An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Title: An Abundance of Katherines

Author: John Green

Edition: Paperback

Number of Pages: 256

Year: 2006

Grade: B-

 

Contains: Drama, Humor, Coming-of-Age, Relationships, Romance.

Analysis of Book (1-10 on each aspect):

Characters: 9

Plot: 7

Writing: 9

Wow Factor: 8

 

 

 

Summary 

(from Amazon): Colin Singleton believes he is a washed-up child prodigy. A graduating valedictorian with a talent for creating anagrams, he fears he’ll never do anything to classify him as a genius. To make matters worse, he has just been dumped by his most recent girlfriend (all of them have been named Katherine), and he’s inconsolable. What better time for a road trip! He and his buddy Hassan load up the gray Olds (Satan’s Hearse) and leave Chicago. They make it as far as Gutshot, Tennessee, where they stop to tour the gravesite of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and meet a girl who isn’t named Katherine. It’s this girl, Lindsey, who helps Colin work on a mathematical theorem to predict the duration of romantic relationships. The laugh-out-loud humor ranges from delightfully sophomoric to subtly intellectual, and the boys’ sarcastic repartee will help readers navigate the slower parts of the story, which involve local history interviews. The idea behind the book is that everyone’s story counts, and what Colin’s contributes to the world, no matter how small it may seem to him, will, indeed, matter. 

 

Review

: Coming into this book I had a lot of expectations. I have heard so many great things about John Green, I have seen so many Brotherhood 2.0 videos and made an account on nerdfighters. I was both happy and disappointed. Truthfully, I just liked the book. I expected it to be this story that just stayed with me forever….

I loved the characters: Colin, Hassan, Hollis. Lindsey got a little annoying for me, what with her boyfriend and how she was different with different people. I really enjoyed the whole “let’s get into Satan’s Hearse and drive the country” kind of plot. I thought that the footnotes were amazing. It just made it that much better with the history, the foreign words, the pop culture references. John did put a lot of work into it and I can see that. I think Hassan and Colin’s relationship was the most interesting. To reiterate, I thought it was a very good book. It just didn’t blow me away like I thought it would. I think this is because it’s a summer book more than a thinking book like Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska seem to be. Don’t be discouraged from reading the book by my review. And BTW- the book is going to be a movie!