Sunday, July 31, 2016

What I'm Reading This Week: An Abundance of Katherines

   It has been a while since my last post. With school and work, I definitely fell behind on my reading. In the time span of my last post, I've read only four books. I just came across An Abundance of Katherines by John Green and I immediately fell in love. If you haven't heard of John Green yet, I highly recommend you check him out. Most of his books are for teens so they are an easy read; so you can actually finish his books relatively quickly. I picked up An Abundance of Katherines this morning and I have roughly fifty pages of it left. Trust me; you will love John Green if you don't already.
   Our story centers around a recent high school grad, Collin. He is a child prodigy worrying about his future on top of girl troubles. He always falls in love with girls named Katherine. But his last relationship with whom he addresses as Katherine XIX left him depressed. She dumped him like all of the other previous Katherines. For Collin though, this break up was different. This time he really loved her. John Green put Collins break up in probably the best wording I have ever read. Collin's friend Hassan is always complaining how Collin should get over it  and how after 19 breakups he should be used to this by now. Being the prodigy Collin is, he compares his break up to a punishment seen by the Greeks. They pulled out all of this person's teeth. Just like teeth pulling is a monotonous task, so is getting dumped. However, now matter how many teeth you pull or how many people dump you, it doesn't hurt any less. I absolutely loved that. Collin in a last ditch ever to win her back and make her see that he is indeed a genius tries to find his "eureka" moment. He sketches a graph of his breakups and tries to come up with an equation to predict the outcome of a relationship. Just as Pythagoras believed that math can predict anything, Collin feels the same way. Numbers can predict love.
   I highly encourage this book to all of my John Green readers. It is definitely not a new book, so I am sure many people have read it. If you haven't though, definitely check it out. An Abundance of Katherines puts a new perspective on how to see relationships and offers some comic relief as well. John Green is a talented writer who offers a realistic perspective on romance. His books aren't fairy tales. The characters are relatable. We don't expect every relationship to work out perfectly. Nor do we expect to fall in love with the first pretty person we see. The same goes for John Green's stories. In An Abundance of Katherines, Collin is able to acknowledge all of these attractive girls but no matter how much he wants to move on, he can't forget about his first real love. John Green depicts break ups both poetically and accurately. He puts love in a logical and mathematical way. If you want an interesting and new romance novel, then this book is definitely for you.