The Fault In Our Stars

I finished this book about half an hour ago, so it's still very fresh and there might be things here that may change when I look at things in perspective. I feel compelled to say, however, that this book is one of the best books I've ever read. I don't get to say that too often, so it is, as a friend would say, one hell of a book.

To briefly put you in situation, the book starts with a girl, Hazel Grace, who has suffered from cancer and still has sequels, her lungs suck at being lungs (quote) and she has to carry around an oxygen tank all the time. She’s depressed and the only activity she does is going to a Support Group for children with cancer, where they tell their experiences and pray for those who have passed away. That’s Hazel’s life until she meets Augustus Waters, a very charismatic and hot guy who also had suffered from cancer and has a prosthetic leg. And their romance commences.

But if that was it, the book wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is. This book does much more than that. It trespasses all our fears of death, all our clichés of children with cancer, all our prejudices of side effects of cancer. “Depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.” The book removes all our blinders from our eyes and offers us what we really seek when dying: to be remembered. We want to do something to the universe, to live and die for something, and we’re afraid of the oblivion.

The Fault In Our Stars is not a book of a teenagers dying from cancer. It isn't a love story of a young couple who know their lives will end too soon either. It's much more than that. It's a book that challenges our own fears of death, how we live every day and what we think it's most important in our lives. 

I cannot write a review that does justice to a great book like this one. So just buy it, grab a pack of tissues and a cup of tea/coffee, and be prepared to cry, feel and be changed forever.

“You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”

The aftermath

For those who do not know me, which I assume is probably a high percentage of whoever is visiting this blog; I’m studying English Studies at university. Incredibly enough, I’m already at the last months of the degree, which means that in less than four months – if I manage to pass everything – I will be a graduate student.

Throughout the years I’ve been taking some subjects that I liked and some that I didn’t, but all of them were compulsory. Now, since it’s the last year, I could choose the subjects I wanted to do (except for two subjects from the past year that I couldn’t take because of Erasmus).

As you will probably see as the blog progresses, my favourite area by far is literature. I’ve always enjoyed reading and occasionally writing, but I wanted to become what my teachers call professional reader, so not only read, but be able to grasp the meaning of the whole book; and then be able to teach it (which was my dream since I was nearly a kid). Honestly, I’ve found quite hard to read some of the books but the satisfaction that I felt when I could read (and understand!) for instance Wuthering Heights was incredible.

This last semester I’m taking quite a few modules in literature. And I must say that, although there is an awful lot of work to do and an awful lot of reading to do, I’m enjoying every bit of it. Perhaps it’s encouraged by the thought that I’ll be gone in less than four months, perhaps is that finally I could choose the modules I wanted to take and therefore they’re more in accordance with what I want to do. Perhaps it’s a mixture of both.

In any case, and although most of the time I just want to finish off, start holidays and not having to think about when the next essay is due; I feel very happy to be where I am right now. This is what I’ve always wanted to do and this is the path I’m going to follow probably all my life.

A (quite long) chapter in my life is finishing. So, if you want to accompany me through these last sentences, through these last words, you are more than welcome. We will enjoy together the last bit of storm before the calm, and we will live the aftermath. What the future will bring, I don’t know. But I will make sure I blog about it.

Books.

Do you know when you have like ten or twelve books to read (and not read for pleasure, but read professionally, like taking notes and stuff), but then you find this one book that you've wanted to read for ages and finally it's in your hands? 

Do you know when you have the ton of books you have to read, carelessly piled up on your right, and that one book you want to read on your left?

Do you know that moment when you start that book even when you know you shouldn't, and then you get hooked on it and can't stop reading it and can't even think about nothing else?

Well, it's happening to me right now.