Looking for Alaska

Looking for Alaskaby John GreenSo Monkey has been professing her undying love for John Green for over a year now. I read her reviews of An Abundance of Katherines and Looking for Alaska and thought, "Do I take a chance? Will I like these books?" and then decided not to delve into that corner of the bookstore and so I missed out on some very good literature. I really should have learned by now that I need to listen to her better. I mean it's been 7 years and I should be smarter. Though in my defence she wasn't entirely sure I would like the books since I am notoriously picky about what I read.Since discovering that my library had more than 5 English books in it, I thought I would look up some of the books I had been wondering about but never really looked closer at because I didn't want to spend money only to read something that sucked.  I looked up John Green and saw they had Looking for Alaska (and that was ALL that came up under Author Search, I swear! I looked today and they ALSO have An Abundance of Katherines (though it is out)! And I am very happy since I fell in love with this book as I read it.Miles is a geeky, friendless boy from Florida who has a knack for knowing people's last words and a love of biographies. He gets accepted to an exclusive private boarding school in Alabama where his father went before him and when the opportunity came up his parents let him go Miles jumped at the chance.At the school Miles finds himself a group of friends courtesy of his roommate, The Colonel. The Colonel also gives Miles his new name at school, Pudge. An ironic sort of nickname as Pudge is really a skinny guy. The group rounds out with Takahami and the hottest girl in school, Alaska.You know from the start of the book that there is going to be a Major Event, since the first part of the book is titled "Before" and each chapter-slash-section is noted as "One-hundred days before" and so on in a count down which makes you really want to get to the "After" part of the book to see what was going to happen. I had pretty much guessed it from the start but I was happy with the "After" half of the book as it dealt with the Major Event in a way I didn't suspect.I loved Pudge and his way of looking at things. I loved the author's subtle humour and sarcasm throughout the book, I even loved all the other characters who were introduced and I think they were written well together. I chuckled out loud a couple of times, though this isn't a funny book, not like Michele Jaffe's Bad Kitty, it was just the humour that could come out of a group of high school kids living their life and pulling pranks in boarding school. Subtle, but there.I will certainly read more John Green books.