October 23rd, 2006
Get yourself a copy of An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. This novel is so inventive and funny and that it manages to make the familiar (a broken heart, a road trip, a funny sidekick, etc.) feel brand new.
(Unlike that last sentence, which is totally hackneyed but I’ve got a lot to do this morning and just wanted to quickly post about this great book and move on to the many tasks at hand, not the least of which is finishing up the latest chapter in the fourth Jessica Darling book. And yes, I mentioned finishing the latest chapter in the fourth Jessica Darling book as a blatant ploy to win your forgiveness for resorting to the aformentioned cliche.)
An Abundance of Katherines is so good that I feel like such an idiot because I haven’t read Green’s debut, Looking for Alaska, winner of the 2006 Printz Award for the best young adult novel. I’m flying to Antigua next week for the Caribbean Literary Festival, and now I know exactly what book to bring for the flight.
Oh. One more thing. The protagonist of An Abundance of Katherines is kind of obsessed with anagrams. Of course, I had to procrastinate by finding some for my name. And I discovered that Megan McCafferty rearranges to this combination of encouragement and self-praise: “Fancy! Craft gem. Me!” Or this unnervingly appropriate piece of advice from the past: “Fan fact. Mercy, Meg.”
