The Abundance of Katherines (John Green)

Summary:
Colin is a new high school graduate with an obsession with anagrams and girls named Katherine. His first girlfriend was Katherine, then his second happened to be Katherine too. And every girl afterward, too, right up to his nineteenth Katherine. Each one of them broke up with him, and after the nineteenth break-up, he feels he's doomed to repeat the same mistake forever. His plump Middle-eastern best friend Hassan decides that they are going to spend the summer doing something not depressing, and going on a road trip. They wind up in a town called Gutshot. They meet a cute girl named Lindsey, her boyfriend Colin (The Other Colin, or TOC for short), and her mom, Hollis. They wind up staying in Gutshot for the summer, helping Hollis out in their little general store, and interviewing the townspeople about the world of Gutshot, and Colin decides to work out a mathematical equation for how long his relationships went on with all the Katherines. His singular focus is admirable to a point, but becomes sadly over-obsessed. Will he ever get over Katherine XIX, and be able to move on?

Thoughts:
Not the best John Green book I've read. I've become fairly enamored with his writing, to be sure, but this was not his best. The main character is annoying about his obsession, and while reading, I just wanted to smack him upside the head most of the time. Sure, the kid's brilliant. He's got a thing for anagrams, and he was a child prodigy. Great. So you're a smart kid. That doesn't mean you have to obsess over the littlest things. But that's how Green wrote him, and it wound up working. But the book dragged for far too long before we get to the good plot bits inside. I trudged through this one far more than I did with either Will Grayson, Will Grayson or The Fault in Our Stars. I'm disappointed, but not every book by a favored author can be fabulous. Just most of them. Oh, and one other minor, nitpicking thing that drove me completely mad. The physical inside the book was annoying. I don't know if it was Green's decision, the publisher, or a little of both, but there were page numbers only on the right side pages, which wound up being the odd numbers. This would have been fine for the most part, but the book dragged, and I kept wanting to know how much more until the end. What made it especially difficult was when the first page of a new chapter fell on an odd page. There were no page numbers on the page because the top of the page was an attractive, wide open space. Looks nice, but if you're only numbering every other page to begin with, this makes it hard to find a page or keep track of anything. As I said, nitpicky, but damn, I couldn't stand it.

Book 55 of 70

Pages: 215, 228 if you count the appendix
Genre: teen lit, romance
Grade: C
Would I Recommend?: Read the other two Green books I mentioned above over this one. I was disappointed. But if you're being a completionist about Green's work, I have read far worse books, so it's not completely unreadable.

A Fault in Our Stars (John Green)

Summary:
In John Green's newest book, Hazel is a sixteen year old who, since her diagnosis with lung cancer, has become a self-described homebody. She goes to Support Group, and not much else, and grudgingly at that. One fateful meeting of the Support Group, she meets Augustus Waters, and her whole existence changes. Augustus is hot, and he stares at her the whole meeting. The agree to read each other's favorite books, and from there the bond does nothing but grow.

Thoughts:
What a brutal, glorious, agonizingly beautiful book. I'd read one of Green's books before (Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and it was fantastic.) and appreciated his humor and the great writing. When, through Green's video blog, which my husband keeps up with, we learned that A Fault in Our Stars was getting released, we had to grab it. This latest novel is no less spectacular than his previous. (No, they have nothing to do with each other, except that they are both about teenagers. No series here, people!) Green creates characters that are endearing and wonderful, and you can't help but fall for them while they fall for each other. When I first cracked the cover, and discovered it was a book about cancer patients, I didn't want to read on, because I didn't want to be depressed over their illness. But this is not, as Green put it, "a cancer book." There's no epic fighting ending in a spectacular honorarium that Hazel fights to build so she can be remembered. Yes, the beginning is a tad uncomfortable for those of us blessed enough to not see the hardships with our own eyes. But Green leads the reader past the fact that Hazel is a cancer patient and leads you to exactly where Hazel would want you to be, forgetting at times that she's sick, ignoring the fact that she's going to die, and living with her while she creates her infinity with Augustus. It's cliche, and I know it is, but... I laughed. I cried. I loved this. Well done, Mr. Green. You've done it again.

Book 13 of 50

Pages:336
Genre:teen lit
Grade:A+
Would I Recommend?:Hell yes. Please do. You won't regret it at all. Promise.