This was both an easy and difficult post to write. Easy, because I love so much books and difficult, because among all those books, I didn't know which one to pick and write about.
So, I ruled out writing about books which are part of series simply because it would be too long a post. I decided to go for novels and in the end, it was a close fight between:
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I ended up choosing Paper Towns simply because I've read it more recently than The Perks of Being A Wallflower. I love both books tremendously though.
Anyway, you'd probably be wondering why I chose this book.
I chose it because I really understood how one of the main characters, Margo Roth Spiegelman, felt. Before talking about that though, I'll just describe (in the best way I can) her character.
She lived in a small town and she knew that the whole world was just out there, waiting for her. She was an enigma to everyone who knew her. Probably one of the most unpredictable people ever. She did the weirdest and most random things, was always so frank with what she felt and was someone who was always ready for the next big adventure. She didn't really care what other people thought about her either.
This description doesn't do her justice, so I encourage you to read the book to understand her better. Anyway, back to me understanding how she felt. Margo was always off and searching for the next big adventure and in doing so, she left her town frequently and at the most random times. Nobody ever seemed to get her or her intentions. To be honest, I didn't either. I was quite annoyed with her character until I came across this quote:
“It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.”
In that quote, I suddenly understood. Margo was always away because she wanted to leave the town she grew up in because to her, it was a paper town. She knew what she wanted in life yet she was also afraid that's why it took some time before she actually left.
So much more happens in the book but I won't write about it because I don't want to spoil it for anyone. Instead, I'm gonna end this post by sharing some of my favorite quotes from the book ☺
“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”
“Tonight, darling, we are going to right a lot of wrongs. And we are going to wrong some rights. The first shall be last; the last shall be first; the meek shall do some earth-inheriting. But before we can radically reshape the world, we need to shop.”
“We bring the fucking rain Q, not the scattered showers.”
“It's more impressive," I said out loud. "From a distance, I mean. You can't see the wear on things, you know? You can't see the rust or the weeds or the paint cracking. You see the place as someone once imagined it.”
“At some point, you gotta stop looking up at the sky, or one of these days you'll look back down and see that you floated away, too.”
“The fundamental mistake I had always made - and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make - was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.”
“I leave, and the leaving is so exhilarating I know I can never go back. But then what? Do I just keep leaving places, and leaving them, and leaving them, tramping a perpetual journey?”
“My heart is really pounding," I said.
"That's how you know you're having fun," Margo said.”
“Here’s what’s not beautiful about it: from here, you can’t see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is. It’s not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It’s a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper towns, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I’ve lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.”
“Of course he is. You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves. I mean, I could hate you for being massively unpunctual and for never being interested in anything other than Margo Roth Spiegelman, and for, like, never asking me about how it’s going with my girlfriend—but I don’t give a shit, man, because you’re you. My parents have a shit ton of black Santas, but that’s okay. They’re them. I’m too obsessed with a reference Web site to answer my phone sometimes when my friends call, or my girlfriend. That’s okay, too. That’s me. You like me anyway. And I like you. You’re funny, and you’re smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually.”
“I can almost imagine a happiness without her, the ability to let her go, to feel our roots are connected even if I never see that leaf of grass again.”
“Yeah, so if that guy can make it in drunk, surely we can make it in sober. I mean, we’re ninjas.”
“Well, maybe you’re a ninja,” I said.
“You’re just a really loud, awkward ninja,” Margo said, “but we are both ninjas.”
"I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn’t planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure was in seeing our strings cross and separate and then come back together."
I hope this post somehow encourages you to read this book! ☺
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