An Abundance of Katherines

Kafir.

This was the first John Green book I read - back when I was 15 - making this read a re-read. It took a while for me to get into the book, I personally felt the first part a little draggy. But I grew to love Colin, in all his nerdyness, after I got over him being sucha whiney baby. I especially liked the Katherine stories near the end! There were two distinct parts of the book I remembered from the last time I read it: 1) the part where he pointed to his head when Lindsey asked where it hurt and 2) her letter to him. Which probably sums up what this book is about.

3.5 stars. Pacing was a little weird and the characters were a little too stock, but otherwise, very good.

I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. I think it was the math. ;p

You can read my full review on my blog here: http://knowitnotsomuch.blogspot.com/2013/01/an-abundance-of-katherines.html

I loved the book and found it entirely readable ...so there.

Colin Singleton worries about his future as he pines over the past. Gutshot (wink) over his last breakup and fearful of how to segue out of childhood prodigy status, he embarks on an impromptu road trip with his pudgy Middle Eastern (“I'm not a terrorist”) best friend who loves Judge Judy and is intent on doing nothing. Boom - there's your movie.

Throw in a mystery at the tampon string factory, the grand unifying theory of relationships, Franz Ferdinand's grave, feral hogs and dingleberries and you've got yourself one fun little read. Looking forward to checking out his much lauded The Fault in Our Stars.

Short Review: I like coming of age novels. It is interesting to me how many different types of coming of age novels that there are. This is a ‘what it means to find purpose in your life' coming of age novel. Colin is depressed because he is an aging child prodigy and doesn't think he will ever really grow into an adult genius that makes a difference in the world. He has recently been dumped the the 19th Katherine that he has dated (he only has dated girls named Katherine, with a K). On a road trip to discover himself, he and his friend Hassan end up in Gutshot, TN doing oral histories of the people of the small town as a summer job. Colin tries to figure out how to create a formula to predetermine who will be the dumper and the dumpee in a relationship.

There is a lot of humor, a decent bit of language, and a very restrained amount of sex and romance. Much to like about the book, I really recommend it and immediately started another book by the same author.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/an-abundance-of-katherines/

Interesting premise, but the execution could have been better.

I just couldn't finish this book. Normally, I can devour a book within a couple of days, if even that, and I started reading this a MONTH ago. I gave it 2 stars because I've read worse books and it wasn't completely annoying, it just wasn't interesting to me. I just couldn't buy into the whole Katherine thing, and some of the language was just so immature. Fugging? Really? I haven't said that since I was 12.

I also decided to read a summary of the rest of this book which confirms that I've made the right decision in abandoning this book, instead of wasting my time.

I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this book. The most endearing thing about it was the friendship between the two main characters. After getting dumped by his 19th girlfriend named Katherine, Colin Singleton sets out on a road trip with his best friend Hassan. When they get to Gutshot, Tennessee, the boys settle in for a summer of self-discovery.

An entertaining book recommended for mature high school readers.

So, this is my third attempt at reading this book. I read the first few chapters in those original attempts, and I was never able to connect, but for some reason it really DID this time. I loved the characters. I laughed, I cried, I smiled... The math related stuff I still sort of skimmed over, but I really did enjoy the novel.

This book had me chuckling on the first page. I follow John Green's Vlog Brothers, and looked forward to that intellectual snark that keeps me coming back for more, and I was not disappointed. First, let's address the main character's name: Colin Singleton.

Any computer programmer or mathematician would recognize the joke at once: here is a young man who is desperate to be known, to be recognized as unique and special. A singleton, in object-oriented programming, is a one-of-a-kind object. You can have a class of an object, say, Car, and then have different objects that belong to the class of Car: Honda, Ford, Toyota, etc. A singleton has only one element in its class or set: it is unique, special. Nerd!Belinda was ridiculously happy to see the intellectual snark and jokes went this far.

Read this book for a contemporary satire on the road trip story, while at the same time feeling heartfelt and snarky, as we all were in high school. A quick read, followed with an appendix where Green asked his mathematics professor friend to go through the math of Colin's Underlying Katherine Predictability. With graphs and everything. I've never been so happy to see a parabola in my life.

A lot of fun. I love books about nerds and roadtrips. And this is about nerds on a roadtrips, so, A+. Great characters, mildly cliche self-realization but that's what YA lit is for, right?

Road trip stories are always interesting ones, because they never really seem to end up being about the road trip themselves; they're more about the characters learning more about themselves and their relationships with each other, and this one isn't really any different in that regard.

That being said, it's a REALLY funny, really heartfelt story about Colin and Hassan, and this girl named Lindsay that they meet in the town of Gutshot, Tennessee. Colin's a child prodigy who fears he's, at 17, in danger of becoming washed-up, and who's been dumped by 19 girls named Katherine. He figures that the best way to overcome this washupedness is to develop a unified Katherine Theorem, which will be able to explain the course of any romantic relationship.

This book has ‘cult hit' written all over it. A lot of the humour requires a certain appreciation for math, footnotes, and language (including foreign language and anagramming), but if you have an interest in those things, and don't mind YA books, you just might love it.

If I could give this book seven stars, I fugging would.

I am definitely in the minority on this book. Everyone seems to love it. I had a very hard time getting into it. The equations and footnotes at the bottom of the pages were distracting, and I couldn't connect with the main character. I wasn't able to finish it. However, I know I'm in the minority here, and that many people loved this book. I'm sorry I wasn't one of them. :(