I am trying really hard to read more books. It has been a long time since I sat down and truly read a book. The first book I read was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Since I enjoyed that book so much (seriously, go read it), I decided to give another Green book a try. So I picked up his second book, An Abundance of Katherines. It is the story of Colin, a (somewhat former) child prodigy who has a tendency to date girls named Katherine. He has dated nineteen of them, to be specific. When Katherine XIX dumps him (as all Katherines do), Colin falls into a depression. His not-a-terrorist Muslim friend, Hassan, suggests they take a summer road trip as a change of pace. The duo ends up in Gutshot, Tennessee, thanks to a roadside attraction featuring the grave of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This is where they meet Lindsey Lee Wells, the Archduke's tour guide, a paramedic in training, and overall celebrity in Gutshot. Colin, who is still extremely smart despite his not-a-genius-not-a-prodigy state of being, decides to become a genius by creating the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Probability. This theorem is supposed to predict a future relationship between any two people. Lindsey's mother gives the boys a job for the summer. They need to interview various residents of Gutshot to get an oral history of the town. Even though that sounds like a horribly boring job, the boys find much more than they ever expected.
I will start out saying that I didn't like this book nearly as much as I liked The Fault in Our Stars. That isn't to say this is a terrible book, though. I'm not a big fan of math so a lot of the information revolving around The Theorem went right over my head. While the math does take up quite a bit of space in the book, it isn't everything. The story of Colin finding himself and Hassan figuring out what to do with his life and Lindsey finding out who she is are all very interesting.
Actually, my biggest problem with the book was the footnotes. I read the book on my Kindle. So for every footnote, I would have to page forward to the end of the chapter to read it, then try to page back to where I was. Obviously, this wouldn't be such a huge problem if you were reading a paper version of the book but I'm not sure how many people read paper books anymore. My 11-year old daughter is the only person I know that still prefers paper books to electronic ones.
If you can look past the footnote issue, I'd recommend giving the book a try. It isn't for everyone. My daughter didn't like it as much as I did but she didn't dislike it either. It doesn't read quite as fast as TFiOS and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I liked it and I hope there's something in there for you too.