John Green, An Abundance of Katherines, 2006.

My second John Green read, An Abundance of Katherines is a delightful romp. Immediately post break-up, Colin Singleton heads out on a road trip with his best friend, the very funny Hassan. Stopping in the amusingly named Gutshot, TN, the two luck into jobs and housing. Hassan immediately begins to make friends and fit in, while Colin mopes about his most recent girlfriend. Colin--a child prodigy who deeply wants to do something that matters--sets out to develop a formula which will predict which of two people in a relationship will be the dumper, and which the dumpee. He has a fair bit of data to make sense of, having had nineteen relationships with women all named Katherine.

Colin also has a lot of useless information at his fingertips, which may perhaps be why I identified with the lad. I experienced as much joy reading the footnotes--which play with or explain some of the details Colin shares--as I did reading the story! He's also a brilliant at anagrams, a skill in which I am profoundly lacking--to my detriment whenever I'm bored and there are only cryptics lying about.

At any rate, it's a funny, funny book and is touchingly sweet. My impression of Green as a solid and impressive YA author is soaring, and I should really introduce my mother to Green's work. I also need to get my hands on a copy of Paper Towns, to give it a read.