The Fault in Our Stars

by John Green
January 2013

OMG. THIS IS THE BEST BOOK EVER!!!!

Not really.  It's a good book, but I wouldn't go as far as praising it the way some people are. Devotees of John Green  (Nerdfighters) are passionate about this book, as they are about all of Green's books.
I found it to be very much a teenager book.  That's not a put down, it simply means that I think it is written for teens and will be loved by teens.
To me it has the same feel as Franny and Zooey. The two main characters are smart and witty. There's lots of references to the likes of Kierkegaard, William Carlos Williams, Magritte, T.S. Eliot, and others. They are full of angst.  In TFIOS (as it's commonly called) the characters have a right to be angst ridden. They are cancer survivors. And everyone knows that cancer is lurking around the corner for those that have had cancer, remission or no remission.

"Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten."
I liked The Fault In Our Stars, but I really felt my age reading it.

“I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.”

― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

I listened to this one. It's narrated by Kate Rudd, who did a great job. The recording won the Odyssey Award this year from the American Library Association. That's the award for recorded books.