Yes, that is a Rubik's Cube clock. And a Swedish flag.

         I am sitting here at my desk with the long awaited, signed The Fault in Our Stars staring me in the face.  As soon as the title was announced and became available for pre-order, I pre-ordered, listing my parents’ address as the shipping address since I didn’t know where I would be living at the end of the anticipated year of anticipation.  As all now know, the publication date was bumped up and I can now read this lovely novel five months before I thought I would be able to.  

            But I find myself unable to crack it open.  I anxiously creeped out my parents’ front door before I left Chicago to return to the house I actually pay to live in here in Michigan, hopping from foot to foot in hopes of catching the UPS man in time to take the book with me.  When I couldn’t put off leaving any longer, I drove back up north and waited for my mom to overnight the book to me.  It arrived at the same time as another oddly related token that I never anticipated receiving.  I wanted to read it right away, but I was in the middle of At Home, by Bill Bryson.  I knew I didn’t want TFiOS to be a book I read as an interjection to another book, so I forced myself to set it aside until I finished Bryson’s investigation of the evolution of private life.  Such as it was, I read 300 pages of nonfiction, wide-ranging world history today so that I could be well positioned to read John Green’s acclaimed story.

            What I am surprised to find is that in the 24 hours since I received the book, I went from ravenously hungry to read it, to unprepared, nervous, hesitant, and nearly desperate.  John has put so much of himself into this book, so many years, so many experiences, that I want to treat it with the respect it deserves.  I can absolutely devour books.  Run through them quickly and with just as much enjoyment as those I read slowly.  It is a slightly different enjoyment, but both still hold vast amounts of pleasure for me.

            This novel was at least a decade in the making.  It was widely celebrated before it was even released.  To avoid spoilers of any kind, I have avoided nearly all reviews of any kind.  But now, with it sitting in front of me, knowing that there are many people out there who have read the book already.  Some before the book was even supposed to be sold, I want to wait.  How long, I don’t know.  But I don’t want it to be just another title on the long list of books I have read recently.  This book is different.  Just from the two chapters John has already read to Nerdfighteria and the world, I know this.  Perhaps it is this already present but minimal familiarity that gives me pause.  I have the smallest glimpse of Hazel and Augustus already. 

            It reminds me of meeting someone truly fascinating for the first time, but having only the briefest of conversations.  A number of years ago, this happened to me.   I met a boy who immediately struck me.   He is an odd duck, to say the least, but an imminently interesting duck nonetheless.  We chatted about the relative merits of Vermont versus Wisconsin cheddar and then didn’t have a real conversation again until a few days later.  I couldn’t shake him from my mind, and the intervening days between those early conversations were exciting and uncomfortable.  I would see him around and cast about for something to talk about, but when my mind drew a blank time after time, I just found someway to make myself busy so he wouldn’t think I was an uninteresting lump with nothing to say to him. 

           

We eventually found things to talk about and have remained friends ever since, but those few days before our friendship really took off evoked the same kind of thrilling timidity I am experiencing right now.  I’ve anticipated new books before, but they were always longer; I knew that the reading of the text would last longer than a day or two.  TFiOS doesn’t have that kind of girth, which is fine.  John’s the kid of writer that can say as much in 313 pages as much as other authors say in 1,000.  He just has that knack for saying the right thing in the right way more often than others usually do.

The story will stay with me, I’m sure, long after the reading has ended, but there is something special about the first time you read a book.  You can never read the same words in the same order in the same way once you’ve read them once.  All subsequent experiences are colored by that first read.  Which is why spoilers can be so disastrous to people who approach books with the same frantic shyness I am feeling at the moment.  I have avoided spoilers simply by not looking for any, so I am entering this reading experience with as much a clean slate as I could reasonably hope for. 

Perhaps I just wish there were someone here in town I could talk to about the novel once I have read it.  With some many people reading at different paces, I hesitate to participate in commentary on the book knowing that the things I have to say could color the initial reading experience I myself have tried to maintain.   Truly, I can’t speak to how I will want to participate in any discussion until I have actually read the thing.

And now, in the quiet softness of newly fallen snow, with a nosy kitten for company, gently caffeinated, and happily fed, I think I am ready.