The Fault in Our Stars (Spoiler-free, I promise)

You should read the book The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. If you've known someone who has died, you should read it. If you assume that someday you will die, you should read it. If you are or were once a teenager, you should read it. If you spend most of your days engaging in but not really thinking about the miracle that is breathing, you should read it.

Does that cover everyone? Good. Just in case, I'll say it again: You should read this book.

I devoured the book, in the most intense figurative meaning of the phrase. My copy arrived at my house around 1 PM. I sat down to read it around 9:30. Approximately four and a half hours later, I finished the 313th and final page. I went downstairs and ate two sticks of string cheese, went to the bathroom, and began this blog post.

For those unfamiliar with the novel, its main character is Hazel Grace Lancaster, who was diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at age thirteen but has somehow managed to survive more than three years. The cancer eventually spread to her lungs, so she's dependent on a portable oxygen tank. She has few friends, she reads the same novel over and over, and she thinks about death a lot -- not in a particularly dramatic or macabre way, but in the way that any of us who use more than a tenth of our brain ponder whatever situations realistically lie in our near future. Hazel reluctantly attends a weekly support group for kids with cancer, and it's there that she meets Augustus Waters, an intelligent, irreverent, extremely good-looking kid who's in remission for a relatively treatable form of bone cancer.

Hazel and Augustus hit it off so quickly and completely and are so unabashedly attracted to each other that at first it felt a little unbelievable, but I have immense faith in John Green as both an author and a human being, and I was not disappointed. I have thankfully never known a family member or friend living with a long-term illness, so it took a few chapters to understand that for Augustus and Hazel and their peers, a good portion of their lives are shaped by all-or-nothing decisions: You don't know how much time you have left, so you enthusiastically pursue the things you want and you don't waste time on things of little importance.

I really can't think of another piece of literature that I've read that was so immediately thought-provoking (even among John's earlier books, which are each more thought-provoking than most of the rest of the young adult genre combined). The Harry Potter series is full of deep truths and timeless, ageless themes about life, love, humanity, and death, and as most of the seven or eight people who read this blog are aware, it has helped to shape myriad facets of the person I am right now, but I've spent more than a decade of my life thinking about those books. (And let's face it, I read the first four with the life experience and self-awareness of an eleven-year-old.) The Fault in Our Stars has been in my possession less than twenty-four hours, and it's caused me to contemplate the complexity of life, the inevitability of death, the existence of fate (or lack thereof), the narcissism of the universe, the power of attraction, the blessing and fragility of health, the realities and imagined aspects of heroism, the credibility of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the beauty of a well-designed Venn diagram, and the power of words (and I mean I actually combed through my own thoughts on these topics, in addition to taking in John's and the characters'.)

I have long held John Green in high esteem. Aside from being my second-favorite author (I know he would be honored to learn that he was even a distant second to J.K. Rowling, and he's really not very distant), he's a brilliant video blogger, a radically compassionate and logical humanitarian, a discerning curator of other people's words, and an unintentional co-founder of the Nerdfighter community, which has greatly influenced my life and choices lo these past three years. That I could someday write one-hundredth as well as John and that my books could be one-hundredth as important to one-hundredth as many people is more than I can imagine. Also that I could use capital letters with such Significance and Aplomb.

Though The Fault in Our Stars deals with a wide array of intense topics, nothing is ever treated superficially. Additionally, though the book is narrated by a self-described "terminal" teenager, it manages to altogether avoid being depressing. The total acknowledgment of the frightfully sad and utterly unfair is woven seamlessly with the snarky observations of rebellious adolescents, the split-second decisions that make life hilarious, the complexity of suburban family dynamics, and the self-consciousness and excitement of true love, along with a perfect smattering of nerdy references. I have rarely been so charmed by a male lead, and I have never before enjoyed video games as much, felt such disdain or such despair for a raging alcoholic, or cried so hard over a paragraph about math. (Though my spectacular family did teach me, many moons ago, that math can, at times, be supremely beautiful.)

As I read the novel, I occasionally jotted down things that resonated particularly strongly with me on the nearest piece of paper, which so happened to be my to-do list for the last few days. I wrote down the word aqueous, which I'm not sure I had ever heard or read before, but which is so beautiful that I keep staring at it and repeating it over and over in my head. I also wrote down the word vitrine, which is also quite intriguing in its physicality, but whose meaning I could not quite divine from its context. (I just looked it up. Vitrine: noun; a glass cabinet or case, especially for displaying art objects.) I recorded a quotation from Augustus on page 123: "You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are." On page 138, Hazel feels bad for scrambled eggs because they have been so stigmatized that one cannot mention them without conjuring up images of breakfast, which is exactly the sort of ridiculous manner in which I often feel bad for totally innocuous inanimate (try saying that five times fast) objects. I actually tore off the list (without everything on it having been completed! Gasp!) to scrawl across the back of it a sentence that I can't repeat without giving away a major plot point, but it suddenly put into perspective something that happened immediately after I was informed of my grandfather's death almost five and a half years ago and which has occasionally bothered me ever since. (For those who've read the book, it's the last sentence in the second paragraph on page 262.)

A lot of things in this book made me think about Grampy and the comparatively brief time he was ill and my memories and feelings surrounding his death. I've actually been thinking about him a lot in recent weeks. It seems I miss him most at Christmas time and during the first month of baseball season. But I digress.

I know The Fault in Our Stars has been a very long time in coming. John has said he's been working on it in one form or another ever since his time as a chaplain at a children's hospital more than a decade ago. It's obvious that it was influenced by Esther Earl, who touched the greater community of Nerdfighteria indelibly if fleetingly, and John has admitted as much, though I think the main purpose of the author's note at the beginning is to gently remind Nerdfighters that he could never and would never attempt to write a biography of Esther disguised as a novel. There's been a lot of furor surrounding the publication and release of this book, not only among John's rabidly loyal fans, but within in the industry. Few other books have had so many copies pre-ordered, and John made history by signing every one of the 150,000 books in the first printing. (For those wondering, my J-scribble is green, but sadly without a hanklerfish, yeti, or special note.) TFiOS was originally supposed to be released in April, and we're all grateful that the date was moved forward several months.

Sometimes when I anticipate something so much and for so long, I start to worry that there's no way it could possibly live up to the monumental expectations I've developed. Sometimes, that turns out to be the case (see: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2; LeakyCon 2011). Thankfully (given how easily excited I am), more often than not the actual finished product absolutely lives up to my idealization of it. It's rare, however, that something far outstrips those expectations, more than I ever could have imagined, and The Fault in Our Stars does just that.

It's Real for Us: LeakyCon 2011

Obviously, I totally failed at BEDA, and even after it turned into BALA it kind of fell apart, between the craziness of being in Chicago and then coming home and getting sick. But here I am again with a super-long post for your enjoyment.

It's the first day of September, which means that a new school year has begun at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In honor of that I've finally gotten my many, many thoughts on LeakyCon 2011 together in a cohesive manner. For anyone unfamiliar with the event, it was a gigantic Harry Potter fan convention that took place in Orlando, Florida, in the middle of July. I first began counting down to LC'11 somewhere around 500 days before it started. I know. I'm a nerd. I like numbers. Moving on...

I'll start with a basic, basic sketch of the experience so I don't have to explain too much as I go along. The con was held at Universal's Royal Pacific resort, which is within walking distance of the Islands of Adventure Park, which contains the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. My roommates included my sister Alicia (or Phish), my almost-sister Maddy, and my friend Jess from college. (We met at a nerd/wizard rock concert in October.) We flew from Columbus to Orlando on Tuesday, July 12th and spent that afternoon exploring the enormous hotel and conference center. The next morning we attended a special event called Lit Day, which featured panels, workshops, and other programs put on by authors, agents, editors, and others from the field of young adult literature. Lit Day's keynote speaker was none other than Arthur A. Levine, the man at Scholastic who fell in love with the Harry Potter books and decided to take a chance by publishing them in the U.S. Wednesday night we attended the opening ceremonies of LeakyCon itself, and then we pretty much danced our way over to the theme park for an event called Open at the Close. The Wizarding World, which normally closes at 10 PM, stayed open until 1 AM just for LeakyCon attendees. The next day was filled with all sorts of programs, which ranged from academic discussions to hands-on workshops to podcasts to original musicals to film screenings to meetups for various groups of people. Thursday evening we attended a special screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, six hours before the midnight release, and then we hurried back to the hotel for a six-band wizard rock concert. Friday meant more programming, including a dance workshop led by Alicia, our friend Emily, and me, and there was another wrock concert that night, this time with seven bands. For me, Saturday was mostly taken up by the two incredible keynote events I attended, and Saturday night was the Esther Earl Rocking Charity Ball. Sunday morning brought a delicious brunch and many tears at the closing ceremonies, and then a plane ride home.

I've titled this post “It's Real for Us” because of a relatively new song of the same name by Lauren Fairweather. On one level, the song refers to a conversation in the seventh HP book in which one character tries to convince his Muggle-born friend that Hogwarts really does exist, even though her jealous, unmagical sister wants her to believe otherwise. On another level, however, the song speaks to the fan community's collective feeling that it doesn't matter what outsiders think, because we love this world we've read about and continue to expand upon. I attended the first LeakyCon, which took place in 2009, and it was probably the most life-changing experience I've ever had, even a shade more powerful than the time I spent studying in Ecuador. I ought to see what other people think about this, but I'm going to postulate that nothing can ever quite compare to your first major Harry Potter con experience, the one that opens your eyes to exactly how vast and diverse and loving this community is.

Unfortunately, I experienced several minor disappointments at LeakyCon 2011. At one point I remember stating that it felt like the “con gods” were against us. On Wednesday afternoon I lost my phone. It just disappeared out of my pocket right before the keynote with Arthur A. Levine, and because I was trying to find it I didn't get a chance to meet Mr. Levine, something I had been really excited about. I did get my phone back eventually, but not until Saturday afternoon. At the Open at the Close event, no one told us that the Forbidden Journey, the ride inside Hogwarts castle, was going to close significantly earlier than the rest of the park. We were just getting in line for the ride at midnight when a Universal employee appeared and told us that they were going to run the ride one last time and we needed to come quickly, so we raced through the castle behind her, and when we reached the loading zone for the ride the employees there told us that they had shut it down for good ten minutes previously. The girl whom we'd followed through the castle mysteriously evaporated. I'll admit I cried quite a bit over that one. I was supposed to take part in an incredible flash mob during the LeakyMug podcast, but it had to be canceled because not enough people committed to taking part. On Thursday morning, Maddy bought her very first wand, a beautiful Lily Potter model from Whimsic Alley, and as we were walking down the Universal City Walk that evening after seeing the movie, she reached into her purse for something and managed to knock her wand out. I heard it hit the ground, and we started looking for it less than ten seconds later, but it was gone. We retraced our path four times to no avail. There were so many people there, and I think it's just as likely that it got kicked under one of the carts along the City Walk as it is that someone else took it. I gave her money to buy a new wand the next day, because I was just not going to let my little sister lose her wand at her first con, and she went back and bought the James Potter model. And unfortunately, I ended up hating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, which was kind of the central event of the con. I won't go into all of that here, because that could be a whole post unto itself, but I sobbed during the credits because I wanted so much to like it, but I just didn't.

In all honesty, I was a little disappointed by parts of the actual con and some of its staff. Registration was a total and complete mess. If you can't handle 3,000 people's registration, then don't let 3,000 people register. There was no excuse for the literally hundreds of badges that were missing. I missed the two Lit Day programs I most wanted to attend because I had to stand in one of several conflict resolution lines for over two hours, and I know they kept telling Lit Day registrants to just go to our programs and take care of it later, but I was afraid if I got out of line and came back I would miss either the Arthur Levine keynote or the opening ceremonies or not have time to change into my costume for Open at the Close. Also, in addition to calling the hotel's lost-and-found every few hours, I asked about my phone every four hours or so at the Leaky staff desk in the conference center, and I unfortunately discovered rude Leaky staffers for the first time ever. Most times the people were very nice, but there were a few occasions where I was made to feel like I was wasting people's time because they had to turn their attention away from their conversations with friends to listen to my quick question.

However. However, however, however, even when things kind of sucked, I was still at LeakyCon. I got to walk through Hogsmeade sipping butterbeer and eat at the Three Broomsticks with my sisters and some of my closest friends (all of whom I've known for less than two years). I had my picture taken in front of Hogwarts with Alicia and my dear friends Emily and Jordan, just as we did when we were at King's Cross Station four years ago. I waltzed with my friend Philip and a good chunk of Team Starkid during “Total Eclipse of the Heart” at the ball. I got to talk to my friend Elisa, whom I met last year at Wrockstock, and I got the chance to have a real conversation with Jordan for the first time since we graduated college. I also met a few friends whom I'd never before met IRL. In fact, I met my friend Jodi when we randomly wound up sitting next to each other while waiting for the LeakyMug to start, and we talked for probably fifteen minutes before realizing we tweet each other all the time! 

The program Alicia, Emily, and I did, which was called “Dance Against the Dark Arts,” ran perfectly smoothly and we had two or three times as many participants as we were hoping for! I was sad that John Green had to go home because he got sick, but I did get to meet him at LC'09, and I got to see Hank run around the room with swords and sing “Protons and Neutrons” in the dark (because the lights went out randomly), and Maureen Johnson trolled the Nerdfighter gathering the whole time via Twitter. I laughed and cried and laughed during the amazing Very Starkid Event and high-fived Joe Walker during the photo booth session. I learned that Benedict Clarke (young Snape in the film) is afraid of lemon meringue pie, and I watched my sister stump Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood) with a Harry Potter trivia question. I got to tell Stephanie Perkins how much I love her first novel, Anna and the French Kiss. And the wizard rock – oh my goodness, the wizard rock! Bands/artists that deserve special recognition for mind-blowing sets that I will never forget include Tonks and the Aurors, Ministry of Magic, Hank Green, Gred and Forge, Harry and the Potters (just for having Evanna come out and play bass during their encore) and of course, Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls and The Remus Lupins, who were playing their last shows. Seeing Alex Carpenter tear up stage was really evidence of how far this genre of music that began as a joke has come. Speaking of Alex, it was really wonderful to get a chance to talk to him in the Room of Requirement on Friday afternoon without being surrounded by a crowd of people also wanting to talk to him. When he's not swamped by a hundred people and can actually hold a conversation with you, you know that he is really glad to talk to you and is honestly interested in what you're saying.

And of course, there's the one thing that I can never manage to express adequately, no matter how hard I try, which is the sense of love and acceptance and community that you can practically grab out of the air when you're at an event like this. Harry Potter fans, the wonderful, nerdy, totally insane ones who spend their hard-earned money to go to LeakyCon, are the most amazing group of people with whom I've ever been associated. There's no way to replicate how I feel inside when I've got my arms around sweaty, hoarse-voiced people I don't even know and we're all swaying back and forth and singing “We're wizards, we'll party forever! This night will never end!” at the top of our lungs, or when Melissa Anelli announces that we've raised $120,000 for Book Aid International, the Harry Potter Alliance, and the This Star Won't Go Out Foundation. It's because of those feelings that I was literally sobbing by the fourth note of “Days of Summer” at the closing ceremonies.

As Lauren says in her beautiful song, “It's real for us, it's real for us. It doesn't matter what the Muggles say, 'cause it's real for us.” I am so blessed because I do get to live in Harry Potter's world, or at least as close as anyone except Jo Rowling can possibly come, and I know it's real because it has its ups and downs just like any other part of life. Even when things in the wizarding world are less than perfect, there's nowhere else I'd rather be.

BEDA Day 25: What is this world coming to?

Earthquake in Virgina on Tuesday. Wildfires in California. Hurricane Irene threatening the East Coast. Libyan rebels have taken Tripoli (not that that's not a good thing, just kind of amazing). And I'm sitting in a hotel in Valparaiso, Indiana, because tomorrow my sister is moving into her college dorm in Chicago.

WHAT?????

BEDA Day 22...ish: Apologies and Excuses

My sincerest apologies to all four of you who read this blog (hi Mom and Dad!). I have been remiss in my duties three days in a row and thus have failed at Blog Every Day in August. This project has now been reduced to BALA, or Blog A Lotta August, which I've always thought of as a cheap out for lazy people. (Well, always since the term was coined approximately 26 days ago by the residents of Echo Base.)

It's technically August 23rd, but since it's not yet daylight out, I'm going to pretend it's still the 22nd. I don't have to go to work tomorrow [today] and I'm not tired because I let myself sleep till noon today [yesterday], so now I'm listening to The Mountain Goats and, obviously, blogging.

I legitimately didn't have time to blog on Friday. It was the last day of our summer session at work, so I had to be at school at 7:45 AM for our trip to Fort Rapids, a western-themed indoor waterpark in Columbus. The day was very long and somewhat stressful, and I nearly lost my voice from trying to talk over running water and shrieking children for five-plus hours, but it was honestly a lot of fun. I can't believe how fast this summer has gone!

As soon as I got home from work, I jumped in the shower and then attempted to make myself look supermegafoxyawesomehot for my date with my sister. Since it was her last Friday night in town before going to college, we went to Sonic for dinner, then went to see the new Anne Hathaway/Jim Sturgess movie One Day (which was really good), and then went back to Sonic for milkshakes. We saw a 9:45 showing, so by the time we got home, it was well after midnight and I was dead tired.

I honestly have no excuse for not blogging on Saturday. I even thought about doing so a few times, and then I just didn't. I slept in a bit, lazed around the house in my pajamas listening to NPR for a while, ran a couple of errands with my mom, and then Mel and I went to a bonfire at our friend/co-worker Andrea's house. We met all of her family's cows, watched other people set off firecrackers and fireworks, and had a good time hanging out away from work with our co-workers Heather and Jody and Jody's daughter, who's eight and adorable. I also wound up covered in marshmallow creme when Andrea's brother tried to attack her with the remains of the ice cream sundae ingredients and missed. Good times.

I tried to budget time to write a quick blog post yesterday (Sunday), but I overslept and my plan failed. I got up with just enough time to get ready for wizard-pirate laser tag, which is as epic as it sounds. My sister and I drove down to our friend Chloe's apartment, and then Chloe drove us down to Cincinnati, where we met other hp-ohio friends at a place called Scallywag Tag. We played two fantastic games of laser tag and then played a ridiculous round of glow-in-the-dark mini golf, during which I made an inadvertent assist in the greatest hole-in-one ever made by wizard, Muggle, or pirate. My friend Emmy's strategy for mini golf is to just hit the ball as hard as she possibly can and see where it ends up. On the twelfth hole, she hit it extra hard to get it over a little bridge thing, and it bounced off a rock at the far end, came almost all the way back and bounced off my ankle, and skimmed the top of the bridge and rolled into the hole. I, as the only Ravenclaw of the group, had been given charge of the scorecard, so I gave her a zero for the round.

BEDA Day 17: Pottermore and Houses and sorting, oh my!

I'm starting to get quite paranoid, to the point where I periodically start shaking and have slight trouble breathing if I let myself think too much. What is the cause of my paranoia? Harry Potter.

You weren't that surprised, were you? Good.

Specifically, I'm paranoid about Pottermore and getting sorted into the wrong House. Pottermore, in case you don't know what it is, is a brand new, interactive, online way to experience the Harry Potter books, connect with other fans, and learn more things about Harry's world that Jo Rowling has yet to tell us. It opens to the world in October, but 1 million people have been given early access to the beta version of the site. From July 31st to August 6th, a clue was posted each day, and those who solved it and caught the Magic Quill before that day's spots filled up got into the beta. I have wonderful friends, and I got in on the very first day, thanks to a 4 AM phone call from my dear friend Chloe. Beta testers are being granted access in waves, and for the last few days my Twitter feed has been filling up with excited tweets from those who've received their welcome emails. I have yet to get mine.

Pottermore gives users the chance to experience all kinds of standard Wizarding milestones, among them being sorted into one of the Houses of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Rather than placing a magical hat on their heads, as is traditional among wizards and witches, Pottermore users take a complex personality test, designed by Jo herself, to find out their House, and Houses can't be changed after they've been assigned. I know at least three people who are already on the beta and who have been placed in a different House than the one to which they've always ascribed. Many wizards and witches out there are having identity crises of varying degrees of severity, and now I'm paranoid.

I've always known I have a lot of Hufflepuff qualities, but I feel very strongly that I have even more Ravenclaw in me. Since I first realized that many people take sorting very seriously and I began to take it seriously myself, which was actually only about two and a half years ago, I've considered myself a Ravenclaw. I have a Ravenclaw tie, Ravenclaw socks, and a beautiful Ravenclaw jewelry set that my friend Carie just gave me; I'm a member of Ravenclaw House on the Harry Potter Alliance forums; and my Twitter and Gmail names are both ravenclawdancer, not to mention that I generally look better in blue than any other color. However, I'm still paranoid of being sorted into Hufflepuff on Pottermore. This Sorting Hat test, the most accurate one I've taken thus far, gives each person a percentage for each House, since it's true that most people have at least a little bit of each House in them. My scores were as follows: Ravenclaw - 100%, Hufflepuff - 95%, Gryffindor - 81%, and Slytherin - 41%. At Hogwarts, it's a known fact that the Sorting Hat takes one's choice into account when assigning Houses, but I have no idea whether that applies to the Pottermore sorting process.

One of my favorite musicians, Alex Carpenter, posted a song yesterday that speaks to the Harry Potter community's collective fear of being sorted wrongly. While I think the song is brilliant, I now have it stuck in my head and it's making it impossible for me to think about anything besides Pottermore...

BEDA Day 16: Grocery store adventures

I went to the grocery store with my dad and my sister tonight. My sister, who is hoping to get her driver's license soon, drove, and we car danced to ALL CAPS most of the way there. My dad made a bad classical music joke about our shopping Liszt as we were walking in. We picked out roses for my mom, who has been through some really awful job-related crap lately. Then we decreased worldsuck by picking up the pieces of a flower pot that had fallen off a shelf and shattered. My dad walked in circles in the bread aisle while my sister and I were choosing loaves of bread. My sister made a really good geometry joke about circles being pointless. My dad and my sister spent five minutes artistically arranging the containers of yogurt we bought in the cart. My sister just about got high in the laundry detergent aisle. I was disappointed by a candle that claimed to smell like the rainforest, which definitely did not hold up to its claims, and my sister accused me of being a "rainforest dropper," which I didn't deny. My sister also ran around taking pictures of all of the items that had been left in incorrect places, such as the bottle of soy sauce left on the taco chips shelf and the box of Junior Mints left in the display of children's cough syrup. (This is a standard practice of hers. I'm hoping she turns it into some kind of deep, meaningful art project about the disorganization and lack of motivation in our society or something.) We got strange looks just about everywhere we went, and it was awesome. I love going places with my family!

BEDA Day 15: Pancakes!!

Tonight when I got home from work I was very tired and hungry (as usual). My dad had picked up dinner on the way home so he could get outside and mow some of the lawn while the weather was good, since the whole job takes 8+ hours. My mom came home long enough to drop off my sister and then headed back out to a meeting, and my sister didn't feel very well. No one could go out to eat with me and I didn't want to go alone, we didn't have much in the house, and I didn't feel like eating Ramen noodles.

So I made pancakes! Real pancakes, from scratch, using the recipe from the red and white Better Homes and Gardens cookbook my grandma gave me last year for my birthday. I didn't burn any, my first pancaked turned out pretty well, and there were only two that had a slight layer of uncooked batter left in the middle. This was actually a major accomplishment for me, because I'm not much of a cook.

My sister has this, like, sixth sense about cooking, where she can just grab some random ingredients and throw them together without a recipe, and they're guaranteed to be pretty good if not amazing. It's nice when she gives me food, but it's kind of annoying too. (I won't lie, I often get annoyed when the random-and-impulsive method turns out better than the carefully-following -directions method. I'm such a Ravenclaw.) My parents are both pretty handy in the kitchen with anything moderately fancy, and my grandma can cook anything under the sun, and she taught herself everything she knows after she got married. I can make most things that come in a box with instructions for the microwave, and I can make one really good but really easy chicken dish that includes Swiss cheese and cream of mushroom soup. I can make pretty good banana bread, and I've finally mastered halfway decent scrambled eggs. I'm such a wuss that I'm pretty nervous to try frying an egg. So I was pretty pleased with my pancake dinner!