An Abundance of Katherines by John Green was a Printz Honor Book for 2007. I listened to this on audio and while at first I didn’t like the narrator, by the end of the book I felt he did a fine job.
First, the positives. This story was intelligent and funny and I laughed out loud several times. I loved all the math in the book (engineering geek that I am), and I wish I could have seen the equations on the actual pages instead of hearing them read. In fact, I would have gotten the book from my library for this purpose in addition to the audio, but it was already checked out. I will still probably do that at some point. I also liked the characters. Just like the book itself, they were intelligent and funny. And lastly, John Green is a good writer.
But….the content. The content, the content, the content. There is a lot of language. There are also a lot of substitutions for a certain word with ‘fug’ instead. An interesting sidenote is that apparently Norman Mailer was the inventor of this word. I’m no stranger to these substitutions, I thought it was kind of funny in Battlestar Galactica (frakkin Cyclons), but is it really appropriate in a young adult book? Do I think teenagers not use these words? No, I know they do. Did I read books as a teenager that used these words? Yes, I did. But, I sneaked them. Books that had ‘content’ were discouraged in my day, not encouraged. Now, any and all language and s*x is fine in teen books and even lauded. There is also a s*x scene described in Green’s book that I found very inappropriate. Do I not know that some teens have s*x? No, of course I do. Did I not read Forever and Wifey in high school? Yes, of course I did. But again, it was not encouraged by my parents and librarians.
If you’re still reading this far and have not given up in disgust by my old-fashioned ways, I will say it again: I thought An Abundance of Katherines was intelligent, funny, and well-written. I just won’t be handing it over to my two teenage sons to read. If it weren’t for the content, I would be giving this book a 4.5 rating, but as it is, it gets a 3.5 rating instead. (Ducks head anticipating the bashing I will receive.)
2006, 256 pp.
I wouldn’t hand a John Green book to my teenager, either, although he actually dislikes books with a lot of sex and language, anyway. He’s all about the story. I did love this book, though. You shouldn’t get bashed — everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.
You must have done the Bloggiesta thing. My jaw dropped when I opened my reader. 40 entries!!!! Goodness! I would have joined in, but we just had too much to do around the house.
Bookfool, I did do Bloggiesta, but the reason I had 40 entries in my feed was because I lost 7 months of posts! I was able to go back and copy and paste them from my google reader, but I’m super sad I lost all my comments.
Oh, no! That’s horrible!!! I’m glad you at least had them in your reader. I subscribe to my own feed, but I don’t keep my posts — I just look at them to make sure they look okay and then delete.
Nancy, do you use Bloglines or Google Reader? In GR, all I have to do is ‘select all’ instead of ‘new’ and all my old posts come up as well.
I lost a few comments in a blog crash. Here are some I recovered from email:
Booklogged from http://www.readfromatoz.blogspot.com/ said:
I haven’t read anything by Green, but I appreciate you pointing out the language and s*x. My 20-yr-old read and loved this book. Now I think I better read it so I can discuss these things with her and learn her thoughts about them. I know I can’t really control what she reads, but I can weigh in with her on values. So thanks for your frank review. She also reads Green’s blog or facebook or something. I think I’ll check that out as well.
Kailana from http://myreadingbooks.blogspot.com said:
I don’t think about books in terms of appropriateness to age groups… Probably because I don’t have children of my own, so I didn’t even pick up on the things that you mentioned until right now.
Veens from http://nidhiveens-loveforbooks.blogspot.com said:
it sounds good!
I never thought on these terms, seriously. But I would anyways go ahead and read this book
Bree from http://www.thethingsweread.blogspot.com said:
I’m with you. I picked up this book to read but wasn’t into it at the time. I still want to read book because his books are recommended by teachers and librarians. However the language in teen books could be cleaned up. I completely agree. Like you, I realize teens swear, have sex, discuss issues but do I want to hand them a book that has all that graphically displayed? No. I also read books with content in high school but they were classified as adult novels. They were not in the teen novel section. I really don’t understand why teen novel authors can’t clean up the language/content and still get their point across. I think the real reason it bothers me is people tend to read “up” a level. Such as older teens read adult, jr high teens read high school teen books, 5/6th grade read jr high books. Books that authors intended for high school or older teens are being read by jr high schoolers. Others will agrue its the parents responsibility but if a responsible parent is letting their child only get books from the appropriate shelves, how are they to know?
Joy from http://thoughtsofjoyblog.blogspot.com said:
I haven’t read this one, but I did read Looking for Alaska and agree with you 100%!
Shelley from http://blog.chainreader.com/ said:
I guess the scary thing is wondering if this is acceptable and encouraged by parents, how bad is the stuff that kids “sneak” these days. Or maybe they don’t feel like they have to?
Lisa from http://bookslistslife.blogspot.com said:
This one is my least favorite of the John Green books, but not for the same reasons. I was really annoyed by the “fug”, even with the explanation, but the s*x didn’t bother me. I just didn’t love either of the boys.
I knew you would like the math aspect of this book (as I did)!
I understand your concerns about the language, and I’ve been avoiding Looking for Alaska because of what I’ve read about the content. I thought this one was relatively benign, though, and I did recommend it to my daughters.
I am 13, a girl and read this book. To the person who wrote this review, bullsh**, if you don’t think young teens swear, you are in for a rude awakening, you’re wrong. We swear open and in public just like this book, we know what sex is and can handle this book maturely. My english teacher RECOMMENDED this book in class. 5/5 stars, you don’t know sh**.
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