An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, the #1 bestselling New York Times author of The Fault in Our Stars was given to me from Scott as a gift. I had never heard of it, never had an innate desire to read, but soon after reading it discovered that I loved and adored every footnote and every reference to our main character sucking at being a child prodigy (and yes this book has footnotes).An Abundance of Katherines was exceedingly clever by page 4. It is about child prodigy, Colin Singleton, who is called a "sitzpinkler" by his best friend, Hassan, and who has been dumped 19 times by girls named Katherine. Colin is obsessed with becoming a genius and mattering to society ... something he has been groomed to believe by his parents who upon hearing that he was a child prodigy felt that if they pushed him enough his crazy ability to learn things would turn into a crazy ability to make a difference in the world ... aka become a genius. This book made me feel good.
The book includes 19 chapters and frequent footnotes which explain a part of the story which makes the footnotes a competing story (in my mind) but a fascinating one. Colin wants to become a genius, has a desire to learn Sanskrit, and eventually is convinced by his best friend to go on a road trip to overcome the whole in his stomach from his latest dumpee experience from Katherine XIX.
Here is the first couple sentences of the first paragraph of the novel ... and what ultimately led me to believe that I would love this story. It is funny. It is sad. And I can relate to Colin Singleton's melancholy:
"The morning after noted child prodigy Colin Singleton graduated from high school and got dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, he took a bath. Colin had always preferred baths; one of his general policies in life was never to do anything standing up that could just as easily be done lying down ..."
Footnote #3 of the book states that: Sitzpinkler is "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."
Colin is a wuss. AND a pessimistic wuss at that ... who again needs to become a genius to feel that he matters to society. He is overly analytic of everything and his best friend is obese and in love with Judge Judy.
Colin has a penchant for making anagrams. Such as turning POTS into STOP. He is therefore quite a whiz at scrabble. He has a slight obsession with numbers and statistics and believes that his claim to fame (fame being the adult replacement for popularity) is going to be his ability to create a mathematical formula (he doesn't consider himself good at math, but being a child prodigy he is still better than most people) that predicts how long a relationship will last - based on his relationship with many girls named Katherine and how much of a dumper or dumpee one person may be in any given relationship. Colin also has a preoccupation with the Archduke Franz Ferdinand (who become famous for basically doing nothing) and Franz Ferdinand ultimately becomes the reason why Hassan and Colin stop in the middle of nowhere during their road trip ... they see a sign to see the grave of the Archduke which seem entirely impossible to Colin - but he must check it out anyway. It is here in Gutshot, Tennessee that he meets Lindsey Lee Wells - a paramedic in training and also Franz Ferdinand tour guide.
Lindsey Lee Wells's mother owns a factory that makes tampon strings. Colin is confused by many things having to do with women-kind. For example, "Tampons have string? Why? Of all the major human mysteries - God, the nature of the universe, etc. - he knew the least about tampons. To Colin, tampons were a little bit like grizzly bears: he was aware of their existence, but he'd never see on in the wild, and didn't really care to." Colin is recognized by Hollis Wells (Lindsey's mother) immediately because he won a game show for child geniuses (basically). Colin and Hassan decide to stay in Gutshot at Lindsey and Hollis's house, and Colin works to perfect his way to graph out human relationships. An appendix in the book is math-laden and explains how said formula predicts the rise and fall of relationships based on specific variables. John Green (the author) got his genius-math-friend to actually create the formula and the graphs.
Colin thinks about Katherine XIX a lot. "The missing piece in his stomach hurt so much - and eventually he stopped thinking about the Theorem and wondered only how something that isn't there can hurt you." His theorem is an attempt to reach his genius potential but also kick away some of the hurt that he feels because of his ended relationship with the last Katherine.
When not thinking about Katherine, when not working on this mathematical theorem, Colin read books. "The reading quieted his brain a little. Without Katherine and without the Theorem and without his hopes of mattering, he had very little. But he always had books. Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they'll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back."
Colin reminds me of myself. When I'm depressed, when I feel like I don't matter, books take me away to somewhere better and give me all the love and solace I need. As I mentioned in my blog post about A Dance with Dragons ... readers can experience a thousand lives while someone who doesn't read will only know one.
Colin continues to live in Gutshot. He and Lindsey (and Hassan) are paid by Hollis (Lindsey's mother) to record the stories of Gutshot locals (mostly people who worked at the factory in all things tamponery). This amazing book shifts from love, to compassion, to books, to telling stories. All things I love and value highly. The idea of "what does it mean to be meaningful" is explored more deeply as the book goes on. For example, George Hodel was a child prodigy (mentioned in the book) and he is also most likely a serial killer ... many speculate that he committed the Black Dahlia murder. And if you don't know what the Black Dahlia murder is, then you are stupid so go look it up and become less stupid. Thanks.
Anyways ... in this book Colin and Hassan have best friend fights, Colin and Hassan learn to let one another know when they cross a line (dingleberries or some such code word), Colin learns to become less of a sitzpinkler, and everyone learns that to matter you have to believe that you matter. This book is hilarious. It is poignant. It is a delightful story about what it means to tell stories and what it means to hear them ... something I explored in my senior year project (details of that senior project are posted below). This books ends up being about compassion. What does it mean to be compassionate, what does that look like and feel like (sometimes it's severely unpleasant), and what does it truly mean to matter in life? As teenagers we also come to face the realization that we're not as special as we thought we were once.
I cannot recommend this story enough. 
Love, compassion, stories, growing up and coming-of-age ... An Abundance of Katherines is about having an abundance of potential and being brave enough to bring that potential forth. The book is truly a comical masterpiece with heartfelt sincerity. The Fault in Our Stars was a great book but I feel as though this book has more to it if you're willing to look. Who hasn't wanted to run away from that hole in your stomach? Who hasn't had a best friend that kept you floating when you just wanted to drown? Who hasn't realized that someone held more compassion than you ever thought they were capable of holding? And who hasn't found love in unlikely places?
"The future will erase everything - there's no level of fame or genius that allows you to transcend oblivion. The infinite future makes that kind of mattering impossible ... But ... There are stories. The stories they'd told each other were so much a part of the how and why of his liking her ... And he found himself thinking that maybe stories don't just make us matter to each other - maybe they're also the only way to the infinite mattering he'd been after for so long ... Even if it's a dumb story, telling it changes other people just the slightest little bot, just as living the story changes me. An infinitesimal change ... ripples outward - ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter - maybe less than a lot, but always more than none." "You can never love people as much as you can miss them."
My senior year of college I did basically what Lindsey, Hassan, and Colin did and I set forth with my tape recorder and asked people to simply "tell me a story." I recorded their story, transcribed it, and eventually took stories from different people and combined them together to create a one woman performance. This book reminded me of the love I once had for living in stories and the desire I will ALWAYS have to matter. To find love and keep it. To experience loss and survive it. To have friends to get me through and experience adventure. And ultimately to be compassionate and save those who need saving even if that means sacrificing myself. READ. THIS. BOOK.
I can't tell you the highly academic name of my senior project because I forgot it. Sometimes academics need to pull their "look at me on my high horse" heads out of their asses. But An Abundance of Katherines reminded me that the stories we tell, no matter how we tell them, do matter.
Finally ... if you find this book interesting ... here is John Green's website. He has posted great insights into his novels and answered some pretty great FAQ's. Give it a shot! And thanks for reading. Let me know if you find this book of his better than The Fault in Our Stars ... I'm curious for some other opinions. http://johngreenbooks.com/abundance-of-katherines/
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