An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

I've read The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns by John Green previously and thoroughly enjoyed both of them. So I was expecting quite a lot from An Abundance of Katherines.

I was, therefore, disappointed when it didn't 'grab' me straight off.

I found Colin annoying more than endearing and the dialogue with his friend, Hassan seemed forced rather than funny. And I can't begin to tell you how much I hated their use of the word 'fug'.


I almost gave up.

But then on pg 119 Lindsay asks the boys, "Hey, why the fuck do you and Hassan say fug all the time?"

And it turns out that they had a very good reason - I just wish the revelation hadn't come past the halfway mark!

This is not as good as Green's other books, but it still has lots of great things to say about relationships, life viewed through teen eyes and growing up.

Perhaps it's having a child prodigy as your lead?

Not many readers can identify with that. And it certainly takes a long time to warm to Colin.

Whereas, Green's other books have likeable protagonists that could be anyone, anywhere.

An Abundance of Katherines contains swearing, sexual references and one sex scene. It also contains maths equations, footnotes & an appendix!

It also counts as a book for my TBR Pile Challenge, Eclectic Reader Challenge, Literary Explorations Reading Challenge & What's In A Name Challenge.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

Regular viewers of my blog may have noticed that I've been playing around with backgrounds and layout lately.

When I was doing my 2013 retrospectives, I realised that in July of this year, I will celebrate my 5 years of blogging anniversary.

It seemed like the right time to refresh the way my blog looks.

If I could just work out how to centre my blog name and/or find a banner I like then I would be satisfied with the new look. Any ideas?

But now it's time to get on with all the backed up reviews from my summer reading.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton won the Booker Prize in 2013. Which means that I can tick this book off my Eclectic Reader Challenge - Award Winning category.

It's also a chunkster, fits the historical fiction/whodunnit genre and it's a book that uses a structural conceit based on astrology.

These are three big crosses in many people's books.
But I'm happy to tackle a chunkster given time and interest and I love historical fiction. As for structural conceits - sometimes they can be annoying, but sometimes they work. Enough has been written elsewhere about this, so I won't go into details except to say that I was okay with it. In fact, I barely noticed the astrological divisions and I didn't feel that I needed to have a working knowledge of astrology to understand the book either.

There are also a number of reviews out there complaining about the wordiness of this book.

Yes, it's wordy, but I didn't think so in a bad way. For me all the words created an incredibly rich, detailed picture of the place, the people and the drama.

The place is Hokitika on the western coast of the South Island of NZ - a place I have visited way back when in 1993. Not quite the goldrush era, but the weather hasn't changed that much in any time!
I could still feel the cold and the wind and I could taste the briny air along with the characters.

It was in Hokitika, that I also bought a beautiful pounamu drop pendant "smooth, milky-grey stones that, when split, showed a glassy green interiors, harder than steel." (pg 99) that Te Rau Tauwhare hunted for.

The people include all the usual suspects to be found in a booming gold-rush town. Miners, Maori's, business men, hard-working Chinese, sailors, prostitutes, drunks, adventurers and con-artists.

The beginning could be a little off-putting for some, as 12 Hokitika locals meet in secret to piece together their knowledge of certain mysterious and sinister events. A stranger enters their midst and becomes their sounding board.

I was mesmerised from start to finish. I was able to keep track of the long list of characters thanks to the chart in the front of the book. I loved how Catton weaved together all the various elements, revealing just enough juicy titbits to keep me guessing.

I enjoyed the sense of time & place and I loved how the ending revealed the love story hidden in the mystery.

The Booker award is given each year to a book, that in the judge's opinions, is the best novel published in the Commonwealth, for that year. They pride themselves on promoting quality literature for the average intelligent reader.

This is not high literature or literature with a capital L; but The Luminaries is entertaining, well-written & deserving of awards & praise.

The Luminaries also fulfills one of my countries visited (New Zealand) for Giraffe Days Around the World Challenge.

2014 Challenges

It's that time of year - when the New Year challenge call goes out to those of us in blogger land.

Will we, or won't we join up? How many challenges? Will I keep to my plan? Or is simply something else to fail at?

So far I've avoided yearly challenges in my 5 years of blogging.
I love a read-along or a special event, like Austen in August or Pym reading week.

I adore The Classics Club with it's five year, open-ended plan to read 50 classics (or in my case 75). It's something I would have done anyway, but the CC actually gives me a purpose and reason  for those times I might feel a little unmotivated.

Given how much I've enjoyed the CC, I decided it was time to join in a few of the 2014 challenges on offer that might help me stay focused and give me a structure to fall back on.

Firstly, Adam @Roof Beam Reader is hosting The Official 2014 TBR Pile Challenge. His challenge is simple and goes like this...

This  challenge was started after I realized I had such an issue buying books but never reading them (not because I don’t read – but because I have such a book buying problem!). So, year after year, books would sit on my shelf, untouched, and I would end up reading newer ones first. I realized I was missing out on a lot of great books because I let them sit there gathering dust instead of reading them as I bought them.

The Goal: To finally read 12 books from your “to be read” pile (within 12 months).

Obviously, to anyone who has seen the pile of unread books by my bed, this challenge and I are a match made in heaven.

But because I like to make simple things difficult, I've decided to combine more than one challenge!

Onto Shelley Rae @Book'd Out and her Eclectic Reader Challenge. 

The idea is to read 12 books, one from each category listed below. I figured I had enough books in my TBR pile to cover the first 11 categories easily!

*  You can read your chosen titles in any order, at any pace, just complete the challenge by December 31st 2014 to be eligible for the prize drawing.

Categories

1. Award Winning  - The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (New Zealand)
2. True Crime (Non Fiction) 

3. Romantic Comedy 

4. Alternate History Fiction 

5. Graphic Novel 

6. Cosy Mystery Fiction 

7. Gothic Fiction 

8. War/Military Fiction 

9. Anthology 

10. Medical Thriller Fiction 

11. Travel (Non Fiction) 

12. Published in 2014 - The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

But to make life REALLY interesting, I discovered that Shannon @Giraffe Days is hosting an Around the World Challenge for 2014.

The idea is to read books set in "a specific country or region with a noticeable attention to location of environment."

She has allowed for different participation levels by creating 4 levels - the happy camper (min of 2 books), the wayfarer (min of 4 books), casual tourist (min of 6 books) & the seasoned traveller (12 book challenge).

The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata (Japan)
Parisians by Graham Robb (France)
The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee (India)

The list below makes me a Wayfarer, but I'm sure I will read more books from around the world as the year progresses.

My list is beginning to look a little something like this...

1. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Award Winning, TBR & North America)

2. Jerilderee Letter by Ned Kelly (True Crime, TBR & Australia)

3. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (Rom Com & TBR)

4. 11/22/63 by Stephen King (Alt History & TBR)

5. The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman (Graphic Novel & TBR)

6. Maisie Dobbs: Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear (Cosy Mystery, TBR & Britain)

7. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (Gothic, TBR & Classics Club)

8. Parade's End by Ford Maddox Ford (War, TBR & Classics Club)

9. The Philosophy of Food edited by David Kaplan (Anthology, TBR)

10. Next by Michael Crichton (this is the tricky one - Medical Thriller - my least favourite genre! This book is officially on Mr Books TBR pile and not mine, but it's in the house, unread by me, and as close as I'll  probably get !)

11. Thin Paths by Julia Blackburn (Travel, TBR & Italy)

12. TBA in 2014!

Adam wisely suggested having a couple of back up titles in case one or two of the above turn out to be duds or not do-able. 

1. The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov (War, TBR, Russia & Classics Club)

2. Sherlock Holmes (Cosy Mystery, TBR, Britain)

3. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (Award Winning, TBR, France)

4. Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk (Award, TBR, Turkey)

All the books in the challenges below are also titles from my TBR piles! I'm hoping to really put a dint in it this year (as long as I resist the urge to keep adding to it!!)

What's in a Name? is being hosted by The Worm Hole.

The idea is to read a book that fits into the categories creatively designed by the host.

This year, the categories are (with some of my possibilities in brackets):

1.  A Reference to Time (11/22/63, Parade's End and Next)

2.  A Position of Royalty (Winter King, The Sun King, Children of the King)

3.  A Number Written in Letters (Ninety-Three, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness)

4.  A Forename or Names (Olive Kitteridge, An Abundance of Katherines, Elizabeth: My Royal Story, Eugenie Grandet, Villette, Nana & Maisie Dobbs: Elegy For Eddie)

5.  A Type or Element of Weather (Cold Spring Harbor, Summer Lies, Winter Journal)

Karen at Books and Chocolate is now hosting Back to the Classics.

Books must be at least 50 years old and fit the categories below:

1. A 20th Century Classic ( To the Lighthouse, Olive Kitteridge )
2. A 19th Century Classic (The Jerilderee Letters, Eugenie Grandet, Sherlock Holmes, No Name)
3. A Classic by a Woman Author (Villette)
4. A Classic in Translation  If English is not your primary language, then books originally published in English are acceptable.  You could also read the book in its original language if you are willing and able to do so. (something by Dostoyevski, Balzac (Eugenie Grandet) Proust, Emilé Zola (Nana) or Mikhail Bulgakov)
5. A Wartime Classic  2014 will be the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I.  Any book relating to a war is fine -- WWI, WWII, the French Revolution, the War of the Worlds -- your choice. (Parade's End, Ninety-Three, Regeneration)
6. A Classic by an Author Who Is New To You This can be any author whose works you have not read before.  It doesn't necessarily have to be an author you've never heard of.  (The Chateau by William Maxwell, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath)

There are a number of other 2014 challenges around that my reading list above (& remaining TBR piles around the house) could also apply to. 

Such as:

Fanda @Classiclit who is hosting the History Reading Challenge (London by Peter Ackroyd, Culture & Imperialism by Edward W Said, The Boy: A Holocaust Story by Dan Porat, 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow by Adam Zamoyski, Marie Curie).

Michael +Literary Exploration who is hosting his annual Literary Exploration Challenge (it should be easy for me to complete the easy challenge, but a little more effort will be required to get through the next two levels - Click here for my Goodreads page for this challenge.

Joy's Book Blog and her New Years Resolution Reading Challenge (maybe I will finally tackle my 2013 What Colour is Your Parachute? book)

There's always the Chunkster Reading Challenge (The Luminaries, The Brothers Karamazov, No Name by Wilkie Collins, A Place of Greater Safety, Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee, The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee) 

Words and Peace's Books on France Reading Challenge (Father Gariot, Eugenie Grandet, The Most Beautiful Walk in the World, Paris at the End of the World, The Chateau, Chronicles of Old Paris, The Flaneur, The Devil's Pool, Indiana, The Reef, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Louise de la Valliere, Swann's Way, Parisians by Graham Robb).

The Foodie's Read (The Omnivore's Dilemma, Cooked & Season to Taste) 

Or the Colour Coded Reading Challenge (The White Earth, Olive Kitteridge, The Colour Purple, The Red Necklace, The Silver Blade, The Blue Castle) to keep me going!

Am I crazy? Have I been too ambitious? Or will it be a fun way to get through some of the books on my TBR pile in 2014?

Wish me luck !