An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (MOBI)

Description

From the #1 bestselling author of Turtles All the Way Down and The Fault in Our StarsMichael L. Printz Honor BookLos Angeles Times Book Prize FinalistNew York Times BestsellerWhen it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type is 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 layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review An ALA Best Book for Young AdultsA Horn Book Fanfare Best Book of the YearA Booklist Editors’ ChoiceA Kirkus Best Book of the Year”Fully fun, challengingly complex and entirely entertaining.” —Kirkus, starred review“Laugh-out-loud funny…a coming-of-age American road trip that is at once a satire of and tribute to its many celebrated predecessors.” –Horn Book, starred review“Imagine an operating room at the start of a daring but well-rehearsed procedure and you will have something of the atmosphere of “An Abundance of Katherines”: every detail considered, the action unrolling with grace and inevitability.” –New York Times Book Review“Funny, sweet, and unpredictable.” –The Minneapolis Star Tribune“The laugh-out-loud humor ranges from delightfully sophomoric to subtly intellectual.” –Booklist, starred review About the Author John Green is the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with David Levithan), and The Fault in Our Stars. His many accolades include the Printz Medal, a Printz Honor, and the Edgar Award. He has twice been a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. John was selected by TIME magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. With his brother, Hank, John is one half of the Vlogbrothers (youtube.com/vlogbrothers), one of the most popular online video projects in the world. You can join the millions who follow John on Twitter (@johngreen) and tumblr (fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com) or visit him online at johngreenbooks.com. John lives with his family in Indianapolis, Indiana. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. (one)The morning after noted child prodigy Colin Singleton graduated fromhigh school and got dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine,he took a bath. Colin had always preferred baths; one of his general policiesin life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily bedone lying down. He climbed into the tub as soon as the water got hot, andhe sat and watched with a curiously blank look on his face as the water overtookhim. The water inched up his legs, which were crossed and folded intothe tub. He did recognize, albeit faintly, that he was too long, and too big, forthis bathtub—he looked like a mostly grown person playing at being a kid.As the water began to splash over his skinny but unmuscled stomach,he thought of Archimedes. When Colin was about four, he read a bookabout Archimedes, the Greek philosopher who’d discovered that volumecould be measured by water displacement when he sat down in the bathtub.Upon making this discovery, Archimedes supposedly shouted “Eureka!”[1] and then ran naked through the streets. The book said that manyimportant discoveries contained a “Eureka moment.” And even then, Colinvery much wanted to have some important discoveries, so he asked hismom about it when she got home that evening.“Mommy, am I ever going to have a Eureka moment?”“Oh, sweetie,” she said, taking his hand. “What’s wrong?”“I wanna have a Eureka Moment,” he said, the way another kid mighthave expressed longing for a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.She pressed the back of her hand to his cheek and smiled, her face soclose to his that he could smell coffee and makeup. “Of course, Colin baby.Of course you will.”But mothers lie. It’s in the job description.Colin took a deep breath and slid down, immersing his head. I am crying, hethought, opening his eyes to stare through the soapy, stinging water. I feellike crying, so I must be crying, but it’s impossible to tell because I’m underwater.But he wasn’t crying. Curiously, he felt too depressed to cry. Too hurt.It felt as if she’d taken the part of him that cried.He opened the drain in the tub, stood up, toweled off, and got dressed.When he exited the bathroom, his parents were sitting together on his bed.It was never a good sign when both his parents were in his room at the sametime. Over the years it had meant:1. Your grandmother/grandfather/Aunt-Suzie-whom-you-never-met-but-trust-me-she-was-nice-and-it’s-a-shame is dead.2. You’re letting a girl named Katherine distract you from your studies.3. Babies are made through an act that you will eventually find intriguingbut for right now will just sort of horrify you, and also sometimespeople do stuff that involves baby-making parts that does not actuallyinvolve making babies, like for instance kiss each other in placesthat are not on the face.It never meant:4. A girl named Katherine called while you were in the bathtub. She’ssorry. She still loves you and has made a terrible mistake and is waitingfor you downstairs.But even so, Colin couldn’t help but hope that his parents were in the roomto provide news of the Number 4 variety. He was a generally pessimistic person,but he seemed to make an exception for Katherines: he always felt theywould come back to him. The feeling of loving her and being loved by herwelled up in him, and he could taste the adrenaline in the back of histhroat, and maybe it wasn’t over, and maybe he could feel her hand in hisagain and hear her loud, brash voice contort itself into a whisper to sayI-love-you in the very quick and quiet way that she had always said it. Shesaid I love you as if it were a secret, and an immense one.His dad stood up and stepped toward him. “Katherine called my cell,”he said. “She’s worried about you.” Colin felt his dad’s hand on his shoulder,and then they both moved forward, and then they were hugging.“We’re very concerned,” his mom said. She was a small woman withcurly brown hair that had one single shock of white toward the front. “Andstunned,” she added. “What happened?”“I don’t know,” Colin said softly into his dad’s shoulder. “She’s just—she’d had enough of me. She got tired. That’s what she said.” And then hismom got up and there was a lot of hugging, arms everywhere, and his momwas crying. Colin extricated himself from the hugs and sat down on his bed.He felt a tremendous need to get them out of his room immediately, like ifthey didn’t leave he would blow up. Literally. Guts on the walls; his prodigiousbrain emptied out onto his bedspread.“Well, at some point we need to sit down and assess your options,” hisdad said. His dad was big on assessing. “Not to look for silver linings, but itseems like you’ll now have some free time this summer. A summer class atNorthwestern, maybe?”“I really need to be alone, just for today,” Colin answered, trying to conveya sense of calm so that they would leave and he wouldn’t blow up. “Socan we assess tomorrow?”“Of course, sweetie,” his mom said. “We’ll be here all day. You justcome down whenever you want and we love you and you’re so so special,Colin, and you can’t possibly let this girl make you think otherwise becauseyou are the most magnificent, brilliant boy—” And right then, the mostspecial, magnificent, brilliant boy bolted into his bathroom and puked hisguts out. An explosion, sort of.“Oh, Colin!” shouted his mom.“I just need to be alone,” Colin insisted from the bathroom. “Please.”When he came out, they were gone.For the next fourteen hours without pausing to eat or drink or throw upagain, Colin read and reread his yearbook, which he had received just fourdays before. Aside from the usual yearbook crap, it contained seventy-twosignatures. Twelve were just signatures, fifty-six cited his intelligence,twenty-five said they wished they’d known him better, eleven said it was funto have him in English class, seven included the words “pupillary sphincter,”[2] and a stunning seventeen ended, “Stay Cool!” Colin Singleton couldno more stay cool than a blue whale could stayskinny or Bangladesh couldstayrich. Presumably, those seventeen people were kidding. He mulled thisover—and considered how twenty-five of his classmates, some of whomhe’d been attending school with for twelve years, could possibly havewanted to “know him better.” As if they hadn’t had a chance.But mostly for those fourteen hours, he read and reread KatherineXIX’s inscription:Col,Here’s to all the places we went. And all the places we’ll go. Andhere’s me, whispering again and again and again and again:iloveyou.yrs forever, K-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-eEventually, he found the bed too comfortable for his state of mind, so he laydown on his back, his legs sprawled across the carpet. He anagrammed “yrsforever” until he found one he liked: sorry fever. And then he lay there in hisfever of sorry and repeated the now memorized note in his head and wantedto cry, but instead he only felt this aching behind his solar plexus. Cryingadds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had wassome horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something. He keptthinking about one word—forever—and felt the burning ache just beneathhis rib cage.It hurt like the worst ass-kicking he’d ever gotten. And he’d gotten plenty.(1) Greek: “I have found it.”(2) More on that later. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Let me begin by saying I am a fan of John Green’s writing and, honestly of John Green, himself. I’ve seen him speak to teachers at a conference, follow his Twitter, and occasionally watch videos posted by him and his brother. I purchased this book at the same time as others 3+ years ago- reading The Fault in our Stars first, then Paper Towns and then, Looking for Alaska. As sometimes happens with buying too many Kindle books at one time, I assumed I had read An Abundance of Katherines, but actually hadn’t. Maybe because it is the most recently read and it’s the story I want to tell myself but I’ve decided this one is the one I like the best of the works I have read of John Green. All of his books involve characters uncovering their “truth with a capital t” – about connecting with the human condition in touching, funny, memorable, and deeply meaningful ways. Each of his stories involves the character connecting with life through an odd, adorable nerd/dork fascination with an attention to detail that is remarkable and leaves me more knowledgeable even if I didn’t think I needed to know so much about maps/mathematical theorems/a particular novel’s author/famous last words. An Abundance of Katherines did not disappoint and proved/helped me re-remember that John Green is a magician with words, connects to the insecure teenager still within all of us, and can make us laugh while crying at the same time. I am really looking forward to reading Turtles All the Way Down – hoping it will become my new favorite.

⭐This book has amazing voice. Colin Singleton is a child prodigy on the cusp of becoming an adult. He feels this intense pressure to be a genius and this intense doubt that he will ever create anything worthy of that title. He’s at an identity crossroads. And Katherine, the 19th Katherine that he’s loved, just dumped him. His best friend, Hassan (who lights up every scene he’s in), and he end up taking a roadtrip.Colin decides to create a theorem. A way to predict who will be the dumper and the dumpee and how long a relationship will last. He will plot it and graph it.Only John Green can have footnotes and graphs within a novel! But it is perfect for the voice of this story.If you enjoyed math in high school, this will be particularly fun to read. If you didn’t, don’t worry, he makes it easy to grasp.The roadtrip takes Colin and Hassan to Gutshot, TN, and they encounter the town golden girl Lindsey Lee Wells. Their time with Lindsey is very character revealing. There is a hilarious hunting scene where Colin shoots something he shouldn’t and a fight scene that had me laughing out loud.It’s a quick read–Green’s prose are ridiculously smooth and each sentence leads into the next so well that the pages flip faster and faster.

⭐Immediately after reading, A Fault in Our Stars, I went on Amazon and downloaded An Abundance of Katherine’s. Like Fault in Our Stars it did not disappoint. I have to say that I have a new favorite author and his name is John Green. I know that his fiction is labeled young adult, but it is so much more. The writing, the characters are all amazing.The main character of the story is Colin Singleton, a former child prodigy. The story behind the Abundance of Katherine’s is that Colin gets dumped. Not just dumped, but dumped by 19 girls named Katherine. It sounds absurd, but it so believable in this story.I really can’t do it justice, so I’m going to let some of the writing speak for itself:”The morning after noted child prodigy Colin Singleton graduated from high school and got dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, he took a bath. Colin had always preferred baths: one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down.””He thought of Chicago, where you can go days without ever once stepping on a single patch of actual earth. That well-paved world appeals to him, and he missed it as his feet fell on uneven clumps of hardened dirt that threatened to twist his ankles.””He couldn’t quite pinpoint when Hassan had started to become like everyone else on the planet, but it was clearly happening, and it was clearly annoying.”Again, I highly recommend A Fault in Our Stars and An Abundance of Katherines. I am sure I will be reviewing more of his books, since I can not get enough of this author.

⭐I can’t help it. I just love John Green’s characters and their voices. He has the best way of describing EVERYTHING. And the footnotes are hilarious and awesome.Pros:Narrator’s voice is awesomeCharacters are well-rounded and funnyEnding has expected and unexpected partsExcellent last lineWell-writtenFun to readCons:I wish he’d resolved one of the issues that arose in the book, but it’s realistic that he didn’t, so I can’t be too upset by itIt’s full of weird facts, which don’t bother me but might bother some peopleColin thinks way too much….and in weird ways (but normal and expected given his character)Honestly, I’m struggling to come up with cons…I really hope my books are as cleverly written as his.

⭐One of my hangups with YA and NA books, is that they feel phony. They read like they were written by an adult who’s forgotten entirely what it feels like to be a kid. A teen. A young adult. Wondering who you are. Where you fit. Feeling lost. Feeling insecure. Feeling exhilarated. FEELING.John Green remembers.This is a story about Colin Singleton, a young prodigy who has dated- and been dumped by- nineteen Katherines. After his latest failed Katherine, a heartbroken Colin, and his best friend hit the road with no destination in mind, for a summer of freedom.I fell in love with every character in this book. With honest, valuable friendships, incredibly funny dialogue, wisdom beyond its young years, and simple love, An Abundance of Katherines is perfection.

⭐It’s not that I can’t see what Mr Green is doing here, it’s just that the really interesting part of the book is the last four chapters. I pushed through and finished it as the author had been recommended but perhaps I picked the wrong book.Colin is a drip – a complete wimp who is needy, self-involved and emotionally retarded. His saving grace is that he’s quite clever but that gets dull really quickly since he never uses his intelligence for anything useful. I’ve met people like this in real life – they bore me there and they bore me on the page. Lindsey was a reasonable character and I actually liked Hassan. Otherwise not much happens in this book since 90% of it takes place in Colin’s head – I mentioned that he bored me, right?Style wise, John Green’s prose is flawless. He has a lot of clever stuff in here and I like the wry humour. I will try some of his other books based on that. He’s clearly a talented writer.Can I recommend this to anyone? Not really, unless you want to spend four or five hours of your life in the head of an emotionally maladjusted boy who really doesn’t consider the feelings of others and is obsessed with being clever. Also if you don’t mind not much happening. If that’s your bag, go for it, otherwise no, I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is not Green’s best work.

⭐SynopsisAfter being dumped by the 19th Katherine in his life, Colin – along with best friend Hassan – decide to take a road trip to help with the emotion recovery of his recent heartbreak. Along the way, Colin – a child prodigy – decided to try and find a mathematic equation to help plot the course of true love. The boys end up in a podunk town where Colin discovers that everything that he thought he knew – especially the things he thought about himself – are not as black and white as he has grown up to believe.ReviewOk. I admit it. I jumped on the bandwagon. When I read The Fault in Our Stars last year I pretty much purchased every book that John Green had written. Then, in true Lisa style, I put them on my kindle bookshelf and let them accrue layers of metaphorical dust whilst I read a lot of other books but due to my 100 book challenge this book, An Abundance of Katherines, has made it to the forefront and I have now read it. Hazzah.For those of you wanting to read it (for the same reason or personal reasons of your own) then I will issue you with a warning. This book is nothing like The Fault in Our Stars. If you are looking for a similar read then you have picked up the wrong book. Of course, An Abundance of Katherines does have the inimitable John Green dry humour and wit but it deals less with health woes and more with the woes of being a teenage boy dealing with heartbreak.For me, one of the great things about this book is the friendship between Colin and Hassan. I felt that there was a silly verisimilitude to their friendship. The way that they mocked each other, they could be angry at each other but they could also be honest and tell each other that they loved or were hurt by the others actions. The story was more enjoyable because of their banter.I really liked An Abundance of Katherines. Even though my reasons for reading it were admittedly flawed, what I liked about it was that it was so different from The Fault in Our Stars. It probably goes without saying that John Green is one of the definitive voices for a YA generation. What may have been said is that he is literatures equivalent to John Hughes. He just gets how tough it is to be young.An Abundance of Katherines by John Green is available now.You can follow John Green on Twitter @RealJohnGreen

⭐An Abundance of Katherines’ is the story of Colin Singleton, former child prodigy who loves anagrams and has been dumped 19 times by girls called Katherines. Colin begins to develop a theorem, ‘The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability’ which he hopes will predict the future relationships he may have. Following his recent break up with Katherine 19, Colin and his best friend, Hassan, a direct-less genius who is quite happy to stay at home and watch ‘Judge Judy’ (who he may or may not have a crush on) decide to go on a road trip where they find adventure and a chance to meet the right girl for Colin.Colin and Hassan have a great friendship and for two boys they were surprisingly honest with each other which I enjoyed reading. Colin is a complicated character because he was obsessed with discovering why his relationships never worked which frustrated me because I felt that he was missing so many good things. Colin constantly tries to define himself and is scared of never finding his place in the world, maybe because of my age, I just felt that he had time to find himself but I remember feeling the same when I was teenager.I enjoyed ‘An Abundance of Katherines’ from start to finish, as always John Green writes brilliant and likeable characters.Rating: 5/5

⭐This title being the funniest line in the book. It’s a good job I was at home when I read it becausehad I been in a public place, it could’ve been very embarassing!!John Green in my eyes is a little genius, there hasn’t been one of his books that I haven’t thoroughlyenjoyed. Katherines is not my personal favourite of his but it still deserves 5 stars for being funny,original, heartwarming and because he creates characters that are truly three dimentional, none are the sameas another (a problem with some authors)In this book we meet Colin, who yes is quite pathetic and needy and sometimes a little annoying with hiswhining, but inside is a genuinely nice guy who has the guts to admit that he just wants to be lovedand he just wants to matter. Don’t we all? Not such bad qualities to have and yet for some reason he keepsgetting dumped and he can’t understand why. So he has his Eureak moment (Colin is something of a childprodigy/possible future genius) he realises that he may be able to predict the path of a relationship usinga mathematical formula. I’m going to stop there, I didn’t get the math, I didn’t dislike it or wish it hadn’tbeen there (it was part of the story and not over done) but I didn’t understand it. No matter, I will take theword of Colin that it worked! The story did seem to lose and then pick up pace along the way but in thesecond half really got going and I was unable to put it down. Green has a real knack for creating worldsand people and making them come alive and the fact that his writing is laugh out loud funny is a huge bonus.I look forward, rather impatiently to his next book, The Fault in Our Stars which I have already pre-orderedto get a signed copy! Ony have about a week left to wait now!

⭐Great fun, but do not trust the alleged facts Colin “knows”! For instance, John Green does not not seem to realize Modern Greek is about as different from Classical Greek as Italian ist from Latin, so the Democritus’ “quote” is NOT the “original Greek” but a modern translation Democritus himself would have considered barbaric. I happen to be a polyglot, so I noticed quite a lot of other mistakes as well. Pity John Green does not reply to (or read?) snail mail; otherwise I would have written him.

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