I’m actually reading some books and articles on literary theory at the moment, but I don’t want to get into that. 🙂 I want to talk about this book — The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.

Seventeen-year-old Hazel is a cancer patient. She falls in love with a survivor, Augustus Waters. It’s a plot you may have already read somewhere else, and one that could be so fraught with melodrama and overt life lessons, but this one is masterfully written. I love John Green’s treatment of the teens. They are smart, funny, and irreverent — Hazel’s narrative voice and the characters’ conversations are a joy to read. And how they react to their world is so painfully real. They are depressed, afraid, adventurous. Most of all, they are so in love, just like any other teenager.

It poses a question that got me thinking (me, a jaded 27-year-old): while the rest of us want to “leave a mark” in the world, there are those who tread lightly and therefore leave lesser scars upon the earth, upon those whom they eventually leave. Who’s the better person, who’s more heroic?

And speaking of leaving scars upon our loved ones, I’m going to leave one of my favorite quotes from the book, particularly the one that turned on the waterworks:

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.

As you should.