Paper Towns

John Green had me at "This Machine Kills Fascists", and then almost lost me with a Woody Guthrie insult. And then he had me again with a Billy Bragg Mermain Avenue reference, and he kept me through to the end.


Quentin Jacobsen has lived next door to Margot Roth Spiegelman for a long time, and he has loved her from afar for an equally long time. When she invites him on an all-night revenge caper around Orlando, he is drawn into a crazy and risky adventure that includes dead fish, spray paint and Sea World. When Margot disappears the next morning, Quentin realizes that the adventure is only beginning. As Quentin and his quirky friends follow the bizarre and complicated series of clues that Margot has left behind, he worries about her mysterious disappearance. Margot has run away before, but she is just so awesome, so popular, so ...Margot...that everyone assumes that she is pulling some sort of amazing prank before graduation. Is this one of Margot's dramatic runaways, or are the clues she left for Quentin trying to tell him something more?

In his fabulous new novel, Green combines equal parts of mystery, adventure, comedy, and drama for an end-of-senior-year road trip that is chock-full of obscure cultural references. Highly recommended!

I listened to it -- 8 hours.