Book review: Looking for Alaska

    I prefer books which are a work of non-fiction, information loaded, history or non-fiction that provides facts along with a strong story line. But i picked this book as it popped up while i was filtering for travel books in the Kwench website ( details here : https://www.klib.in/app/#/book ).
 
   The book revolves around the college story of friends studying in the culver creek, Alabama. The author explains the heat, the cold , the woods around the school and the students stay which hints at the weather south of America for the non-americans.

    The story revolves around a smart, witty yet hopelessly lost girl called Alaska. The main character Miles joins the school and they gang up with Takumi and Colonel to play pranks in the school.

    The story is a typical American school stuff which i felt gets dragged a lot while I was half way through. The second half of the book get boring with lengthy explanation of prank plots by the kids.
The books ends sadly with Alaska being dead and her friends desperately searching reasons for the way she dies.

Over all it was not a good read to me because :

1. Author mentions about smoking and drinking alcohol within the school campus very often through out the book. He depicts it such a way that drinking and smoking is kool and how the newly joined school guy Miles picked it up. The kids who read the book can get a feeling that drinking and smoking is very casual and is something to do without which they can miss out fun.

2. The main character Alaska is shown as a lost, sad soul because she feels she was responsible for her mother's death. She is one who loves reading books beside pulling off pranks and sex. She hates objectifying women but is in relationship with Jack, which is not explained well.

3. I cannot even say that this book can be a good read for school students because there is no take away from the book morally or knowledge wise. It is just a sad story where a student ruins her life for no apparent reason.

Although one point caught me. It can be roughly translated to this :

Alaska says "I don't want to get caught in the dreaming of doing something. dreaming of doing something sometimes brings the satisfaction so much that we mull over it and forget to actually do it. i want to be someone who don't dream about doing something but go out and get that shit done". That definitely makes a lot of sense !"

Also, all the character have atleast one quality which are great to have. for eg: Colonel aims to score well and buy a big house for his mom, Miles has information on last words of famous people and read biographies, Alaska has the habit of reading books, Takumi can rap etc. This was a good touch up which kind of makes people have some character that they can define themselves with.