An Abundance of Katherines: Tasty Soft Serve Ice Cream

It happened at Costco.

I hadn't had breakfast, but I had been eating from the buffet of free samples throughout the store. My blood sugar started to drop and I started making poor decisions, such as picking up a Value Pack of Häagen-Dasz ice cream bars.

It was while I was in my low blood-sugar stupor that I passed the giant pile-o-books near the sweat pants and chocolate bars.

Because this was Costco, the books were all sold in shrink-wrapped Value Packs. On one side of the table there were shrink-wrapped series: Game of Thrones, 50 Shades of Shit, Twilight, Hunger Games; on the other side of the table were books shrink-wrapped by author: John Grisham, Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, John Green.

When I saw the John Green collection I thought, "Hey.. Doesn't everyone love John Green? I wonder why. Wasn't An Abundance of Katherines banned or something? Maybe I should read his stuff." I decided to pick it up, along with a Value Pack of Kinder Bueno Bars so I'd have something to snack on on my way home.

Once I got home and ate something other than a Kinder Bueno bar, I started feeling buyer's remorse. I started wondering who I could gift The Fault in Our Stars to; I really did not feel like reading that book. I was going to read An Abundance of Katherines only because it had been banned, but I had no intention of reading the other two books: Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska (though I did in the end, but that's a different blog post).

Anyways: the book.

It wasn't bad.

I wouldn't say it was the world's best book, or even one of the better books I've ever read, but it was OK.

The plot is that this guy Colin is some kind of genius, but he shows promise without making good on it. He's apparently been dumped by 19 Katherines (hence the title of the book) and is now trying to crack some bizarre mathematical Katherine-heart-winning code to win Katherine #19's heart back. Of course we all know that that isn't going to happen. Some contrivance does happen to get him to go on a road trip and then meet a girl who's boyfriend's name just so happens to also be Colin. The girl is more or less a Manic Pixie Dream Girl with some extra personality and depth of character, and things go on as you'd expect these things to go because this book has all the depth of a shallow wading pool.

Now, that said, it's a pretty cute book. The writing is well-done; it's funny; it's fun. Because it's well-written and the characters are well-developed, you get fairly involved with them, and you start to care for them as deeply as you will ever care for somewhat shallow teen protagonists.

There really is no twist to this book. It's a straight up road-trip-come-romance. There's no deep meaning, no metaphors for anything, and no insights into the human condition. It's basically the equivalent of good quality chocolate-vanilla-swirl soft serve. How this book managed to get banned is entirely beyond me.

Charlotte Street: A Cheap Ripoff of High Fidelity

If there were any justice in this world, someone would have called out Charlotte Street for the cheap ripoff of High Fidelity it is.

What blurred lines?

Unfortunately, there is no justice. Instead we have people saying that Danny Wallace was "influenced" by High Fidelity, or "drew inspiration" from it, or that Charlotte Street is "reminiscent" of High Fidelity. But believe you me, this is a cheap ripoff if I ever saw one. If this were a song, it would be on Rob From High Fidelity's List of Five Hit Songs That Were Cheap Ripoffs of Genius Originals.

Charlotte Street isn't even a clever cover or reimagining like Clueless (Emma), or 10 Things I Hate About You (Taming of the Shrew), or Arctic Monkey's cover of Drake's Going 
Home, or anything by Weird Al; no, it's just a cheap ripoff, like My Sweet Lord, or Blurred Lines, or Led Zeppelin's entire catalogue (let's see if anyone is actually reading this). The damned book even has the same "twists" as High Fidelity. What it doesn't have that High Fidelity does is insight, wit, character development, and excellent writing; and what it does have that High Fidelity doesn't is two-dimensional characters, a pointless road trip, a stupid scene at a wedding, and a pat happy ending.

If the book had been tremendously good or spectacularly bad, I may not have regretted buying it, but it's a mediocre book that appears to have been written for the purpose of being made into a movie script. It has all the depth and charm of The Help, but with less suspense because you've already read this book.

Charlotte Street angers me more and more as I think about it. I wish I could ask for my money back.