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3.35 AVERAGE
3.35 AVERAGE
The only other book I've read by John Green is Looking for Alaska and I definitely like this one much more. It seems like he has a formula though: offbeat quirky guy with a funny sidekick and cooler, yet still offbeat girl that the quirky guy pines for. Anyhoo, as with Looking for Alaska, I loved the humor in this one and thought a lot of lines were fantastic. However, I just didn't really care for the plot. I like the message he sends in his books. I just think the plot itself is kind of boring. The premise of this book-washed-up prodigy with a thing for anomalies (and girls named Katherine) who tries to devise a theorem that will predict the outcome of all relationships, is very original and sounds very interesting. Yet, I couldn't get lost in the story. I'm thinking this just isn't my cup of tea.
emotional
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I've read three of John Green's books so far and I've noticed that all his books follow the same trend. All of his characters are nerdy, witty, smart, quirky and there's always a humourous best friend.
1)Hazel, the main character in The Fault in our Stars, falls for Augustus who has a humourous best friend called Isaac. Hazel and Gus create metaphors and dissect everything in the world.
2)Miles, the main character in Looking for Alaska, learns famous last words. He has a hilarious best friend/roommate called The Colonel and falls for the mysterious and gorgeous Alaska.
3)Quentin, the main character in Paper Towns, is an intelligent and quirky main character who been in love with Margo Roth Spiegelman for years and have humourous and lewd friends/sidekicks.
4)Colin, the main character in An Abundance of Katherines, has a best friend who creates fun and humor, Hassan. Colin has dated and been dumped by nineteen girls all with the same name, Katherine.
The story itself sounds extremely illogical and silly. How can one nerdy guy get dumped by nineteen Katherines and not learn that the name Katherine spells trouble for him? But this quirk worked positively for the story and was the part that I enjoyed the most.
Unfortunately, almost everything else in the story didn't work for me. The characters have some elements to them that makes them interesting, but at the same time, they are quite bland. I was unable to connect with the characters and relate to them. Almost every single event in An Abundance of Katherines is predictable. I couldn't shake off the feeling that I had read a book like this before.
I did love the footnotes and the anagrams. It brought some much needed uniqueness to the book. And the Maths... uhm... I kind-of skimmed through it because I'm not a Maths person. To be completely honest, the Maths scared me!
This book was a let down. It didn't have the uniqueness that I wanted it to have. Maybe if this was my first John Green book, I would have enjoyed it more.
1)Hazel, the main character in The Fault in our Stars, falls for Augustus who has a humourous best friend called Isaac. Hazel and Gus create metaphors and dissect everything in the world.
2)Miles, the main character in Looking for Alaska, learns famous last words. He has a hilarious best friend/roommate called The Colonel and falls for the mysterious and gorgeous Alaska.
3)Quentin, the main character in Paper Towns, is an intelligent and quirky main character who been in love with Margo Roth Spiegelman for years and have humourous and lewd friends/sidekicks.
4)Colin, the main character in An Abundance of Katherines, has a best friend who creates fun and humor, Hassan. Colin has dated and been dumped by nineteen girls all with the same name, Katherine.
The story itself sounds extremely illogical and silly. How can one nerdy guy get dumped by nineteen Katherines and not learn that the name Katherine spells trouble for him? But this quirk worked positively for the story and was the part that I enjoyed the most.
Unfortunately, almost everything else in the story didn't work for me. The characters have some elements to them that makes them interesting, but at the same time, they are quite bland. I was unable to connect with the characters and relate to them. Almost every single event in An Abundance of Katherines is predictable. I couldn't shake off the feeling that I had read a book like this before.
I did love the footnotes and the anagrams. It brought some much needed uniqueness to the book. And the Maths... uhm... I kind-of skimmed through it because I'm not a Maths person. To be completely honest, the Maths scared me!
This book was a let down. It didn't have the uniqueness that I wanted it to have. Maybe if this was my first John Green book, I would have enjoyed it more.
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
"What matters to you defines your mattering..."
Third John Green I've read (TFIOS, Looking for Alaska), and though I've thoroughly enjoyed them all, this will probably be my least favourite.
What I will say about this book however, is that it's extremely useful when one is suffering a recent break up/broken heart. 'An Abundance of Katherines' deals with the sometimes painful emotional garbage with logical cold reason (to which I say "good riddance!"). I very much enjoyed Colin, our main character, strenuously adapting a mathematical formula to gain insight on the romantic compatibility of two people.
It's a quick read- and valuable for the tender grieving heart, trying to make sense of the senseless.
"Well, but it's not as good a story if you dumped her. That's how I remember things, anyway. I remember stories. I connect the dots and then out of that comes a story. And the dots that don't fit into the story just slide away, maybe. Like when you spot a constellation. You look up and you don't see all the stars. All the stars just look like the big fugging random mess that they are. But you want to see shapes; you want to see stories, so you pick them out of the sky. Hassan told me once that you think like that too-- that you see connections everywhere-- so you're a natural born storyteller, it turns out."
"I feel like, like, how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you do."
"He missed that, too, and it hadn't even happened. He missed his imagined future. You can love someone so much, he thought. But you can never love people as much as you can miss them."
"...[He] wondered only how something that isn't there can hurt you."
"They each came to precisely the same conclusion about him. He wasn't cool enough or good-looking enough or as smart as they'd hoped--in short, he didn't matter enough. And so it happened to him again and again, until it was boring. But monotony doesn't make for painlessness. In the first century CE, Roman authorities punished St. Apollonia by crushing her teeth one by one with pliers. Colin often thought about this in relationship to the monotony of dumping: we have thirty-two teeth. After a while, having each tooth individually destroyed probably gets repetitive, even dull. But it never stops hurting."
"She never liked me much, but she sure loved me."
"It was the immutable tango between the Dumper and the Dumpee: the coming and the seeing and the conquering and the returning home."
"After it felt like being stoned and sticked from the inside, a fluttering and then a sharp pain in his lower rib cage, and then he felt for the first time that a piece of his gut had been wrenched out of him."
"The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real."
"Even if it's a dumb story, telling it changes other people just the slightest little bit, just as living the story changes me. An infinitesimal change. And that infinitesimal change ripples outward-- ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter-- maybe less than a lot, but always more than none."
"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they'll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they'll always love you back."
"And the moral of the story is that you don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened."
"Nothing happened, really, but the moment was thick with mattering."
Third John Green I've read (TFIOS, Looking for Alaska), and though I've thoroughly enjoyed them all, this will probably be my least favourite.
What I will say about this book however, is that it's extremely useful when one is suffering a recent break up/broken heart. 'An Abundance of Katherines' deals with the sometimes painful emotional garbage with logical cold reason (to which I say "good riddance!"). I very much enjoyed Colin, our main character, strenuously adapting a mathematical formula to gain insight on the romantic compatibility of two people.
It's a quick read- and valuable for the tender grieving heart, trying to make sense of the senseless.
"Well, but it's not as good a story if you dumped her. That's how I remember things, anyway. I remember stories. I connect the dots and then out of that comes a story. And the dots that don't fit into the story just slide away, maybe. Like when you spot a constellation. You look up and you don't see all the stars. All the stars just look like the big fugging random mess that they are. But you want to see shapes; you want to see stories, so you pick them out of the sky. Hassan told me once that you think like that too-- that you see connections everywhere-- so you're a natural born storyteller, it turns out."
"I feel like, like, how you matter is defined by the things that matter to you. You matter as much as the things that matter to you do."
"He missed that, too, and it hadn't even happened. He missed his imagined future. You can love someone so much, he thought. But you can never love people as much as you can miss them."
"...[He] wondered only how something that isn't there can hurt you."
"They each came to precisely the same conclusion about him. He wasn't cool enough or good-looking enough or as smart as they'd hoped--in short, he didn't matter enough. And so it happened to him again and again, until it was boring. But monotony doesn't make for painlessness. In the first century CE, Roman authorities punished St. Apollonia by crushing her teeth one by one with pliers. Colin often thought about this in relationship to the monotony of dumping: we have thirty-two teeth. After a while, having each tooth individually destroyed probably gets repetitive, even dull. But it never stops hurting."
"She never liked me much, but she sure loved me."
"It was the immutable tango between the Dumper and the Dumpee: the coming and the seeing and the conquering and the returning home."
"After it felt like being stoned and sticked from the inside, a fluttering and then a sharp pain in his lower rib cage, and then he felt for the first time that a piece of his gut had been wrenched out of him."
"The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real."
"Even if it's a dumb story, telling it changes other people just the slightest little bit, just as living the story changes me. An infinitesimal change. And that infinitesimal change ripples outward-- ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter-- maybe less than a lot, but always more than none."
"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they'll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they'll always love you back."
"And the moral of the story is that you don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened."
"Nothing happened, really, but the moment was thick with mattering."
adventurous
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book is fun fun fun
A John Green book that doesn't make me cry? Why thank you An abundance of Katherines for not tearing my heart into pieces and stomping on them like looking for Alaska of TFIOS.
This is your basic John Green: nerd guy, girl and fun best friend but like all his other books it's fantabulous, his characters have such different personalities that it doesn't feel like they are the same in every book even if they are basically the same 3 types of people.
Colin our main guy is a prodigy that has dated way to many K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E-S no Kats, or Katies or Katrinas I was beginning to think he had a tattoo of the name so he need girls to match it :) his view on the world is that of an insecure teenager just wanting to matter but not knowing how to make himself matter.
There is a lot of funny facts in this book that come from Colin being a prodigy and the footnotes made the book, it's something different and fun.
Also the ending the realizations and the friendship was plain up lifting and left me with a grin :)
4.5/5 stars to you rejig, ole henchman
A John Green book that doesn't make me cry? Why thank you An abundance of Katherines for not tearing my heart into pieces and stomping on them like looking for Alaska of TFIOS.
This is your basic John Green: nerd guy, girl and fun best friend but like all his other books it's fantabulous, his characters have such different personalities that it doesn't feel like they are the same in every book even if they are basically the same 3 types of people.
Colin our main guy is a prodigy that has dated way to many K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E-S no Kats, or Katies or Katrinas I was beginning to think he had a tattoo of the name so he need girls to match it :) his view on the world is that of an insecure teenager just wanting to matter but not knowing how to make himself matter.
There is a lot of funny facts in this book that come from Colin being a prodigy and the footnotes made the book, it's something different and fun.
Also the ending the realizations and the friendship was plain up lifting and left me with a grin :)
4.5/5 stars to you rejig, ole henchman