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In case you’ve missed this cultural phenomenon entirely, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is a book where two kids meet and fall in love in a cancer survivor support group. Trust me, I know. Just keep reading. Ahhhh! *gnashes teeth* This is a terribly hard one for me. The Fault in Our Stars has held firm (for years) to one of the hotly contested spots in my Top Five Favorite Books list.* And deservedly so. It’s tears-in-your-eyes funny, soggy-pile-of-tissues sad, and stare-in-jealousy-at-John-Green wise. This coming from a girl who refuses to read cancer books, and avoids sad books at all costs. Of course that means I expected the movie to be terrible. Even if it wasn’t terrible, I certainly wouldn’t notice, because I would be busy snootily insisting that the book was Better, Prettier, Smarter, Bigger Busted... Read More

Oooh… *rubs hands together* We might draw some blood on this one, because both book and movie were enjoyable, and both had significant drawbacks. For newbies, Insurgent is the second installment of the Divergent Trilogy, an action-filled dystopian trilogy that’s inspired a lot of love (and a lot of outraged shrieking) from its fans. It’s a post-apocalyptic world where the survivors are separated by values: honesty, bravery, etc. etc. Personally I thought “Ability to grow a potato” should have featured more prominently, alongside “Willingness to mate in a world without Clearasil” but hey! No one asked me. On the page, Insurgent suffers from a near-terminal case of Mopey Girl Doing Nothing. It’s a disease that runs rampant in the genre, much like pink eye through a daycare. It afflicted the later books of Hunger Games in a similar fashion, but... Read More

I love movies. Just not…the movies they have been making. For about the last ten looong years. Which means I was squealingly excited when they started making all my favorite books into movies. The latest of those, a whip-smart John Green classic, is Paper Towns. Paper Towns is about this crazy chick who does lots of cool stuff, and the nerdy guy who loves her, and then learns a lesson about how harmful it is to oversimplify someone into a fantasy image. The book was a triumph of charisma and nerdiness, leaving me giggling and flipping pages for the next clue. The movie, as it turns out, is a fantastic translation of everything that made the movie great. The book starts out with HELLO! Crazy Ninja girl coming in through a window! Who is this chick? In the film, Cara... Read More