Let's all agree to stop comparing books to Harry Potter. A) I don't want to read Harry Potter again, and I don't want to read fan fiction of it either. B) I almost missed out on this amazing book because it was called Harry Potter for adults. It's not. It's SO MUCH BETTER.

I was told before reading this book, by both people who loved and hated it, that it was dark and Quentin was awful. I would argue that Quentin is just a normal guy, and the reason people don't like him is that he's actually too realistic. (Oh, the humanity!) Quentin feels like his life is meaningless, he studies all the time, he gets drunk pretty regularly, he worries about the future, he tries to make friends. He's so painfully, wonderfully, achingly human and normal. It's actually strange to read if you're on a constant-fantasy-binge like yours truly. But it's great. Grossman isn't afraid to plumb the depths of what a real person would be like in an unreal situation.

Grossman writes, "Every ambition [Quentin had] ever had in his life had been realized the day he was admitted to Brakebills, and he was struggling to formulate a new one with any kind of practical specificity." Is there a person out there who didn't feel that way after finishing college?

My favorite thing about this book is how wickedly funny it is. After Quentin gets punched in the face by a classmate, another student comments that Quentin had it coming and in describing Q's attacker says "That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. To tell you the truth I'm kind of glad he hit you." And when Quentin has to interact with his oblivious parents? "Quentin's conversations with his parents were so circular and self-defeating, they sounded like experimental theater." In short, everyone at my pool thinks I'm insane because I was giggling to myself all weekend while reading this.

But the humor is also equaled by the depth of the story. You really watch Quentin grow up and realize that he's not the only person in the world. (It helps that multiple people tell him this.) But one of my favorite passages describes how a pall over the school caused by the death of a student is slowly being lifted:

Everyone was pretending to be bored to tears, or maybe they actually were, but Quentin wasn't. He was unexpectedly happy, though he instinctively kept it a secret. In fact he was so full of joy and relief he could barely breathe. Like a receding glacier the ordeal of the Beast had left behind it a changed world, jumbled and scraped and raw, but the earth was finally putting up new green shoots again. [The dean]'s idiotic [sports] plan had actually worked. The gray gloom the Beast had cast over the school was retreating. It was all right for them to be teenagers again, at least for a little longer. He felt forgiven, though he didn't even know by whom.

I loved, loved, loved this book.