Book Review: An Abundance of Katherines

 

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

After winning a game show for "Smart Kids", former child prodigy Colin Singleton (who has dated and been dumped by nineteen girls named Katherine throughout his 18 years of  life) and his best friend embark on a road trip with Colin's game show winnings.

Although this is an award-winning book, I'm really torn between liking it and disliking it. I really like John Green's writing style, and the story itself is, for the most part, entertaining and well rounded. But Colin is so whiny, and actually really annoying, especially with his anagramming everything, and trying to predict how long a relationship will last through a math theorem, that it's hard to get through at times.

I give this book a C+.

If you liked this book (or even if you didn't), I definitely recommend The Fault in Our Stars, also by John Green. It is a great book.

Book Review: The Fault in Our Stars

Being an organizer of a large book club, I get all kinds of requests, many being from authors, or people who work for authors, wanting our group to read their latest work, most of which is self-published. And usually it's not just their latest work, but their first work. And in our past experiences, not good.

There's a lot of email screening happening on my part. And rejection.

But a little over a year ago, I got an email from a local mom starting up her own local kids magazine, called North County Kids Magazine. It's a great little gem, full of parenting tips, and events taking place in North County San Diego. She wanted to know if I'd be interested in writing book reviews, mom to mom. (In fact, it's called Mom to Mom...)

Um, heck yes I would.  Gosh!

It's seriously so fun and rewarding and I love it. It's brought in a few new members to the Hip Chicks Book Club even.

So I'll be posting some of my short reviews here on MAPC, and hopefully it'll help you find a new great read.

I'll start with one of my more recent reviews, for The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, which also happened to be our book club pick this month.

 

After meeting in a cancer support group for kids at a local church, Hazel and Augustus fall in love, and even find a little adventure, despite their diagnoses.

This is one of the top books I've read recently. I think I fell in love with the characters as much as they fell in love with each other. It's smart, hopeful, funny, and heartbreaking (have a tissue handy for sure! I balled my eyes out!). So many things I love in a book.

I give this book an A.

Bonus: The main character, Hazel Grace, was based on a real person named Esther Earl, who was quite an inspiration. John Green even dedicated TFIOS to her. Here's an article on Esther, and the book This Star Won’t Go Out: The Life & Words of Esther Grace Earl, which I'm very much looking forward to reading.