulty so he's not "really" happy. (Revenge of the idiots.)
-The girl who gets mistreated by her rakish but handsome boyfriend gets some self-respect and leaves. (Revenge of the spurned girlfriends. And I don't think anybody who lives in the Real World / might have seen "The Last American Virgin" really thinks that abusive men are ever without women. Or, that there is a certain fraction of women that cannot get enough of abusive men. If this book had been accurate, the Spurned Girlfriend would probably have doubled down on the Bad Guy Boyfriend and would have spent so much additional time fellating him that his skull would have caved in by the end of the book.)
At the end of the day, I'll just have to dismiss this as yet another among a million forgettable bildungsroman that has been written--but with a lot of neat factoids and a couple of good quotes:
1. (p.207): "And the moral of the story is that you don't remember what happened. What you remember *becomes* what happened."
2. (p.212): "You can make a theorem that explains why you won or lost past poker hands, but you can never make one to predict future poker hands. The past, like Lindsay had told him, is a logical story. But since it is not yet remembered, the future need not make any sense at all."
Verdict: Not recommended for my kids. No morals-of-story to be taken away.
kaypat23's review against another edition
4.0
Most of the books in this collection averaged about 3.5-4.1 stars per read. I bought them all individually but I prefer to just review the box set because it's easier.
From my favorite to least favorite:
1. Paper Towns (this is special to me. It just has that end-of-high school, coming of age, road trip feel and while I did not care about Margo, I cared deeply about Q and his friends. Also, the movie had Nat Wolff inside who was apparently ALSO in other John Green movies)
2. Looking for Alaska (very philosophical and arguably Green's best work)
3. The Fault in Our Stars (Idk why it's number 3 but it's just kind of heartbreaking despite all the awful tumblr trends it spawned)
4. Will Grayson, Will Grayson (it's pretty uplifting but for the life of me, I can't quite recall what it was about)
5. An Abundance of Katherines (this one is just insanity from start to finish)
From my favorite to least favorite:
1. Paper Towns (this is special to me. It just has that end-of-high school, coming of age, road trip feel and while I did not care about Margo, I cared deeply about Q and his friends. Also, the movie had Nat Wolff inside who was apparently ALSO in other John Green movies)
2. Looking for Alaska (very philosophical and arguably Green's best work)
3. The Fault in Our Stars (Idk why it's number 3 but it's just kind of heartbreaking despite all the awful tumblr trends it spawned)
4. Will Grayson, Will Grayson (it's pretty uplifting but for the life of me, I can't quite recall what it was about)
5. An Abundance of Katherines (this one is just insanity from start to finish)
chiligoat's review against another edition
2.0
This is the first time I've read anything with an author duo where the pair hasn't collaborated together on every chapter. Instead they take turns, which means that not only I get a break from John Green's rather insistent writing style every couple of pages, but it's evident that he is working very hard to up his game when spurred on and inspired by a rather brilliant David Levithan.
This was my second J. Green story, the first having been the nigh legendary [b:The Fault in Our Stars|11870085|The Fault in Our Stars|John Green|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360206420s/11870085.jpg|16827462], which I did not absolutely fall in love with. I was determined to give the man another go, because he has structural skill as well as the ability to coax out a startled laugh in the midst of the bleak and I'm glad that I did.
This is a book that feels complete by the time you reach the rather cacophonic ending. Everything is wrapped up neatly. Dues have been given. Nobody is completely villainised, everybody has been humanised. Lessons of forgiveness and human nature and the importance of listening to each other have all been learned, but they've not been absolutely forced down our throats. They've come naturally. And while I still have a thing or two against Secondary Female Character Used Principally As The Reward and Secondary Female Character Used As Primary Antagonist For The Sake Of Antagonism.. well, it's a story about teens/YA for teens/YA. It's a very USAm (upper and lower) middle class high school, you won't get around that either.
But it is about friendship, and it is about love, and it handles the various kinds of falling outs that do exist, and - so much the better - it handles how you can mend those relationships for sake of perpetuating them but also about how to close those chapters so as to move on and build yourself back up. I would recommend those kinds of skill lessons to all emotionally struggling - i.e. all - teens and young adults everywhere.
This was my second J. Green story, the first having been the nigh legendary [b:The Fault in Our Stars|11870085|The Fault in Our Stars|John Green|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1360206420s/11870085.jpg|16827462], which I did not absolutely fall in love with. I was determined to give the man another go, because he has structural skill as well as the ability to coax out a startled laugh in the midst of the bleak and I'm glad that I did.
This is a book that feels complete by the time you reach the rather cacophonic ending. Everything is wrapped up neatly. Dues have been given. Nobody is completely villainised, everybody has been humanised. Lessons of forgiveness and human nature and the importance of listening to each other have all been learned, but they've not been absolutely forced down our throats. They've come naturally. And while I still have a thing or two against Secondary Female Character Used Principally As The Reward and Secondary Female Character Used As Primary Antagonist For The Sake Of Antagonism.. well, it's a story about teens/YA for teens/YA. It's a very USAm (upper and lower) middle class high school, you won't get around that either.
But it is about friendship, and it is about love, and it handles the various kinds of falling outs that do exist, and - so much the better - it handles how you can mend those relationships for sake of perpetuating them but also about how to close those chapters so as to move on and build yourself back up. I would recommend those kinds of skill lessons to all emotionally struggling - i.e. all - teens and young adults everywhere.
sarahkomas's review against another edition
2.0
Semi-interesting starting concept, but overall poor execution. I disliked the lack of capitalisation in half of the book.
kiki_reads's review against another edition
4.0
I was very apprehensive about reading this book because I am not a fan of David Levithan and have a hit and miss relationship with John Green. However, I am so glad that I did decide to read it with my friends Aimee and Emer because I LOVED IT!!
I have to mention that my love for this book is because of Tiny Cooper he is a brilliant character and everyone needs a friend like him. He made both Will Grayson better as characters and now has a special place in my heart. Let’s not get side tracked by love of Tiny and talk about the Will Grayson’s.
I was so confused why David Levithan’s Will did not use capitals and it annoyed me although it was explained at the end. *far too late*. Despite this I liked how his Will was slightly darker and how he was discovering that it is ok to be yourself and admit that you need help. I think that it was a positive message for other people who might suffer from depression. I also thought it was brilliant that both Will, Tiny, and Gideon accepted being gay and it wasn’t a problem for them.
John Green’s Will Grayson was a typical JG character and even though he was supposed to be a main character he wasn’t exactly the star of the book. I didn’t hate him I was only interested in his story because of Tiny.
ALL I WANT IS TO SEE TINY’S MUSICAL!!
I have to mention that my love for this book is because of Tiny Cooper he is a brilliant character and everyone needs a friend like him. He made both Will Grayson better as characters and now has a special place in my heart. Let’s not get side tracked by love of Tiny and talk about the Will Grayson’s.
I was so confused why David Levithan’s Will did not use capitals and it annoyed me although it was explained at the end. *far too late*. Despite this I liked how his Will was slightly darker and how he was discovering that it is ok to be yourself and admit that you need help. I think that it was a positive message for other people who might suffer from depression. I also thought it was brilliant that both Will, Tiny, and Gideon accepted being gay and it wasn’t a problem for them.
John Green’s Will Grayson was a typical JG character and even though he was supposed to be a main character he wasn’t exactly the star of the book. I didn’t hate him I was only interested in his story because of Tiny.
ALL I WANT IS TO SEE TINY’S MUSICAL!!
katekat's review against another edition
5.0
All of John Green's books will forever have a special place in my heart and I do not think I could ever really pick a favorite. I love his writing style as it makes the characters and the situations they are living in feel so very real. His characters are perfectly imperfect and I feel like I can relate to them all. If John Green writes a book I am guaranteed to read it.
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