An Abundance of Katherines

Book 25 of my 2020 Reading Challenge

read from March 28 - April 1

An Abundance of Katherines

by John Green

Summary (via the book jacket)

published 2006

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 layer comic novel about reinventing oneself.

My Opinion

2 stars

The reason I picked this book off the library shelf is because I was getting light reading material to occupy me while my daughter's recovering from surgery (she's fine).  Her name is Katherine (but she's always a Katie) so I thought the title was funny.

I didn't really like it.  It's unusual to have the boy be the whiner and piner but that doesn't make it easier to tolerate.  

It started to pick up when the cave conversation happened, ironically when it became less about the Katherines, and I settled in.  At that time I was thinking this would probably be a 3 star rating where I rate it neutrally as an acceptance that I'm not the target audience for the book and that could contribute to some of the reasons I didn't like it.

What took me right back down to a 2 rating were the number of times "retarded" was used.  There's no reason for it based on the time period this book took place and it wasn't a misguided attempted at shock value because nobody responded to it.  Both "good" and "bad" characters used it so it wasn't to show the character of someone, although it could've been to further a "hick Southern" stereotype based on the people that used it.  No matter what, no reason for it multiple times.

A Few Quotes from the Book

"It rather goes without saying that Katherine drank her coffee black. Katherines do, generally. They like their coffee like they like their ex-boyfriends: bitter."

"The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real."