Juvenile Fiction
Dutton Childrens Books
2006
ebook
227
Owned
2007 Michael L Printz Honor Book
Katherine V thought boys were gross
Katherine X just wanted to be friends
Katherine XVIII dumped him in an e-mail
K-19 broke his heart
When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type happens to be 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.
I use GoodReads to keep track of books. Sometimes, I check reviews of books I’m thinking of reading, some books go on the TBR list regardless of what others think. Others don’t make the cut. For some books, these Printz books in particular, I wait to look at reviews until I’m done reading, I want to avoid having preconceived notions of a book if I can.
I’m always interested in reading what people who didn’t like a book have to say, this helps me clarify what I think — maybe the thing that someone else hates is the thing that made a book work for me. Occasionally, other reviews make me change my mind. I’ve read reviews that point out something problematic about a book that I had enjoyed, and have ended up feeling differently, disliking the book after the fact.
All of which is to say: having read t”An Abundance of Katherines” before, and enjoying originally and on the reread, I read reviews by people who didn’t like the book with humor. I find myself wondering if we even read the same book! I saw words in these reviews like: “boring” or “predictable” or “characters were unlikeable” and my favorite “the math part was dumb.”
I thin k there’s a pretty fine line about predictability in books — in many genres, books follow a pretty specific formula. When you pick up certain books, you can expect certain things to happen by the end, and for many readers, it’s not the end of the story, it’s the journey to get there.
Do John Green books have a kind of template or a formula? I think so, yes, and that’s exactly why some people keep reading his books. But to me, that doesn’t make them boring or pointless, it’s what happens along the way that matters. It’s the conversations and insights about life, love, relationships, and why we’re even here that keep me reading.
As far as likeability of characters go — I didn’t have a problem with this book, personally, but that’s what makes the world go round. If everybody like the same people and things, I think it’d be pretty boring. I’m also quite sure I’ve said before that making a character “likeable” isn’t necessary for creating a character that people care about.
Readers expect their authors to keep up their end of a bargain or a contract. We come to certain genres and books knowing we’ll get a specific outcome. Sometimes, the author will appear to break that bargain, resulting in books getting tossed across the room, but then we go pick the book up, keep reading, and find out that the new thing the author gave us was even better than what we thought we wanted. Some authors do just plain destroy the bargain and for no good reason, and I don’t have a lot of patience for that.
To me, his promise is to make his readers feel something, to experience and learn something new about ourselves. I think John Green keeps his end of the bargain, even if unexpectedly, and I know I’ll keep reading.
