Unshelved Book Club: An Abundance of Katherines

Coincidence or cosmic sign? This comic promoting the John Green novel An Abundance of Katherines was published the very same day that I finished reading the book! I actually listened to the audiobook, which is read by Jeff Woodman, and I think that the romantic parts are even better when he is reading them out loud than if I was reading them on the pages myself. Not that there are that many romantic parts, since the narrator, Colin, is miserable for most of the book as he mopes and moans about how he has dated NINETEEN girls named Katherine and they have all dumped him. That right there should be enough to make you want to read the book, but then there is his best friend Hassan, and a road trip, and the town of Gutshot, Tennessee, and the grave of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and that's when things start to get really interesting. Colin is a slightly neurotic child prodigy with language and facts and numbers, who is hoping to grow up into a bona-fide genius, but is worried that he will turn out {gasp} normal and not unique and that he won't matter. Although I read the book to find out more about the nineteen Katherines, I ended up enjoying Colin's struggle to "matter" more than I anticipated.

I checked it out. 7 hours.