The "Puff"
The Happy Dance
The Happy Dance
Two girls with some pretty awesome t-shirts
Last night, The Loft Literary Center in downtown Minneapolis hosted John Green, author of Looking For Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines. I was lucky enough to be able to go with some of my friends at it was probably the coolest author event I've been to. I'm a big fan of his books and watch his Nerdfighting videos obsessively, so it was really neat to see him in person.
He spoke about his inspiration for his books, the "shape" of them, how he writes, the details behind the two covers of Paper Towns, and tons of other stuff. Strangely enough, the majority of the audience was adults. My friends and I might have been the youngest people there, and we're really not that young. Even so, the room was filled and everyone seemed really excited to be there, cheering loudly when John came in.
He was very funny, nerdy, and engaging, which was what I had hoped for. :) He's the kind of speaker that you want to listen to. I loved hearing him talk about the Paper Towns covers and reading the prologue from it (you can read more about the covers in the post before this). I was totally hooked and can't wait to read it; which I can actually start doing now, as Paper Towns was on sale exclusively for the audience, three weeks before it's released. I need to start reading! Hopefully I'll get through it quickly, so that I can pick up Song of the Sparrow and finish that soon! They also had Let It Snow on sale, which John coauthored with Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle, which I think is being released on October 2nd, so look for a review of that soon too.
The people in the audience asked some great questions and he gave some really insightful answers. He even did his Happy Dance for us. :P Overall, it was an awesomely fun experience and I'd love to go to an event of his again, if I could. I highly recommend that if John's coming somewhere near you on his tour that you go and see him. It'll definitely be worth it.
The best part of the evening by far was when we were leaving. We were the last people to go and while walking out, John waved to us, we screamed to Hank through his phone, and he thanked us for "being awesome". A great way to end a fun-filled night. :)
Oh and one little tidbit that I learned last night was that the movie rights to Paper Towns have already been sold. Wow! And even better than that is the fact that John himself is writing the screen play and the movie's being made by the same people who did Juno (which is a fantastic movie, btw). That news made me super excited and now I definitely need to finish Paper Towns soon so I can start visualizing its complete on-screen awesome-ness in my head!
