What it’s about
“The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green is a poignant love story about two teenagers, Hazel and Augustus, who meet at a cancer support group. As they navigate life, love, and illness, they discover the beauty and pain of human connection, confronting the reality of mortality with humor and hope.
How I found it
Honestly, I don’t know. I spent half an hour trying to figure that out and all I know is that I read this book in 2019.
My thoughts
Cancer sucks. But not this book. A few months ago, when I made a Goodreads account, I rated this book 3 stars. I didn’t want to be flooded with romance recommendations or anything cancer-related. But I remembered the book being good, and I felt like I needed to write about it. So, I picked it up again, planning just to skim through the highlights and refresh some of the plot and quotes. Next thing I know, I’ve already re-read half of it. That says Something - Something with a capital S. It’s easily a 4-star book. I need to change my rating.
When I first read it, I hadn’t seen anything related to the movie adaptation. Later, when I watched the trailer, I couldn’t help but think that the actors seemed a bit healthier than how I’d imagined people going through cancer treatment would look. I haven’t actually watched the movie, though. I just hope it does the book justice. I do like the featured song All of the Stars by Ed Sheeran.
Heavy Spoilers and Trigger Warning
About a year later, I found out it was also being adapted into a Bollywood movie called “Dil Bechara”. A few months after that, my mom read the breaking news to me: Sushant Singh Rajput, the actor playing the male lead, had taken his own life. I was in disbelief and even called it as a “bad publicity stunt” at first. Better if that was the case, but it wasn’t. The tragic irony lies in the fact that in his final movie, his character also dies unexpectedly. To quote the book itself:
“You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence.”
Anyway, this was the first fiction that made me feel like I’d really read something good. Now, it’s also the first book I’ve read twice.
My top 3 quotes
Quote
“I’m in love with you,” he said quietly.
“Augustus,” I said.
“I am,” he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”
Quote
It’s really mean of you to say that the only lives that matter are the ones that are lived for something or die for something. That’s a really mean thing to say to me.
Quote
“You know what I believe? I remember in college I was taking this math class, this really great math class taught by this tiny old woman. She was talking about fast Fourier transforms and she stopped midsentence and said, ‘Sometimes it seems the universe wants to be noticed.’
“That’s what I believe. I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it—or my observation of it—is temporary?”I thought of my dad telling me that the universe wants to be noticed. But what we want is to be noticed by the universe, to have the universe give a shit what happens to us—not the collective idea of sentient life but each of us, as individuals.