Dancing Words

When I heard that this is going to be turned into a movie showing this September, I scrambled to read this. Also, it was in my TBR for a long time now, so.. two birds with one stone.

Having read TFIOS, which I liked, I was prepared to have a dose of reality. While TFIOS was good, I agree that it painted teenagers in a very mature way which was a little unbelievable.

However, although this is closer to reality, this is not my brand of humor. I was in a perpetual state of Excessive Modesty Mode.

Nothing is stupider and more ineffective than Excessive Modesty Mode. It is a mode in which you show that you’re modest by arguing with someone who is trying to compliment you.

Instead of just focusing on the story, I would get commentaries from Greg of how his book sucks and how you would do better by finding him and smashing the book on his head for making you read his crappy writing. It seems to me that he's trash talking himself and he wants someone to contradict him and tell him that his book is not bad, in fact, it was great. It was exhausting.

The moments I like best are the ones when he is interacting with anybody than his own thoughts. Scenes with Rachel, and Earl, and his Mom, and Madison, and..basically anyone. Just don't leave him alone is fine with me.

And with Earl's upbringing you would think the Greg would fare better than him, but no. Earl is still much, much better than him. For one, it did not take a dying girl for him to realize that he needs to deal with his shit first before he could help his family.

"I’m surrounded by family members doing stupid shit. I used a think I had to do shit for them. I still wanna do shit for them. But you gotta live your own life. You gotta take care a your own shit before you get started doing things for errybody else."

"They got shit to figure out before I can help em. I love my mama, but she has problems that I can’t help her with. I love my brothers, but they need to figure they shit out before I can help em. Otherwise they just gonna drag me down."

Earl is really the most interesting person in here. And seriously said to Greg what I've been wanting to say,

"God damn I’m sick and fucking tired a watchin you treat this girl like she some kind of, some kinda burden, when she the closest thing you fucking have to a motherfucking friend and she about to die on top of that. You know that, right? You dumb motherfucker. She home now cuz she about to die. That girl lyin there on her goddamn deathbed and you come to my house all whinin and cryin and shit about some irrelevant bullshit. I want . . . to kick your ass. You hear me? I want . . . to beat the fuck out of you right now."

It took me awhile to write this review and I'm glad I did. I had time to ponder on Rachel's death and on the book's epilogue. The more I think about Rachel, the more that I am saddened about her death. I guess, this what it really feels like to lose someone, especially when she lost all the will to live and fight her sickness. It kinda turned up some ugly emotions from me, too. Oftentimes, life can make no sense.

3 stars