Paper Towns By John Green, A Book with A Silent Paper-Like Purpose.

Paper Towns– According to John Green the definition of paper towns is the name of places on a map, that aren’t really real. It’s something people want to create as something real.

The book is about two main characters named Margo Roth Spiegelman and Quentin Jacobson who is also known as “Q” and their sketchy sort of friendship throughout the book. Margo and Quentin have been neighbors since they we’re really young, but eventually when middle school and high school came along they grew apart, and Margo was the popular kid who everyone envied, and “Q” was a band geek because his two other friends happen to be band geeks too. Towards the end of their seinor year Margo shows up in Q’s bedroom insisting he be her driver, while she has 11 things to do on her list. Q doesn’t understand why Margo chose him, but he goes with her to take revenge on her cheating boyfriend Jase, and the her best friend who slept with her boyfriend Becca. Along the way they also play some pranks on the bully Chuck, ending the night with just a simple goodbye. Now that all the popular people who surrounded Margo have disappeared, Quentin believes he will finally get to spend sometime with Margo, because now she has no one to sit with at the lunchroom table.

He was wrong.

Margo disappears the next day, and no one really intends to find her because we learn that Margo likes to runaway a lot and everyone is use to it. However Q starts noticing certain clues Margo leaves just for him, maybe in order to find her. So along with his friend he starts putting clues together,reading Walt Whitman, and realizing that Margo wasn’t the girl everyone thought she was, she was more adventurous trapped in world she felt was imprisoning her. The idea that Margo spend a lot of time in Abandoned building, and read travel books didn’t sound like the Margo from Orlando, Florida.

I chose this book because I’m a fan of John Green, and I couldn’t help but notice that this book and Looking for Alaska were very similar. For one thing, the girl never appear to be who she is and in the end she never comes back, and you wonder why does John Green like to make girls so lost and adventures, and the guy’s so hopelessly romantic. When I read Looking for Alaska, I didn’t think it was as good as everybody praised it to be, but when I read Paper Towns, It blew my mind. I loved the idea of Paper Towns, and sometimes it is true that we focus more on the future, we do everything for our future and we don’t stop and give a chance to are present to evolve. We have already started making plans on how many kids were going to have, what career where going to take up, who are husband is going to be, but we never really plan out our present day and live in the now. After finishing this book, I sat down on the train wondering where are the people where going, what kind of lives they led, that they do lived in their own paper houses made out of bricks and cement and plywood. 

 

I noticed some details that really can apply to real life in the book Paper Towns.

1. We give the people we love to much credit that we forget that their just humans. We idolize them, and put them up on this pedestal that really doesn’t exist. Theirs this part in the book were Q is talking to Ben about Margo and how he feels so strongly about her, and Ben takes a look at his girlfriend and says something along the lines of “When I first met her I thought she was hot and interesting, but now that I’ve gotten to know her sometimes I can’t help but think she’s just a girl with a bunch of girl problems and sometimes she’s bossy.” We also see that Q’s perspective of Margo is very high, he still knows the small Margo who use to bike ride along the Orlando, Florida subdivision with him, but he still can’t understand why Margo likes to lead such a mysterious life. This is important for a young reader to understand, that love isn’t always what we expect in the other person, and sometimes we must learn to accept it. As John Green writes on his website ” Q was having a hard time looking for Margo, not because she was hard to find, but because he was looking for the wrong person.”

2. This book shows you’s you the different perspective of different people. You see the struggle of the popular kids, we eventually learn that the bully chuck suffers from low IQ, and that Radar’s parents had black santa’s. The Black Santa’s according to John Green were use to symbolize how we have always one bias opinion of something as simple as, Santa Claus is white.

3. This book really talks about being yourself, and I think it’s a great book for anyone who enjoys YA and a book to help them understand one another, especially teenagers. John Green always does a good job on that.

 

 

The Tao of Wu and why It Did Sort Of Not Protect My Neck.

I read the Tao of Wu for two reasons:

1. It was a book for motivation and spiritual finding, and I love those books.
2. It’s WU TANG CLAN, and that’s a good enough reason.

However I must say the book was a little disappointing, I don’t know what it was about the book that didn’t really attract me but apparently my two reasons didn’t mix. I enjoyed learning how Wu Tang Clan started out, before becoming who they are today in the Hip Hop world. The book is told by RZA and he talks about his love for Kung Fu movies, and Chess and how they adapt well to the meaning of life. I learned that Dragon Ball Z really has a hidden meaning about spirituality, and to me it was sort of unbelievable where RZA was coming up with these things. I feel like most parts were repetitive, gangs trying to get revenge on RZA and his group of friends and them getting out of death by a miracle, and RZA sort of making himself sound like the prophet of the project housing world. I admire Wu Tang for their music, their lyrics are incredible and it’s obvious they are Hip Hop at it’s most real, and I also love books of motivation, but this just wasn’t the book for me. I do recommend it to people who love Wu Tang, love motivation, or love both because it could be you do understand RZA better then I do. I really give this book a 3.8 for being a fun read, and interesting on the Clans part and some here and their quotes I can adapt to real life.

Since I left it on such a sour note and I am a  fan of the Clan, I will an interview RZA did with Time Magazine about this book:

Emerging in the mid-1990s, New York City’s Wu-Tang Clan proved to be one of the decade’s most intense, wacky and essential rap groups. The nine-MC Clan was led by the RZA, who in recent years has gone on to release several solo albums and film scores (Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog and Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill). His latest project, a book released this month called The Tao of Wu, is half-memoir, half-spiritual guide. The rapper and entrepreneur, whose real name is Robert Diggs, talked to TIME about the history of hip-hop, cult films and his love of Broadway.

In The Tao of Wu, you lay out your very unique worldview. I lost track of all the elements involved, which include traditional Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, chess and numerology. If you had only a minute to tell someone about your beliefs, what would you say?
First of all, the tao means the way. And there are many ways to get to a place as long as you stay on the path. So if you want to travel the way of Jesus, the way of the Prophet Muhammad, if you want to travel the way of Buddha or Bodhi Dharma, if you want to travel the way of a great chess master like Kasparov or Fisher — any way you can reach self-enlightenment or self-worth works. Many great men have left paths for us. In the end, we are all searching for the same thing. We’re just taking different routes to the same location.

You turned 40 this summer, and you’ve witnessed essentially the entire history of hip-hop. What stands out?
When I first heard hip-hop, in 1976, there were maybe only 500 people that could do it. Now you got 5 million people. First it was about partying and fun. Then it went to a way to express oneself without having to physically express it. Then after a while, hip-hop became more socially conscious. Then it went to the celebrity [phase]. And now we’re in a state where it’s unbalanced. A lot of artists don’t necessarily have the same substance as they once did. I’m 40, and I went through hip-hop. I lived it. These kids just learned it. They learned it from TV. Their neighborhoods aren’t the same as our neighborhoods were. Their problems aren’t the same as our problems were. They have a black President! The whole concept of hip-hop has changed. It’s become a commodity.

 

One of the passages in your book talks about the anime movie Dragon Ball Z and how it represents the journey of the black man in America. And it struck me because in Inglourious Basterds, there’s a scene about how King Kong represents the plight of the black man in America. Is there another movie or book or piece of art that you think represents what African Americans have had to go through?
Tarantino and I agree on King Kong. I’ll give you another movie: John Carpenter’s They Live. That’s perfect for our times right now. That’s where we’re at. I saw that movie, and it really made me think. I started bugging out in the mall. I just felt like, wow, there was something about that movie that was real. I got locked up like two hours [after watching it]; I was drunk and acting crazy.

Who are some musicians that you listen to whom your fans probably wouldn’t expect?
You know who I love? I love the Bee Gees, and I love Barry Gibb and Andy Gibb. I listen to them almost every day. The arrangements were so simple, right? But they had a taste of complication about them. Grease? I watch that film over and over. The hard-core part of me, people know. But the corny side of me is what they wouldn’t know. They wouldn’t know that I would go by myself to watch a movie like — what’s that one with John Travolta where he dresses like a woman?

Hairspray?
Hairspray, yeah. Can you imagine me in a theater watching Hairspray? But I really appreciate choreographed music.

Is there a certain scene in the movie you love?
Every musical performance in there was great. The only one I didn’t like was where John Travolta danced with Christopher Walken. That’s the only scene that was a little shaky, with the two guys dancing. But to me, every scene, every dance, every lyric resonated. That and Dreamgirls — those movies are modern masterpieces. A lot of people don’t recognize the power of Broadway. When I was first successful, about 1998, when I was living very wealthy, I was always going to Broadway shows. From Chicago to Rent to Ragtime.

Would you ever do a Broadway show?
Oh, yeah. I got one ready! That’s one of my dreams, to get Wu-Tang on Broadway. I have two entertainment dreams I have to live out. One is to play Carnegie Hall with an orchestra and me on piano. The other is to have a play based on Wu-Tang music. The 36 Chambers needs to be on Broadway, baby!