first thoughts: paper towns by john green

I only finished reading it about seven minutes ago, so this will litereally be first impressions, in whatever order they want to come out:
- I love the idea that we all have strings inside. I'm a mugely visual person-- I'm also, as it turns out, a very visceral and tactile person, what with being almost legally blind. This means that I think mostly in images (and get inspired in images, but that's a post for another day, on the writing blog), but I trust how things feel more than how they look. And the strings make sense to both senses. It's true what the book says: it feels like we have strings. Mine have been kind of tightly wound this past week or so, and now I'm scared that they'll start snapping.

- I totally understand Margo's need to get away. I grew up traveling. I feel most of the time the way I imagine the Gypsies felt when they were told through the 40s and 50s and 60s that they need to settle-- confused, a little lost, vaguely resentful, restless-- very restless-- and like I could just leave at any moment, except that there's all these reasons why I shouldn't. If I was going to, I know the moment it should have been: after graduation, before I got news that I'd gotten that sholarship, in that one month window when my home life was less than happy, my boyfriend was a jerk, and I didn't have a plan for the rest of my future. I'm not sorry I went to school and have the life I have now-- it's infinitely better than it was then-- but sometimes I wish I had just gone, and I think this whole book is about what happens when you do, and when others have to pick up the pieces.

- I love that someone else who felt stuck in Orlando feels like that. It's like the book was written to tell me that that's how all of Orlando feels. This is probably the post-book-glow (it's like post-sex-glow, but a lot of times more pure because it's all how I interpret it) talking, but it really did go straight to several specific sore spots and longings in my own personal psyche, and that's unbelivably comforting.

- The whole thing is also amazingly romantic.

- I want to visit all these paper towns, the real ones from the end of the book, and write a book of my own about the experience. I want to pass on this book so others can read it-- maybe my neice who loves books as much as I do, or at least did, last time I talked to her*.

- I hope when we were in HS, we sounded as smart and creative and wonderful as Q and his friends.


*Maybe she can start a book blog herself. It would have been so awesome if I could have blogged about books when I was ten-- or when I was fifteen, and read over a hundred books in one year, because that's ALL I did.