I spent the last two days reading a book called The Fault in Our Stars by John Green — I mentioned my intent to read it in my video earlier this semester. I finished it about half an hour ago, and it has taken me until now to really absorb and process what I’d read.

It’s a story of two teenagers who deal with the pressures of cancer, love, and time. I don’t believe in spoiling books, but it’s worth reading. Do it, right now, I can wait.

This book touched me the most of all the books I’d read by John Green. I’ve read all but one and they all were enjoyable: there was something bigger to take away, and the protagonists’ usual goofiness appealed to me. TFiOS was different. I felt this terrible ache of attachment to the characters, protagonists and side characters alike, which was new. I was deeper in their psyches and their motivations than I feel I’d been in his previous books.

When I finished it, my eyes were raw from the emotional rollercoaster the 313 page book took me on. Like all good books, I was hesistant to let it end and let my brain forget that with a finite number of pages to get wrapped up in, the end was inevitable and there was no way to work around it. To borrow a phrase from the story, the physical book had this metaphorical resonance to it: it’s with us for a limited time, bound by its finite printed form, just like people can be and just like the experiences we have in our lifetimes. Who knows if John Green had such a meta interpretation of his work.

There’s a certain part that’s stuck with me since finishing, and I’m sure countless other people were affected by this concept quoted below. Hazel speaks:

“I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”

That just stuck with me as being so beautiful and so true.

Books, Cancer, John Green, TFiOS, The Fault in Our Stars Creative Outlet, Random Rants and Existential Crises