BOOK REPORT for an abundance of katherines by john green
bff charm: yay!
swoonworthy scale: 4
talky talk: right on
bonus factors: math, road trip!
relationship status: best guy friend
the deal:
washed-up child prodigy colin has just been dumped by his nineteenth katherine — on graduation night. his best friend hassan convinces colin (and their parents) to go on a summer road trip so colin can get over his heartbreak and figure out a way to matter to the universe. they end up in gutshot, tennessee where they meet lindsey lee wells (along with her boyfriend the other colin, his friends jeans are too tight and short one chewing tobacco and a girl named katrina) and figure out all kinds of truths, of which some can be graphed mathematically. oh, and lindsey’s mom owns a factory that makes tampon strings. !!
bff charm: yay!
colin is adorable. he’s totally nerdy — he was a child prodigy, so he learns things really fast and is good at making obscure connections among his vast library of trivia. hassan has to help him be more “normal” by telling him when his trivial tangents aren’t interesting, but i actually thought most of them were interesting (oh, also, this book has FOOTNOTES. hello? i LOVE footnotes!). colin DEFINITELY could benefit from jenny’s advice column for teenage boys, but lindsey makes a pretty good stand-in (so does hassan). i’d actually invite all three of them to be my bffs.
swoonworthy scale: 4
there’s some definite kissy-kissy in this book, but since the book is about colin the dumpee getting over his massive heartbreak, most of the chemistry is either in backstory about the various katherines (whom he labels k1 through k19) and a little later with lindsey, and it’s not a big part of the book. i mean, it IS a big part of the story and stuff (like, the whole point of the book), but at the same time, it’s not really what the book’s about.
talky talk: right on
ok, so don’t get annoyed at first with the fact that the characters use every swear word ever, all the time, EXCEPT they say “fug” instead of “fuck” because apparently that’s something to do with norman mailer and it gets explained in the book. and don’t feel dumb if you didn’t know that, because i didn’t (i felt dumb, although i’ve never read norman mailer and haven’t really thought about reading norman mailer for the really superficial reason that his name’s “norman” and it makes me think of nonfiction, even though i know it’s not). but totally feel superior if you read the first “fug” and think, “ooh, like norman mailer changed all the f-words in naked and the dead to because his editor complained”. because that would make you smarter than colin. or at least as smart.
so, yeah, john green’s writing style is really clear and straightforward, and the teenagers totally talk like real teenagers (at least the way my friends and i talked). plus, i got inspired by jenny’s review of almost perfect and really REALLY enjoyed reading a book by a guy about a guy. it’s been a long time (since i read boy meets boy by david levithan, in fact) since i’ve done that, and john green is totally someone i’d recommend if you’re interested in reading books by guys about guys.
bonus factor: math
so colin is obsessed with mattering. he has this issue with being a child prodigy — he’s totally not a child, and no longer a prodigy, but definitely not a genius. he’s constantly chasing his archimedian eureka moment, and hits on the idea of writing a formula that expresses all relationships and can possibly predict the future of a relationship — plug in the two parties’ popularity, relative attractiveness, age and other factors, and you can see the curve of the relationship’s success and determine who will dump whom and when. or possibly. anyway, it’s actually explained in some detail in the book, which i could totally handle since there were pictures, and then in lots of detail (like a calculus textbook) in an appendix, which i started to read but got too confusing when it started talking about functions and i realized i haven’t thought about functions and integrals in 10 years and don’t really plan to start anytime soon, so i skipped the rest of the appendix. but if you like math, it’s pretty cool, and even if you don’t, it definitely adds nerd cred to the book.
bonus factor: road trip!
um, that’s the archtypical coming-of-age structure — a road trip has an unknown destination designed to help the character discover something about himself through the places visited or the eventual destination. and it totally works and isn’t trite and it’s actually kinda cool how they end up in gutshot (it has to do with the assassinated archduke franz ferdinand, which was interesting to this history nerd, but not interesting to hassan).
casting call:
adam brody as colin
samaire armstrong as lindsey lee wells
ok, i just.couldn’t.help.myself. i KNOW they’re like the geek king and queen (at least for the first season), but i really couldn’t see anyone else but seth cohen and anna stern as colin and lindsey.
jack black (like 20 years ago) as hassan
i know jack black is like twice too old, but pretend he’s 19 and lebanese and quasi-jokingly evangelical muslim (but not jokingly muslim — make sense?) and decides out of the blue to refer to himself only as “daddy” and takes a year off after high school to sit around his parents’ house watching judge judy all day. then he’s totally hassan.
ACTUALLY. i just got this, but this book is TOTALLY a teenage version of high fidelity (almost), with colin as rob and hassan as barry (and jack black NAILED barry in the film version) (there’s no dick, which is too bad because i really liked him, but colin’s not cool enough to have 2 friends) and katherine and lindsey are BOTH laura (pre-breakup laura and end-of-the-book laura). and since high fidelity is one of my favorite books, that is high praise for an abundance of katherines. high praise indeed.
relationship status: best guy friend
this book is totally that guy you’ve been best friends with since 2nd grade, and you love him desperately as a friend, and you’re starting to have feelings for him as more than that, but while you’re sharing a couch and popcorn bowl with him after school you simultaneously fantasize about holding hands AND worry about totally weirding him out, so you don’t act on it. he’s the guy you went to last year after you got dumped for advice, but you hate it when he talks to you about HIS crushes. you want to take things to the next level, but you don’t want to lose him forever, so you stay friends and hope every time you hang out for him to make a move.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I thought maybe they just wanted to write an ode to the Fug Girls. Like maybe KARL LAGERFIELD would show up with his white gloves to smack down some wisdom on someone.
It’s got math. I’m reading it.
You had me at Franz Ferdinand references! Not so much the math, but that’s my fault, not the math’s…
I am SO pro-footnote. More footnotes in everything, please! Even math-related ones. Well, maybe. But I do love me some Adam Brody!
I LOVE JOHN GREEN!! like, i really do wish he was my guy BFF, what with his nerd fighting and funny videos and friendly rivalry with his brother (seriously, y’all, check out his website RIGHT NOW).
i’ve read this book too, and i really enjoyed it, ESP. the math. cos it actually does make you feel smarter to be reading a book with complex math, and it’s like, math that MATTERS. you know how in calculus you were all, “this shizz is pointless!” well, THAT would’ve been the right time for yr teacher to say, “actually, you could use this to figure out how to avoid getting dumped.”
dude, i would have ACED calculus if that had happened.
I love this book so much it’s ridiculous. Oh, John Green: I would be best-friends-with-benefits with all your protagonists. (Nerdy teenage boys = basically my favorite narrators.) Math and love and navel gazing and wit: that is how you make me fall in love with you, o books of the world.
oh, dude, i SO wish my calculus teacher had introduced us to the more valuable aspects of calculus. i mean, who cares about planting corn and soybeans (besides corn and soybean farmers, of course, which is totally cool, but no 17-yo in my 12th-grade calculus class was a soybean farmer)? cos that’s all we worked on figuring out.
and if you’re not into math, NEVER FEAR. there’s arabic and german and history and english and ALL MANNER of nerddom. footnotes! graphs! and really, the math is pretty cool (and i hate math).
i am so glad other people loved this book!
Quite frankly, the math was a neat gimmic, but somewhat off-putting for me. I didn’t understand it, so I ended up skimming over those parts. Out of Green’s three novels, this was my least favorite, but that’s only compared to his other two. I’d recommend ‘Looking for Alaska’ and ‘Paper Towns’ without reservation.
As I’ve actually been hunting (fell asleep in the deer stand, was obvs a natural) and seen a herd of feral pigs (do pigs travel in herds? packs? whatevs),so whilst reading that scene, I was laughing so hard I almost asphyxiated. Hilarious.
Can’t wait for my copy of Will Grayson, Will Grayson to arrive at the library! I’m finally #1 in the queue!!!!! TINY COOPER AT LAST!!!!!!
that scene was funny enough without personal experience — i can’t imagine how great it would be if you’ve actually BEEN chased by feral pigs!
this is my favorite John Green book (minus Tiny Cooper TINY COOPER, which is a joint work of genius). maybe because my female self can relate to Colin more than to the dude in Looking for Alaska.
Colin totally has some of that weepy SecretGarden!Colin crap about him, which is why I’m glad Hassan exists.
Actually, I want my own personal Hassan. I see what you mean by Jack Black, but it’s the Jack Black of School of Rock, not Jack Black of …everything he’s been in recently, except for Kung Fu Panda.
Anyway. Doubt you’re checking comments this far back, but ilu.
most DEFINITELY the jack black of school of rock, and maybe high fidelity. not lame jack black of omigod did you see that awful movie with kate winslet? kate, honey, what were you DOING? or jackhole jack black. how awesome was hassan, anyway? YA books need more hassan.