So, last night John Green spoke at the University of Indianapolis. Wait – it just occurred to me that it’s possible that there are people reading this blog who don’t know who John Green is. If you *do* know who he is, skip to the next paragraph. If you *don’t* know who he is, here’s the short version – John Green is the award-winning Young Adult author of LOOKING FOR ALASKA, AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES and PAPER TOWNS. You can find his books here. He also runs the highly popular Vlogbrothers YouTube channel with his brother, Hank. You can find their videos here.
Now that we’re all on the same page, let me start again.
So, last night John Green spoke at the University of Indianapolis. I love John Green. I’ve read all of his books, multiple times each. They stand up to multiple readings because he’s a master at capturing the pain and humor and wonder that is late adolescence. When he announced that he’d be reading/speaking at the University (not shocking, since he lives in town. How cool is that? John Green and I LIVE IN THE SAME CITY.) Anyway, I was super excited. I bundled up the baby and roped my mother into coming along and the three of us trooped off into the very cold February night.
The first fantastic thing that happened was that John read for the first time ever from his forthcoming book WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON, which he co-wrote with David Levithan. From the small piece that he read, it sounds like it will be just as fabulous as all of his other novels. He also paused over one particular line and said – half to himself – “I didn’t leave it like that, did I? God, I hope I changed it. I’d better mark that and check.” That’s not completely verbatim, obviously (I couldn’t take notes. I was holding the baby.) but it’s pretty close. I love hearing other authors spontaneously revising their work. I love knowing I’m not the only one who is never, ever completely satisfied with a manuscript. Anyway. He also read from his third novel, PAPER TOWNS, and I loved that too, though it was less of a revelation since I’ve read that one four times.
One of the things that impressed me most over the course of the night was John’s ability to talk about serious, tough-provoking ideas while continuously tossing in enough humor to keep everyone hanging on his every word – although, let’s face it, this was a room of serious John Green fanatics. They’d have been hanging on his every word, anyway. The topics ranged from the importance of books in human culture to what the TWILIGHT series was all about, and he left tons of time for audience Q&A, which was fantastic. His answers were all extremely honest, and not just in a not-lying sort of way. Honest in an actually-willing-to-reveal-something-about-who-he-really-is sort of way. I admire that. A lot.
Afterwards, he sat and very patiently signed books for anyone who wanted, which, as far as I could tell, was pretty much every person in the place. After my mom and I had our books signed (hooray! I have a signed John Green book!) he invited us (and everyone else) (and why am I using *so many* parenthetical expressions tonight?) to sign the copy of PAPER TOWNS that he had read from. This was an awesome idea. I will absolutely steal it for any signings I may do. I promise to credit John when I implement the theft, though.
All in all, it was a fantastic evening and if you weren’t there, you really missed out. You can make up for it by buying and reading John’s books, visiting his website www.sparksflyup.com or checking out the Vlogbrother’s channel on YouTube, where my mother, daughter, myself and the rest of the audience from last night will make a brief appearance in a video set to air a week from Monday.
We all say “Good morning, Hank, it’s Monday!”
We did a great job.
I expect to hear from the Oscars people shortly.
Okay, enough joking around. Go check out the million and one John Green links I gave you. Then come back and let me know what you think.
See you then!