Blog this item

An Abundance of Katherines

By John Green

(28)

| Hardcover | 9780525476887

Like An Abundance of Katherines?
Join aNobii to see if your friends read it, and discover similar books!

Book Description

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. He's also a washedup child prodigy with ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a passion for anagrams, andContinue

Critics

An Abundance of Katherines By John Green

Unlike many of his fellow authors, John Green always intended to write books for young adults. " Most of the YA authors I know wrote a book and then were told it was YA, but I always wrote with that audience in mind," Green says. "I wanted to be a pa ... (read full critics)

bookpage published on Sat, 18 Sep 2010

AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES

I'll admit. I was thrown by the cover. If I hadn't been familiar with John Green's impressive debut, LOOKING FOR ALASKA, I might have passed AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES by, assuming it was a self-help book. But nothing was going to stop me from diving ... (read full critics)

teenreads published on Thu, 16 Sep 2010

See all critics

4 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

"He missed that, too, and it hadn't even happened. He missed his imagined future."

Is this helpful?

Control Freak said on Mar 2, 2008 | Add your feedback

Very funny and touching. One of the best authors for high school readers.

Is this helpful?

Rameycreek said on Oct 16, 2008 | Add your feedback

Favorite Quotesp. 8 ...sitzpinkler...[from footnote]A German word, slang for "wimp," that literally means "a man who sits to pee." Those wacky Germans--they've got a word for everything.p. 24 "It's a road trip! It's about adventure!" Hassan pounded on the steering wheel to emphasize his excitement. ... (continue)

Favorite Quotesp. 8 ...sitzpinkler...[from footnote]A German word, slang for "wimp," that literally means "a man who sits to pee." Those wacky Germans--they've got a word for everything.p. 24 "It's a road trip! It's about adventure!" Hassan pounded on the steering wheel to emphasize his excitement. "It's not like we have somewhere to go."I have always loved the idea of taking a road trip without a destination in mind, but I think I am too much of a planner for that.p. 34 It was not the way Curve smelled that Colin liked--not exactly. It was the way the air smelled just as Lindsey began to jog away from him. The smell the perfume left behind. There's not a word for that in English, but Colin knew the French word: sillage. What Colin liked about Curve was not its smell on the skin but its sillage, the fruity sweet smell of its leaving.p. 76 The act of leaning in to kiss someone, or asking to kiss them, is fraught with the possibility of rejection, so the person least likely to get rejected should do the leaning in or the asking. And that person, at least in high school heterosexual relationships, is definitely the girl. Think about it: boys basically, want to kiss girls. Guys want to make out. Always. Hassan aside, there's rarely a time when a boy is thinking, "Eh, I think I'd rather not kiss a girl today." Maybe if a guy is actually, literally on fire, he won't be thinking about hooking up. But that's about it. Whereas girls are very fickle about the business of kissing. Sometimes they want to make out; sometimes they don't. They're an impenetrable fortress of unknowability, really. Ergo: girls should always make the first move, because (a) they are, on the whole, less likely to be rejected than guys, and (b) that way, girls will never get kissed unless they want to be kissed. Unfortunately for Colin, there is nothing logical about kissing, and so his theory never worked. But because he always waited so incredibly long to kiss a girl, he rarely faced rejection.p.94-95 Lindsey is giving Colin lessons on storytelling "Okay," she said. "here's the thing about storytelling: you need a beginning, and a middle, and an end. Your stories have no plots. They're like here's something I was thinking and then the next thing I was thinking and then et cetera. You can't get away with rambling. You're Colin Singleton, Beginning Storyteller, so you've got to stick to a straight plot. "And you need a good, strong moral. Or a theme or wahtever. And the other thing is romance and adventure. You've got to put some those in. If it's a story about peeing into a lion cage, give yourself a girlfriend who notices how gigantic your winky is and then saves you from the lion at the last second by tackling you, because she's desperate to save that gorgeous, ginormous winky." Coling blushed, but Lindsey kept going. "In the beginning, you need to pee; in the middle, you do; in the end, through romance and adventure, your winky is saved from the jaws of a hungry lion by the pluck of a young girl motivated by her abiding love for giant winkies. And the moral of the story is that a heroic girlfriend, combined with a giant winky, will save you from even the most desperate situations."This part made me laugh out loud and I don't know how many times since then I have read it to someone or told someone about it. It just makes me smile!I was so excited to learn that farid is Arabic for unique. In Inkspell, one of my favorite characters is Farid (at least that is how I imagined it to be spelled, I listened to it on audio).

Is this helpful?

SheReads said on Mar 6, 2007 | Add your feedback

This was just an awesome story. Serious and laughable all at once, slightly angst-y and yet philosophical, in the way only John Green seems to be.

Is this helpful?

Jaemi K said on Oct 17, 2006 | Add your feedback