#and an author of books like the fault in our stars and the anthropocene reviewed

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

I'm a genuinely-confused adult with poor understanding of social media. Are you John Green, the author who wrote those books, or are you John Green, the unpaid intern that happens to have the same name as the John Green author person?

[actual-sleeping-beauty]

Against All Odds, John Green and Hannah Marks Made a Movie of Turtles All the Way Down

“Maybe that’s you acknowledging that there’s this distance between you and the reader now, or even that there’s this distance between you and the self you were when you wrote Looking for Alaska or The Fault in Our Stars,” he thought to himself. “Once I did the time jump, I realized I could be kind to that character in a way that she couldn’t be kind to herself in the moment.” It was also a note to self: “I was going back and saying to myself: You’re so sick, and I’m so sorry, more than anything. I’m so sorry, and you’re going to get through this.” I try to covertly wipe my moist eyes as one of the world’s most beloved YA authors continues. “I remember thinking as I was writing that, like, Does that mean this is it? And maybe it did.”

god i just. john's books have accompanied me through my adolescence and my young adulthood (i've brought my copy of tfios to multiple countries) and i am so grateful for them. and i need to reread tatwd because when i first read it i hadn't yet had the kind of debilitating mental illness experiences i've had now. i'm so intrigued by where john's fiction will go from here, and so hopeful for him that it manifests. i truly think his writing gets better with every passing work. the anthropocene reviewed truly helped save my life this past year. i am just so grateful.

[gaypudding]

I just watched Turtles All The Way Down and I have some thoughts (I’m sick rn so if John somehow stumbles across this I’m so sorry for my dehydrated ramblings):

This is a great adaptation of the book. I love John Green’s works and I loved how Turtles took bits from the Anthropocene Reviewed and put little bits in here as well (and I loved the cameo). Yeah I did cry near the end.

As an aspiring filmmaker, part of me thinks that John’s work isn’t translatable to screen because his writing is so verbose and intrinsic. I love reading John’s works because they put my thoughts on paper, but having to watch that play out while also having a narrator and on-screen representations of abstract thoughts feels very on-the-nose for film. However, this isn’t necessarily a fault to the movie, it’s just how John writes (I realize now that calling him John is very informal, but he’s my internet uncle so I’m sorry Mr. Green but that feels weird to call you). ALSO I’m a big believer in making whatever the fuck you want however you want as long as it’s staying true to yourself, your art, and your audience, and I liked the movie so ahhhhhh I’m running out of coherent thoughts.

I haven’t watched Looking for Alaska or Paper Towns because of things I’ve heard about them (ik, a bad reason not to watch something) and because they aren’t my fav of his books. But I loved Turtles and I’m glad that the director put so much care into trying to tell the story the right way. I could also tell that John was a huge part of the filmmaking process.

If anyone has read this far into my exhausted ramblings, then I’ll just say: I liked it 4/5.

P.S I also didn’t like the amount of product placement, I get that you gotta pay for the movie somehow, but product placement in movies ALWAYS rub me the wrong way (especially when they have very strong messages RE: Barbie). I also know that Applebees and the PopTart box is part of the book but shhhhjjjhhhhhh

P.P.S I’ve been a fan of John Green since The Fault in Our Stars was popular. It was my favorite book in 6th grade and I went to see the movie premiere with my mom when it came out. I’ve also been on Tumblr since then. I read Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherine’s back to back in the same day. John’s work both as an author and as a general human has been a huge part of my life and a huge part of my journey as a creative person. I’m going to graduate college in a semester and I just want to say thank you for helping me and inspiring me through literally half of my life.

[reioka-reads]

Title: The Anthropocene Reviewed

Author: John Green

Status: Keep

You know, I feel like I should preface this with the fact that I do love John Green and his work. My first book of his was The Fault in Our Stars, and I consumed it in literally three hours. None of his other books really resonated as much with me, but it wasn’t like they were unenjoyable. I might not have been the target audience, but they were still nice reads. So I was always going to be biased toward this book.

That being said, this is the first book of essays I’ve really ever read, so it was a bit of a learning curve. I loved it. I loved how I could finish one and start another without worrying whether or not I’d really absorbed and understood what I’d read before. Each essay was about what he said they were, but they were also about John personally, and also about the human experience in general. His prose is a little flowery, but he is absolutely, one hundred percent genuine about it, so it doesn’t come off as ‘trying to sound smart when he isn’t.’ It’s also perfectly in character for him. He tends to use a lot of figurative language to get his point across, but then, that also really works for me. Sometimes figurative language is the only way to understand something.

Overall, this book was a real winner. I went into some of the subjects with my mind (and ratings) made up, and he somehow found a way to make each of them beautiful in a way that I had to change my mind, always for the better. I give this book five stars.

[supercantaloupe]

SO happy you rbed that book rec ask meme again, i was afraid i'd missed it: 1, 3, 8, 13, 22, 27, 28, 37, 43, 55, 61, 131? 💞🌺

aw jack 💖🥺 admittedly some of these questions are about genres i don't really read but i'll do my best!

1. a book that is close to your heart - listen i know Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is cringe or whatever but middle school me ate that shit up. i'm still very fond of it and a lot of what it has to say -- namely its optimism re: human connection/friendship through the internet and unashamed & nostalgic fan culture

3. a stand-alone that you wish was part of a series - none come to mind; when a book is well written, imo, it has an ending satisfying enough to stand alone. more often i find myself wanting to read more similar standalone books by the same author than i do wanting to read a direct continuation of a single book into a series; see all of Andy Weir's space novels (The Martian, Artemis, and Project Hail Mary) as an example.

8. a book you finished in one sitting - Project Hail Mary! okay, not technically one sitting, but pretty much. i finished it within 24 hours and loved it

13. your favorite romance novel - not much of a romance reader tbh! i suppose i still have a fondness for John Green YA from middle school. The Fault in Our Stars, if i must pick something overtly romantic, but i do prefer Paper Towns, if you'll allow me to stretch what "romantic" means in terms of a book's plot

22. your favourite thriller - i don't really know exactly what constitutes a thriller in a book? i don't really read these. does Moby Dick count? i liked moby dick

27. a book with a purple cover - God Bless You Mr. Rosewater again! love me some vonnegut. (my copy is purple, i think other editions have different covers tho)

28. a book you wish you could read as a beginner again - "beginner" i'll assume here means "for the first time". i kind of wish i could go back to elementary school and relive reading Darren Shan's Cirque du Freak series again. i tore through all twelve books. i think if i tried to revisit them now it would lack a lot of what i now look for in a book, but i remember the series so fondly as a kid

37. your favourite heist book - another genre i don't read much of. it's been ages since i read this series, but i remember enjoying Gail Carriger's Finishing School series. if i recall correctly at least one of the four books (likely more) had heists in them. also i haven't read it yet since i literally just got it but there's a book called Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth that's about two guys who try to steal all the chickens from an egg farm? i'll keep you posted if it's any good lmao

43. a book that you have read more than three times - The Martian my beloved 💖💖💖

55. a book with a satisfying ending - i really like how The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood ends (which is part of why i haven't bothered reading its recent sequel yet, lol). i have a feeling my definition of a "satisfying ending" is not the same as everyone else's, though, lmao

61. your favourite horror novel - yet another genre i don't read much of. i do remember reading this one book called H2O by Virginia Bergin in middle school. it's about an apocalypse in which all the water on earth (save for sealed ccontainers) becomes infected with a deadly parasite and it fucked me up and stayed with me since.

131. recommend any book you like! - The Anthropocene Reviewed! John Green's latest book, a collection of essays on various things as viewed through a human lens, each rated on a 5-star scale. shockingly heartfelt. highly recommend!

[ask meme]

[mercerislandbooks]

Try Audio Books for Book Bingo!

Thanks to the recent Seattle Times article with the reminder that listening to an audio book constitutes reading a book for the purposes of Book Bingo, I was able to use some of my recent audio book “reads” to fill in a few Book Bingo squares!

For me, audio books have been a fun way to squeeze in a few more titles per month. I listen when I work out, on my way to and from work, when I’m knitting, and, when I’m really into an audio book, on my lunch breaks. I especially like listening to YA (bonus points if they have dual narrators, so fun!), romance, and some nonfiction, which is often narrated by the author, as you’ll see below. Every so often I’ll add in a literary fiction, like Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. The pleasure of truly excellent prose spoken aloud adds a depth to my experience of the story. I can’t listen to an audiobook as fast as I can read a book, so it gives me more time to think about the characters, what is happening in the plot and speculate about what might happen next. When I listened to The Dutch House (read by Tom Hanks) I was continually surprised by the twists of the plot. When I listened to Gold Diggers, I was able to step away long enough to remind myself these were fictional characters, because I thought they were making so many bad choices!

Island Books partners with Libro.fm, a local independent audio book platform. Readers who want to support Island Books and get downloadable audio books can purchase a monthly subscription, or buy audio books a la carte, while designating their chosen independent bookstore. Most of our staff uses the Libro.fm app, and whenever I personally mention in a recommendation card or in a blog that I listened to the audio book, it has been exclusively using Libro.fm.

Here are my recent audio book “reads” that are helping me fill in my Book Bingo!

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

I’ve read several of John Green’s YA titles, (The Fault in our Stars, Looking for Alaska, and Turtles all the Way Down) and heard he had a podcast, but never listened to it. So when I saw he had a book of essays coming out, and that he was reading the audiobook, I thought it would be a nice change of pace from all the YA rom-coms I’d been devouring. There’s something lovely about hearing an author read their personal essays aloud, knowing that they are acutely aware of the intent they are trying to convey to their reader/listener. Having no preconceptions, I found this a delightful ramble through John Green’s thoughts about things as varied as the Indy 500, Kentucky Bluegrass (which I initially thought was the music genre and was confused as to all this discussion of lawn care), and Air-Conditioning. Green gives a concise deep dive into each subject, but always circles back to his own, quite moving, personal experience. The through line in each, either explicitly or not, is the disruption of the Covid pandemic, and he imbeds in each essay a snapshot of whatever uncertainty we were all contending with at that particular time. I used The Anthropocene Reviewed for my “Poetry or Essays” square.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

I know this has already been one of the big books of the summer, especially among the late teens and early twenties readers. I had it in my to listen queue when I found it listed on the Seattle Public Library’s “Peak Picks” page - perfect way to fill in that square! I listened to the bulk of it on a recent road trip and, for me, the audio book was the perfect way to submerge myself in the story without overthinking the moments that slightly strained my credulity. August has recently moved to New York City as a way to hopefully finish college, extract herself from her mother’s obsession with a particular cold case, and be alone without feeling lonely. She stumbles into an apartment situation with a handful of quirky characters, a job as a waitress at a pancake restaurant, and a commute on the Q train to school. Which is where she meets Jane. August has a crush at first sight, especially after Jane rescues August with a scarf to cover her coffee ruined shirt. But August starts to realize there’s something different about Jane - she listens to cassettes on a Walkman, she’s always wearing the same outfit, and she’s always, always on the Q train whenever August gets on. This is certainly a romance, and there’s plenty of steamy moments, but the relationships between August and her roommates moved me the most as they slowly break down her protective shell. August struggles to let herself love others, and to let herself be loved, so listening to her gradual change was tender and sweet. I loved seeing her find her people, a place where she felt like she belonged, and realize how full and good her life could be. One Last Stop would also work for Romance, QTBIPOC and Coming of Age Book Bingo squares.

The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta

This one I didn’t start for any particular Book Bingo square, but The View Was Exhausting would work for Romance, Beach Read, QTBIPOC, or Recommended by a Local Bookseller (me!).  All I knew going in was it was a romance with the fake dating trope and set in the upper echelons of Hollywood society. I figured it would be a fun escapist look behind the scenes of a lifestyle a million miles away from my own. Whitman “Win” Tagore is an A-list British Indian actress chasing after a coveted role in a Hemingway film adaptation when scandal erupts in her personal life. She retreats to Saint-Tropez to do damage control by calling in her on again off again “boyfriend”, society darling/male model Leo Milanowski. The world thinks that Win and Leo have a love story for the ages, but since the moment they met at age 20, it’s been about public image - fake dating on a global stage. First I was captured by narrator, Tania Rodrigues, and her precise English accent that she molds to fit every character. Her voice reading Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta’s words made me feel like I was in each exotic location. Second, the whole concept raised really interesting questions about the double standard for men and women in the film industry, and especially for women of color. Win feels like she has to faultlessly maintain her image in order to have the career she wants, and so as not to make it harder for any other British Indian actresses coming up behind her. She goes to great lengths, with her loyal publicist, to craft the image she thinks the public wants, the producers and directors want, and is exhausted by the effort. I found myself wondering if Win could just refuse to play the game? This is an audio book I raced through because I couldn’t wait to see what would happen!

I hope everyone is finding something fun to read or listen to this summer. If you want to sign up for a Libro.fm membership, go to the sidebar on our website, islandbooks.com and click on the link. Time for me to pick my next listen!

— Lori

[theabhorsenslibrary]

Podcasts Recommendations

This is a subject which I would struggle to write much about as I do not listen to a lot of podcasts regularly - hence why I have removed the “top 10″ from the title of this post and have decided to focus on ones I would recommend.

The Anthropocene Reviewed This one comes from John Green (author of such books as The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns) where he reviews various things. The episodes range from 20-30 minutes and is a very easy listen, I personally find John Green’s voice very soothing.

Dear Hank & John This is probably the only podcast I listen to with any regularity because I love how close John and Hank Green are as brothers. Their podcast always brings a smile to my face and its always fun to listen to them giving entertaining advice to people. John and Hank never seem to take themselves too seriously which is what makes this podcast such a nice listen.

Welcome to Night Vale WTNV is a podcast which I dip in and out of regularly, it tends to be one I have to be in the mood for but have always enjoyed when I listen to it. I just love Cecil and the characters of Night Vale and will probably continue to dip in and out of the series.

Conversations with People Who Hate Me This is a podcast I got into because of Night Vale because Dylan Marron, the host, also voices Carlos the scientist in WTNV. In the first series or two he focuses on talking to people who have thrown him hate on the internet while later series focus on being a moderator between two people. Its just so interesting in listening to people talking even when they have opposing view.

David Tennant Does a Podcast With... This particular podcast I started listening to because I really like David Tennant as an actor. I really enjoy listening to him just having a natter with other famous individuals, though I do tend to listen only to the individuals I am personally interested in so there are a couple of episodes I haven’t listened too.

Solve the World This is the last podcast I’m going to be talk about and one that was recommended to me by a friend. Solve the World is a 100 episode story about a girl called Jennifer Dash and her adventures through some really strange and whacky scenarios. Its been quite some time since I listened to this but I remember its one I remember enjoying when I did.

[mayliang17]

Book review: The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

Book review: The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John GreenMy rating: 3 of 5 starsFor those of you who are familiar with John Green because of books like “Fault in Our Stars,” the author also does a podcast called “The Anthropocene Reviewed,” a mix of the scientific and the personal. If you like the podcast, you’ll like this book. Many of the chapters are based on the podcast, and the format is similar as well.I…

[mathematicianadda]

Books I Loved in 2019

Before it gets too deep into 2020, and this new decade swallows me like a whale ingesting krill, I want to take a moment to tell you about books I enjoyed this past year.

All of these books are certified 100% great and you should read them so we can chat about them, like a little two-person online book club.

(Note that my attention span favors books which are (1) written with a distinctive voice, (2) intellectually dense, and (3) short. Your tastes and mileage may vary.)

  Math Books

I read a lot of books about math, for the purpose of stealing the authors’ ideas and, eventually, their identities drawing inspiration.

The Weil Conjectures, by Karen Olsson. Beautiful, subtle reflections on the elusive nature of modern mathematics. Composed from an outsider’s vantage, yet with an insider’s ear and finesse.

Humble Pi, by Matt Parker. Riveting, wide-ranging exploration of mathematical mistakes. Includes clever “mistakes” of its own – e.g., the pages are numbered in reverse.

Euler’s Gem, by David Richeson. Dave’s two books – this one on topology, and his new one on impossible problems such as squaring the circle – are superb. His selection and presentation of mathematical ideas is exquisite: an unmatched combination of accessibility and depth.

Tales of Impossibility, by David Richeson. My back-cover blurb: “The story of a mathematical treasure hunt, and a treasure chest in its own right.”

What Is the Name of This Book? by Raymond Smullyan. A classic collection of great puzzles, including those about knaves who always lie, and knights who never do. I especially loved the pages of anecdotes, jokes, and stray thoughts.

Infinite Powers, by Steven Strogatz. In contrast to my book on calculus – a silly, literary, personal affair – Strogatz’s is epic and sweeping. It weaves together historical storytelling and surprising accounts of modern applications.

Mathematics for Human Flourishing, by Francis Su. My back-cover blurb: “Francis Su believes that math can make us better humans—and he leads by example. Every page is a work of generosity and compassion. Plus, the puzzles will haunt you for weeks.”

  Sci-Fi Short Stories

My pleasure reading. A good one gives a quick, stimulating burst of “whoa.” The four authors below – some of my absolute favorite writers – deliver fireworks.

Exhalation, by Ted Chiang. The most carefully crafted and rigorously imagined sci-fi in the business. The final story, on parallel universes, is worth the price of admission.

How Long ’til Black Future Month?, by N.K. Jemisin. A collection of extraordinary diversity, from distant-planet exploration to a prose-poem meditation on NYC to a spy caper set in an alternate, high-tech 1800’s New Orleans.

Changing Planes, by Ursula Le Guin. Stimulating, funny thought experiments about imaginary civilizations. Silent people; perpetually migrating people; people with wings…

Sorry Please Thank You, by Charles Yu. Witty and wildly imaginative meditations on relationships, meaning, and capitalism.

  Gorgeous & Heartbreaking

I guess sometimes I want to be sad? I read all of these before my daughter was born. Having an infant now, I don’t lack for strong emotions in my diet.

Night, by Elie Wiesel. This Holocaust memoir was required reading for 9th graders at the first school where I taught. Ten years later, I’m finally caught up.

Alex: The Life of a Child, by Frank Deford. I love Deford’s sportswriting; this is a memoir about his daughter, who died of cystic fibrosis. Sat on my shelf for years; had to read it before my own daughter came along, lest it wreck me even more than it did.

The Best We Could Do, by Thi Bui. Graphic memoir of a family’s journey from Vietnam. Full of hurt and compassion, with colors so beautiful they register as music. One of the best books I read all year.

  Literary & Comic

Not coincidentally, those are adjectives you might use to describe my 2019 book, Change is the Only Constant.

The Lonesome Bodybuilder, by Yukiko Motoya. Short stories; a Japanese sort of magical realism. One of the strangest books I read this year.

Romeo And/Or Juliet, by Ryan North. A choose-your-own-path version of Shakespeare’s classic. North is one of my favorite humorists, and he explores every corner and permutation of his delightful premise.

Love Dishonor Marry Die Cherish Perish, by David Rakoff. A short novel written entirely in verse – and what struck me, given the sardonic edge of Rakoff’s essays, entirely in earnest.

Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger. Two linked novellas. I still don’t understand why Catcher in the Rye gets all the glory; Salinger’s other stories are deeper, funnier, and more virtuosic.

Tenth of December, by George Saunders. Incisive, witty short stories, ranging from pedestrian to sci-fi fantastical. Saunders has a keen and devastating eye for the flattering lies that we tell ourselves.

To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. A time travel romp through Victorian England. Leisurely yet propulsive, full of fun moments. To say nothing of the dog!

  Illustrated & Ingenious

These books, for me, push the bounds on what books can be and do. All three are full of serious, interesting ideas – and all three are playful in presentation.

The Dialogues, by Clifford Johnson. The author, a physics professor, drew this series of cartoon dialogues about science himself. Clearly a multi-talented fellow.

How To, by Randall Munroe. I write in Munroe’s shadow, and it’s a big, beautiful shadow. This book shows off his chops not just as a humorist, but a researcher; he has a nose for the quirky and fascinating.

Basketball (and other things), by Shea Serrano. I wound up giving this as a gift to every basketball fan I know. A mixture of meticulous argumentation and delicious pop culture lunacy.

  Modern & Insightful

Usually I read stuff that’s years or decades old, but in 2019 I actually read some modern nonfiction about modern concerns that might be relevant to a modern person! Go me!

Because Internet, by Gretchen McCulloch. Whereas oral speech has always had formal and informal registers, writing had only the former. Until the internet. This bestseller thoughtfully unpacks how we write online.

Hacking Life, by Joseph M. Reagle, Jr. An affectionate but unflinching critique of the form of self-help known as “life hacks,” and its obsession with optimization.

How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm, by Mei-Ling Hopgood. Every chapter, more or less: “Here’s a question about child-rearing. Here’s a society that does it totally differently than the US. And guess what? Both have their ups and downs.” Formulaic but immensely reassuring for the new parent.

Bringing Up Bebe, by Pamela Druckerman. Polar opposite of Hopgood’s book; celebrating the Parisian style of child-rearing as lower-effort and superior. Probably right on food; maybe insightful on discipline; dubious elsewhere, but well-written.

  Literature for and About Teenage Girls

I went on a brief kick of this stuff, and it’s great! Good job, teen girls! I mean, not that you wrote these books, but you created the market demand for them, which is the highest form of virtue in a capitalist society!

The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green. Tear-jerking mega-bestseller. I borrowed it from a friend because I fell in love with Green’s podcast, The Anthropocene Reviewed, which I recommend fanatically.

Catfishing on Catnet, by Naomi Kritzer. Charming YA thriller, based on a Hugo-winning short story about an AI that gains sentience… and demands cat pictures.

Grace and the Fever, by Zan Romanoff. After years of obsessing over a boy band, what if you got to meet them? Half the joy is sheer wish fulfillment; the other half is the surprisingly delicate character study of our guarded narrator.

from Math with Bad Drawings https://ift.tt/36ttwp5 from Blogger https://ift.tt/2T4D6dQ

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

Arw you really the author John Green? The same person who wrote The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska?

Yes, but I published one of those books 19 (?!?!?!) years ago and the other 12 (!?!?!?!?) years ago. What have I been up to since then?

My brother Hank and I started Good.store, which delivers high-quality socks, coffee, and soap to your home and donates 100% of its profit to charity. Through good store, we've raised over $7,500,000 to support efforts to radically reduce maternal mortality in Sierra Leone, where as recently as 2019, one in seventeen women could expect to die in pregnancy or childbirth.

(In fact, technically I am here on tumblr as an unpaid intern for the awesome coffee club, which you should really sign up for if you like ethically sourced coffee that tastes delicious and doesn't enrich billionaires.)

I wrote the novel Turtles All the Way Down and then had a little existential crisis and wrote a nonfiction book called The Anthropocene Reviewed, the latter of which is my first book for adults and my first attempt to write as myself.

I helped produce made a movie adaptation (streaming now on Max!) of Turtles all the Way Down.

I helped raise my kids and supported my spouse as she wrote her book You Are An Artist and created a PBS show about art called The Art Assignment.

I ran the educational media company Complexly and the merch company dftba.com while my brother had cancer.

I bought around 2% of a fourth-tier English football team called AFC Wimbledon. Wimbledon are different from most football clubs because they are owned by their fans, each of whom gets one vote in the club's leadership regardless of how much money they put into the club.

I became obsessed with tuberculosis, the world's deadliest infectious disease (it will kill over a million people this year despite being curable), and how TB both exemplifies and reinforces human-built structures of injustice, which is the subject of a book I'm writing that will come out next year.

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

Dear Mr. Sizzling Sandwich,

Have you ever read Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag? Once when I was very sad I went to the library to cope and found myself on the floor reading that book in one go. I had also been listening to the anthropocene reviewed and it occurred to me that a lot of the things Sontag discussed reminded me of your videos and podcasts about tuberculosis and some of the ideas in TFIOS. It also seems likely that, as an author and person who seems to read a lot of books, especially on the subject of tuberculosis, it would be statistically likely that you had. Anyways, I thought that book was very interesting and wondered what you thought (if you did read it after all).

Sincerely,

A regular sandwich

Yes it was very important to me when writing The Fault in Our Stars, especially. Here is a passage from the opening of Sontag's essay:

"My point is that illness is not a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness—and the healthiest way of being ill —is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking. Yet it is hardly possible to take up one’s residence in the kingdom of the ill unprejudiced by the lurid metaphors with which it has been landscaped."

And this is how I wanted to approach TFIOS if I could--to write with a hyperawareness of how people metaphorize, and how the lurid metaphors of cancer especially have shaped (and in many cases harmed) the lives of cancer survivors, but try to find a way not to metaphorize the disease itself, which as Hazel repeatedly says, is just a disease.

But I also relied (and rely!) so much on Illness as Metaphor because of the way it connects historical constructions of tuberculosis to contemporary constructions of cancer. Cancer now is seen in much of the rich world as the most capricious disease, the "robber of youth" (as TB used to be known), as the illness that you may survive through positive thinking or clean living or whatever--which all used to be how we thought of TB.

(This is why the band in The Fault in Our Stars is called "The Hectic Glow," which is something Thoreau said about TB when romanticizing it as a beautiful disease.)

Of course, our current metaphors around TB are very different--TB is now constructed as a disease of dirt and filth and poverty. In time, the same may become true of cancer--already cancer is killing more people in low- and middle-income countries than in rich ones. So the other thing I take from Illness as Metaphor is that the lurid metaphors of disease are not stable or fixed, nor need they be. We can change them together. I tried to contribute to that in whatever small way in TFiOS, but I don't and can't ever know if I succeeded, because that isn't up to me; it's up to the ongoing readers of the story.