Book Review: An Abundance of Katherines

 

An Abundance of Katherines 

by John Green

 Paperback, 228 pages

Published August 14th 2008 by Speak (first published September 21st 2006)

Katherine V thought boys were gross
Katherine X just wanted to be friends
Katherine XVIII dumped him in an e-mail
K-19 broke his heart
When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type happens to be girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact.On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun--but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl. Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.- Goodreads

Rating 

        I can still vaguely remember watching my first vlogbrothers video and falling in love with John Green's personality. This long before baby Henry or baby Alice. Long before the release of the Fault of in our Stars or talk of a movie for it. Long before I knew anything of what it was to be a nerdfighter. Finally, long before I ever read a John Green novel.Now I have watched his and his brother Hank's videos tons of times, I am in on most if not all of the nerdfighter jokes and songs, and I have read pretty much all of watch John Green has written and loved it all. 
       Before that though, I bought some of his books and for some strange reason decided to start with An Abundance of Katherines. Why not start with his first, which was Looking for Alaska, I will never know. Anyway, I read AAK and loved the quirkiness of it. The characters were sort of out there and funny. The plot was one of those you only find yourself when you are not really looking sort of things. I remember loving the little footnotes and how much I could see the character actually himself writing those footnotes not the author pretending the footnotes were written by the character. 
       Even if I was way above the age of the characters by the time I read this book, I still saw bits and pieces I could relate to in them. It's really amazing what a good author could do. After reading it, though, I really really liked it but I didn't love it.  I tried to sit down and decide what it was that wasn't doing it for me. In some part maybe the characters and situations were a little too out there and out there at times, but John's writing style, wonderful characters and humour more than made up for it. 
   While it will never go down as my favorite John Green book.I am glad I took a chance on this book first to see all the really great stuff he wrote before and after it. Think reading his "worst" taught me to really enjoy his best that much more. Also, the fact that all of his books always teach me something about humanity in unlikely ways. For this one I think it would be : While you can use all the math in world to develop an equation to figure out how long something will last, life will always surprise you in the most wonderful and crazy ways.