30 Before 30 - January Book (The Fault In Our Stars)

The fifth book I read for my 30 Before 30 challenge was...


Yes... I know I'm a little bit behind in my book reading... forgive me won't you?

A friend of mine at work actually lent me this book after I expressed interest in trying to read several books that were going to hit theaters this year... and I'm so glad she did. This book was a fast read and very thought provoking to me. I'm often worrying about all the trivial things going on in my life and this got me to thinking about the bigger picture instead of the minor details.

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At 16, Hazel Grace Lancaster, a three-year stage IV–cancer survivor, is clinically depressed. To help her deal with this, her doctor sends her to a weekly support group where she meets Augustus Waters, a fellow cancer survivor, and the two fall in love. Both kids are preternaturally intelligent, and Hazel is fascinated with a novel about cancer called An Imperial Affliction. Most particularly, she longs to know what happened to its characters after an ambiguous ending. To find out, the enterprising Augustus makes it possible for them to travel to Amsterdam, where Imperial’s author, an expatriate American, lives. What happens when they meet him must be left to readers to discover. Suffice it to say, it is significant. Writing about kids with cancer is an invitation to sentimentality and pathos—or worse, in unskilled hands, bathos. Happily, Green is able to transcend such pitfalls in his best and most ambitious novel to date. Beautifully conceived and executed, this story artfully examines the largest possible considerations—life, love, and death—with sensitivity, intelligence, honesty, and integrity. In the process, Green shows his readers what it is like to live with cancer, sometimes no more than a breath or a heartbeat away from death. But it is life that Green spiritedly celebrates here, even while acknowledging its pain. In its every aspect, this novel is a triumph.

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This book made me laugh, cry, feel joy, and defeat. For me it made me think... think about what's important and not to sweat the small stuff in life. It reminded me of how much I love and appreciate the people in my life because they could be gone sooner than I have planned. I'm looking forward to it hitting theaters in 2014 and I see Robert Pattinson as the future "Gus."

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