Paper Town – John Green

I bought this book because, on the cover, the author is defined as one of the most influent people on this earth. I saw how many prizes he has won and I gave a glance to his vlogbrothers youtube channel.

Then I started reading this book (I have not seen the movie that has been taken from it).

OK, I told myself after the first 200 pages (out of 391): where is the point?

I like some issues: this Margo, tired of being a two dimension paper-girl in a paper-world, who escapes from his town, for instance. I like the idea of missing authenticity. I like the paper town cartographers’ trick. But I do not like the whole book.

The 21 hours of car, that the author describes hour by hour, were the heaviest ones, but the rest of the book was anyway full of boring details. I did not like the schools and after school activities descriptions, nor the searching for Margo, nor the chat discussions, nor the parties and beer games descriptions.

It is not that I do not like that world, but something in its descriptions does. Too slow, maybe? I am not sure. Mann’s “The Enchanted Mountain” was much slower, but it did not cost me this hard work to finish.

Difficult to rationalize, I just know that I did not like this book.