The book I chose to read for this summer is “Looking for
Alaska”. I’ve heard from a lot of people that this was a good book so I decided
to join in on the action. The three major characters in this story are Miles
Halter, Chip Martin, and Alaska Young. Miles is the main character, who decides
to join a boarding school. He’s very quiet, but is easy to talk to and goes
along with the flow. Nowadays, he would be known as unsocial and even geeky as
he stands a good 6 feet tall and scrawny as a twig. His favorite hobby is
memorizing famous people’s last words, and he’s really good at it. Chip is
Miles roommate, and most people call him “The Colonel”. Miles is referred to as
“Pudge” throughout most of the story so far. Chip is a short, stocky, somewhat
nerdy man who has been going to this boarding school for a while. He’s known
for causing trouble and doing what he thinks is fair. Alaska Young is a
beautiful and rebellious girl whom Pudge falls in love with. When she was
little her mother had a seizure right in front of her, but she was so freaked
out she didn’t think of calling 911, so her mom died. Her father blamed it on
her even though she was just a little kid. There are some other characters that
pop up a lot in the story too so far, such as Lara & Takumi. They are
friends with Chip, Alaska and Pudge but don’t impact the story too much. The
last character that plays an important role in the story is The Eagle. He is
the dean of the boarding school, watching over everyone with a close eye. The
boarding school where all of this takes place is called Culver Creek
Preparatory School, which is located in Birmingham, Alabama. A conflict that
keeps popping up in so far in the book is Pudge has to decide whether he wants
to go out with his friends and do pranks or stay out of trouble and not get
expelled. And so far he has chosen to go out and live his life with his
friends. I predict that he will continue to keep joining them, and that soon
something will happen and he will regret it. I also predict that something will
happen between him and The Eagle because there was a part at the beginning of
the book that almost seemed to foreshadow. One question I have is: How does
Alaska feel about Pudge? It’s obvious to see his feelings towards her but I’m
curious about her feelings towards him. A connection I have is this book
reminds me of all the movies where the beautiful girl is dating a guy and the
main character of the movie likes the girl and does everything he can to get
her, but I’m not sure if that’s how this book will go.
