No DisreSPECT, John Green

I just finished reading...

This:


I bought it from HPB a few summers ago, and only just got to it because it's the week before finals week, and because during the week before finals week, I need to read something uncomplicated.

Unluckily, An Abundance of Katherines is not uncomplicated. It contains math. Theorems.

Luckily, I loved it anyway.

Although not as much as Looking For Alaska (which, to be fair, is a top notch book. Hard to beat). An Abundance of Katherines was original, yes, but what confused me was the way John Green (author) squeezed in a moral right at the end. The moral (I'm paraphrasing here) was that it's easy to become so caught up in a goal (being world-famous, being popular, etc.) that you don't remember why you wanted that thing (to be world-famous, to be popular, etc.) in the first place.

Here's the actual quote: "Maybe life is not about accomplishing some (kidscoveryoureyesquicklynow) bullshit markers."

And that's a great moral, truly it is. My problem was that I didn't get a sense throughout the book that the characters were trying too hard to accomplish -stupid- markers. In retrospect, yeah, but not in spect. Unfortunately, my friends, the spect is where I should be noticing things.

I almost think that the theorem, and the Katherine thing, and Hassan being awesome, and the Lindsey love story, and the (kidsagainpleaselookaway) tampon string factory crisis, and the road trip, and etc. distracted me from the point of the novel. Which is bad. An Abundance of Katherines tried to be about 10 different novels at once.

Whereas my spect's maximum is one.