Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Review: An Abundance of Katherines

An Abundance of KatherinesTitle: An Abundance of Katherines
Author: John Green
Genre: Realistic Fiction

Why I Read It: I kept saying that I would read a John Green book, so I figured I would give this one a go.

A Quick Summary: Colin Singleton is always being dumped by Katherines. Nineteen in total. Following the 19th Katherine dumping, he and his friend Hassan take off on a road trip on a mission to develop and prove the Theory of Underlying Katherine Predictability.

What I Thought: I don't usually read realistic fiction... because I get bored. I tend to not enjoy stories based on real life in the real world (one of my friend constantly mocks my preference for "magical dinosaur" books). This one was still a fun read, and you can really hear John Green when he writes. The characters were quirky, and they went on an interesting journey. I haven't really got any strong opinions one way or another on this one. One of the main focuses of the book is what it means to be important or to mean something- Colin's quest for success comes from the fact that, while he is was child prodigy, all that promise really hasn't come to fruition. He's trying to find a way to define himself, and, as humans we tend to define ourselves by other impressions and by comparison, so he feels that meaning something to other people is very important. This is, I think, interesting to be reminded of. That, as people, we are often driven by a need to be somehow relevant in order to define ourselves. So overall I didn't love this book, probably due to the genre, but it definitely had some thought provoking elements.

Fun Fact: I had to scrape rock bottom for this one. There are a great deal of graphed parabolas and curves in this book (in Colin's Theorem). The entire branch of calculus focuses on analyzing the slope of a curve. It's development was contributed to by Sir Issac Newton as he developed his world changing theories. (So, now you know who to blame.)

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