reading right now ( )

I actually liked looking for alaska better, but this was a good one too. The teens in his books always seem to have some sort of life-changing moment that usually is pretty simple, which is how 'eureka' moments go. ( )

In an attempt to understand and/or outrun the albatrosses in his life, Colin Singleton takes a road trip after graduating from high school. He needs to leave behind the nineteen girlfriends (all named Katherine) who dumped him, and eighteen years as a prodigy crushed by people's expectations of him. Traveling with his best friend Hassan, they decide to swerve off their scheduled path to visit an unlikely tourist attraction, the Duke Ferdinand of WWI fame's alleged grave site. This detour takes Colin away from his normal life and with a bit of luck, lands the pair in Gutshot Tennessee, where Colin gets deeply involved with the lives and lore of the locals.

Through it all, Colin's focus remains on the big picture: developing a scientific theory / mathematical formula (described, like the footnotes in the book, in tongue-in-cheek detail) to explain his failed relationships. Filled with footnotes and including an appendix explaining the formula, Green's book is built on an abundance of wit, empathy, and insight. ( )

After falling in love with John Green's writing in Looking for Alaska, I took the opportunity while visiting the Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle, to buy both An Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns.

An Abundance of Katherines is about Colin Singleton, a high school graduate and child prodigy who has just been dumped by his girlfriend, Katherine. In fact, all Colin's girlfriends have been called Katherine...all nineteen of them. After being dumped shortly after graduating, Colin and his best friend, Hassan, decide to go on a road trip, while Colin continues to work on his Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability. On this road trip, Colin and Hassan find themselves in middle of nowhere Gutshot, where they meet Lindsay, not a Katherine but something very different.

Katherines is a little more daring than Looking for Alaska, while at the same time, very little appears to happen. Although I did not find myself becoming particularly attached to the characters in this book, I did enjoy the writing, particularly the mathematics that pervade the story. I also liked Green's use of footnotes for these mathematical formulae and other amusing tidbits.

Sadly, I did not love Katherines as I did Alaska, but it was a well written book regardless. I would recommend it as an example of John Green's intuituve and insightful writing, although as other bloggers have pointed out, not everyone would consider this book suitable for younger teens.

Ever wanted to know how long a relationship would last? Who would break up with who? Have a way to figure out if beginning the relationship in the first place is even worth the trouble? Receive all those answers by plugging in a few factors into a mathematical theorem, sounds simple enough to me, and to Colin Singleton. Colin is a new high school graduate, a soon-to-be-ex child prodigy, and this theorem, the theorem that could potentially make him a genius, is the problem he is facing.

You see, Colin has a problem. Colin falls in love very easily. That wouldn't be such a bad thing if it wasn't for the fact that all his "loves" have been named Katherine (exactly 19 of them). Each of those Katherines have broken up with him for whatever reason; and after the love of his life (Katherine XIX) leaves him in a terribly bad place he decides to use that to his advantage. He tries to make himself a genius by coming up with the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, to not only make himself known for something, but to also figure out why all nineteen Katherines have dumped him.

As a distraction, Colin and his best friend Hassan set out on a road trip to nowhere, in The Hearse (Colin's car). Seeing a sign for the grave of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the boys head to Gutshot, Tennessee; a small town, where they happen upon Lindsey Lee Wells, a girl who is nothing like any Katherine has been for Colin. She reads celebrity rag magazines, her friends, her boyfriend (also named Colin, aptly dubbed T.O.C. aka The Other Colin), and her wealthy mother Hollis, who offers the boys a place to stay. The palace-sized home on top of the hill being more than just large and full of interesting things, but it's also a shade of pink only rivaled by a bottle of Pepto Bismol.

Hollis hires the boys to accompany Lindsey with getting an oral history of Gutshot, which means visiting everyone that works in the factory (which produces tampon strings, just so you know), the people too old to work, and the people so old to work they are in the old folks home. Colin also decides his "Eureka" moment is finishing the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, but what he doesn't count on is better than finishing any theorem. He not only finds himself, but that there are some things (i.e. chance, memory recollection, the unpredictability of matters of the heart) that can't be solved in a theorem, math, or science. Some things have to be lived, and we follow these three through their adventures, learning to be somebody, mattering as a person without being world-famous, and just growing up.

There are so many things about this book that I love! Upon meeting Lindsey's friends, the boys immediately came up with amusing acronyms for them (J.A.T.T. aka Jeans Are Too Tight, hehe). As someone who lives in Tennessee, I still couldn't help giggle every time Gutshot was mentioned. The footnotes! I forgot how fun those could be! The characters are quirky, and there is the ability to relate to them in a sense, and real. And the book taught me things I didn't know! Just for amusement, here are five things I didn't know before reading An Abundance of Katherines:

Nikola Telsa loved...pigeons (yea, I know)...and had the original electricity idea, not Thomas Eddison.
Looking at it from a scientific point of view, there is no proof that drinking eight glasses of water will do a darn thing for your health.
William Taft was not only the fattest president, but got stuck in a bath tub one time (hehehe, so funny)
Abligurition is an actual word, that I can't pronounce, but means "the spending of too much money on food."
Not only is there a World's Largest Crucifix, but it is in Kentucky.
This is one of the few books that I would recommend to everyone! Don't worry about all the math, there are footnotes and graphics to explain it all. This is a book that guys and girls alike can enjoy! ( )