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What are your thoughts on John Green’s books?
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I think that he’s a very popular writer but I’ve never really gotten around to reading anything he has written and I don’t plant to. I just don’t feel compelled to at all. I know that he’s got a steady fanbase that love his books and I totally respect that!
I was just curious what you guys think of his books. Love them? Hate them? Why?
Top Comment: I said this on a post earlier, but I like listening to John Green talk about books more than I like reading John Greens books. His books are fine. They are decently written and usually pretty fun. I don’t think that they are anything special, but I really don’t think they are suppose to be. I haven’t read one in awhile as I am definitely now outside the target audience, but when I was reading them they were just very readable escapism. However, I do really love listening to him talk about other peoples books. He comes off as very intelligent and passionate about literature. I would actually like to see him write something a bit more adult themed.
I am John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars and now a new nonfiction book, The Anthropocene Reviewed. I also cofounded educational YouTube channels like Crash Course. AMA!
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Hi, reddit. I've done an AMA around the launch of each of my books since 2012, and here I am again.
I've written several novels, including The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down. Last month, I published The Anthropocene Reviewed. It's my first book of nonfiction--a series of essays reviewing a wide range of topics (from Super Mario Kart to bubonic plague) that is also an attempt to reckon with our strange historical moment, and my personal battle against despair.
Library Journal called the book “essential to the human conversation," and the San Francisco Chronicle called it "a reminder of what it is to feel small and human, in the best possible way." It was also chosen by Amazon as a best book of the year so far, and debuted at #1 on the NYT bestseller list, all of which meant a lot to me because this book is so different from my previous work and I had no idea if people would like it.
What else? With my brother Hank, I co-created several popular YouTube series, including Crash Course and the very long-running vlogbrothers channel. Crash Course is used by more than 70 million students a year.
Other things I work on: The Life's Library Book Club, an online book club of over 9,000 members that reads together and raises money for charity; a multiyear project with Partners in Health to support the strengthening of the healthcare system in Sierra Leone; the long-running podcast Dear Hank and John; and the podcast The Anthropocene Reviewed, which is where the book got its start.
Lastly, I did sign all 250,000 copies of the first printing of The Anthropocene Reviewed book (which took around 480 hours), so if you get the hardcover U.S. edition, it will be signed--at least as long as supplies last.
Top Comment: There’s a chapter where you talk about loving the world and how loving the world isn’t “to ignore or overlook suffering,” which is one of my favorite parts of the book. I’ve felt that was true for a long time, but was never able to put it into words or make it feel right. I work at a children’s hospital and (although not as a chaplain!) and see a lot of tragedy, I’m in nursing school during a pandemic, I have sometimes-debilitating mental health and health diagnoses. But I also have the greatest friends in the world. I have a dog I love more than anything. I have pretty hikes and sights just down the road. How were you able to be comfortable with loving the world despite the parts of it that make it hard to love? Do you have advice on how to fall in love with the world while recognizing its flaws and actively wanting to help make the world better for everyone?
John Green, come on seriously?
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I picked up The Fault In Our Stars because every second person on here said it was the most profound and heartfelt book they had ever read. It was fine, the characters are a bit pretentious and certainly too witty to be teenagers. But other than that, no problems with it. So I went out and got the rest of his books, god was that a mistake. I never read an author so formulaic. We get it, there is a moody teenager too smart for his/her own good and he/she has a particular thing they never stop blathering on about and (last words, anagrams, that book) they can't have their teenage love because everyone is too ridiculous. And then there's a road trip. It astounds me too see all the accolades his works have, Paper Towns, supposedly a young adult mystery is just a book that makes a reader wait for the main character to catch on to something the reader got 4 chapters ago. As well as dealing with the problems above. I'm five chapters in to An abundance Of Katherines and I already want to rip it to shreds.
Edit:Why is everyone in love with this guy?
Edit2: This got a lot more attention than I thought, and it somehow managed not to get drowned in its infancy by John Green fans defending their king. That said I'm 18 myself and just finished yr 12, so I'm pretty close to his audience. Also I've seen some really solid comments on here that were quite thought provoking and made me almost reconsider my position.
Edit3: A lot of comments seem to be misinterpreting discussion as hate.
Edit4: That is not me on /lit. Also you suck.
Top Comment: Maybe you're too smart for your own good. Maybe your life is a John Green book.
John Green’s books
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I feel like this opinion may have me like Flynn Ryder surrounded by knives in the pub in Tangled, BUT, nevertheless:
I unironically enjoy John Green’s books.
I honestly loved TFOIS. That was by far my favourite. I’ve read it about a million times and my copy is BATTERED. I just wanted to know also if there are other people who just do still like his books and take some of his writing with them into adulthood.
For a grown man, he’s good at writing like precocious teenagers. And his books have always stayed with me.
Top Comment: The Anthropocene Reviewed is my favourite book of his. It gets me out of a reading slump every time.
Is John Green really that good?
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What the title says. I am conflicted about this to be honest. I did enjoy the fault in our stars, in fact, it used to be one of my all time favorite books. John Green has a couple of ways to create emotions to the readers that are actually really hard to find in authors and that I won't explain here, mainly because I do not know quite how, and because it will take me a long ass time and make me sound like a snob. But all I can say, is that ''metaphor speaks pain better than we do'', or something along the lines that I read in the fault in our stars. It is not even neccecarily about metaphor, but I can not explain it otherwise.
But is John Green really that good? Or am I biased? Did I ignore some major flaws in his writting? It is true that teenagers do not actually behave or speak the way john imagines them. And it might also be kinda true that his characters are underdeveloped and one dimensional, for example, the only thing I remember Hazel as is as a nepotistic cynical teen that somehow speaks like a well studied philosopher/pretentious professor. She did not interest me as a character. Gus on the other hand is not even cynical, he is just that: A kid that speaks like a pretentious professor, and he seems to think a lot for someone who spends excssive time playing videogames and playing basketball, a sport that even he admits to hating. I don't even feel like Gus's relationship with Hazel changed her, even if she and Gus are polar opposites. Hazel is a cynical nepotistic girl who spends escessive time doing nothing and thinking about death and human existence from the prespective of someone who is dying, and Gus spends quite a lot of time thinbking about it while coming to important life changing conclusions about it from the prespective of someone living, or to put it even better, without caring about living or dying, just like someone who is living and has a normal life expectancy does. That did not change Hazel, it did not make her less cynical, less nihilistic it did not even make her accept nihilism as a part of life. It did nothing. Or maybe that is just what I remember.
What do you guys think? Is he a good author? Is he amazing? Is he okay? Is he mediocre? Is he bad? In my honest opinion whichever of these answers is right, John Green has a lot of potential but may be unable to handle it correctly and ruins the future of books that could potentially be amazing if he wanted them to.
Top Comment: I don't know. I have this conflict as well. I tend to think that he's reader-age-appropriately-good. I've told my young teenage sister for her entire life "Books are a safe place to practice having big scary emotions." A book may make you feel sadness, fear, happiness, grief, in a very real way and that may help a person not be completely overwhelmed when they are confronted with those emotions in real life. So add to that the fact that his novels are generally geared toward teens who are hormonal, emotional, inexperienced...I mean it's an easily manipulated population. Not in a cruel way, just in that it's an easy audience to get to REALLY FEEL THINGS. He's an effective teen author i suppose is my point. Edit: My first award! Thank you!
I'm John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down. I'm in a bus for the next eight hours. AMA.
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Hi, I'm John Green, author of the books The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines. Turtles All the Way Down, my first new book in almost six years, was published a couple days ago.
Why'd it take so long? Because I was on reddit too much.
I also make YouTube videos with my brother Hank, including vlogbrothers and the educational channel Crash Course.
Hank and I are in a bus for the next eight hours on the road to Charlotte, N.C. for the third stop on our tour. AMA!
I should add that there is a subreddit only for people who have finished Turtles All the Way Down where you can discuss it with other readers and ask me questions. But it is SPOILERIFIC so please only visit if you've read the book.
EDIT: We are nearly to Charlotte, and before arriving I need to educate my 7-year-old on the finer points of Super Mario Kart, because he just said the game is "boring" and "stupid" and that "Yoshi doesn't even look like Yoshi." Thanks for the great questions, reddit! Insert standard AMA thing where people say they'll try to come back later to answer more questions but then they never do.
Top Comment: Do you think you would still consider writing something outside of the YA bracket? What key aspects of YA keep you writing it? PS. big fan of 10 years now. I was 15 when I first saw you and Hank on YouTube and have met you guys in Scotland twice. Please visit again sometime!
Is it worth trying to defend John Green in the public forum?
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Michigan Daily has an article as part of their 'Canceled' series titled "It's Time to Talk About John Green". Published Dec 6 2020.
To me the critique is largely that John is Waspy cishet trash and in perfectly good health so he has no place to be able to writing from the perspective of terminally ill teenage girl.
I can understand that criticism but canceling somebody involves removing the power they have by not supporting their efforts; not giving them a platform.
Thing is, that platform is used to do some incredible things like the Partners in Health initiative, etc. To me, cancelling John Green actually presents some sort of danger to the real world which is more than I could say for any other celebrity who has been called in to be cancelled.
Is it our duty as internet denizens to defend him?
Apologies for format errors, I am on mobile.
Top Comment: On one hand, we're all entitled to our view of our own experiences and I can absolutely see why a cancer survivor would have some of the author's views. On the other hand, much of their argument is sophomoric, and frankly, if they are wondering why he hasn't been canceled yet...where were they in 2014-2016 when the "I hate John Green" tag was flourishing on tumblr, the whole pedophilia accusations happened, etc?
I'm John Green, author of Paper Towns and The Fault in Our Stars. AMA, r/books!
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Hi. I'm John Green, author of the YA novels Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and The Fault in Our Stars. I also wrote half of the book Will Grayson, Will Grayson and just under a third of the holiday anthology Let It Snow.
The Fault in Our Stars was adapted into a movie that came out last year, and the movie adaptation of Paper Towns comes out on July 24th in U.S. theaters.
I also co-founded Crash Course, vlogbrothers, DFTBA Records, Vidcon, and mental floss's video series with my brother Hank, but in those respects (and many others) I am mostly the tail to his comet.
AMA!
EDIT: Thank you for 4 hours of lovely discussion. I'll try to pop back in and answer a few more questions, and I'm sorry I missed so many excellent questions. Thanks for reading, r/books!
Top Comment: Hi John! All your characters name their cars, what is the name of YOUR vehicle? Thanks for helping me think bigger thoughts.