Nerdfighters!

I don’t have a favorite non-fiction writer because; well I don’t read non-fiction books. My favorite fiction author, like Libby, is John Green. Currently he has 3 books published. My absolute favorite book by him is Paper Towns. John Green writes his books in a way that you feel like you’re in the story; you have a personal connection with each one of his character. His books are crafted in a way that you can see John’s personality. In his book Looking For Alaska, I was saw a lot of his personality and sense of humor through the main character, Miles.

He and his brother, Hank Green, have a YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers, where they post videos weekly. They call their viewers Nerdfighters. They first started their show in 2007 as a competition for each other. For the entire year of 2007, they couldn’t communicate with each other in any textual way. So, no emails, instant messages, text messages or any other written way. If one of them happened to break the rule, they would be punished. One of my favorite punishments was to John. Hank and the nerdfighting community challenged him to wax his beard. And John, being a dedicated vlogger, did as he was told. John posted his video challenge, and the website got to view his painful dare, and the blood in which he shed for the sake of a video. After the challenge, John found out that waxing your beard is actually dangerous because it’s a very tender area.

Paper Towns was being written after the Vlogbrothers started their challenge. I got to see John talk about his writers block, see a day in the life of a writer, and become extra pumped for the release of his third novel. After the book was published, John hosted a sort of ‘book club’ where he would talk about sections of the book and explain how he got the ideas for it. Nerdfighters also sent John ‘toys’ that were based on his novels. For example, in his first book, An Abundance of Katherines, one of the character’s parents collects black Santas so of course John received multiple black Santas for his own collection.

The point of those stories was to say that I feel as though I personally know John Green. I can see John’s voice through his writing. John and Hank green still vlog, so I still get updates about my favorite author. Now John talks about news on Sundays, answer questions on Tuesdays, and Hank makes music videos on Wednesdays, and between the two of them, they post other videos randomly. I love that I got the experience to see John Green life before I read his books. Seeing him on an almost daily bases, talking about his own life problems and struggles he might be encountering, was really neat. Currently, he is working on the screen play for Looking for Alaska, which if all go to plan, should start filming this summer.