Farewell, Harry Potter

I wonder if "quirky-kid-who's-too-impossibly-smart-for-his-own-good" is the new "boy-finds-out-he-has-magical-powers-that-are-too-strong-for-his-own-good." I honestly kind of hope so. Don't get me wrong...I rather enjoy the Harry Potters of the word, but when I walk into the kids/teen section of the audio book store where I work and am hard pressed to find anything without witches, wizards, dragons, and friendly vampires, or, now days, wolves, it becomes a bit monotonous. So this brings me to John Green's An Abundance of Katherines.

I had heard quite a bit of hype about this book's predecessor: Looking for Alaska. It is, by no means, a sequel, but this is the book that introduced me to the author. I wasn't exactly impressed with this first book, but it is kind of half of my inspiration for doing this project. One of the characters, Alaska Young, has what she calls her "life library". It's a collection of books that she owns that she wants to finish before she dies. That is pretty much the same thing as my book collection had been. It was basically just a tangible "to read" list. This, however, in combination with the last book I read before this project, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, inspired me to actively work towards fulfilling this goal. In Bradbury's dystopian future, owning books is illegal. The only ones that they cannot take from you are the ones that you have committed to memory. Now, I don't foresee a time in our near future where this will become necessary, but it started me thinking: what is it that makes me possess a book? Is it the physical presence of that book in my hand, or the stories and the concepts that I store away in my mind?

So, even though the book's story didn't captivate me, it is evident that some of its ideas have. This, combined with hearing that the same people who raved about Looking for Alaska were let down by An Abundance of Katherines made me start to think that this may, indeed, be the better of the two books. And, in my opinion, it was. Green's second book is about a boy, Colin Singleton, who has a certain type of girl - those that are named Katherine. At first, it is coincidental, but, being the nerd that he is, when he sees the pattern arising, I believe this becomes his motivation in seeking out Katherines. At the start of the book, we find Colin wallowing in despair from being dumped by his 19th Katherine. Yes, that's right. 19. Now, some of you may say that that's unlikely, or even impossible, but if you can believe that an 11-year-old boy with latent magical powers is the chosen one who is predestined to defeat the ultimate evil, I think we can handle a slight suspension of disbelief at the fact that all of this boy's girlfriends have been named Katherine.

This book is set up in the form of a road trip between Colin and his best friend Hassan, the uncertainty of the journey mirroring the uncertainty of both boys' futures. Colin wants to become a genius and find a reason for the world to think he matters. Hassan wants to be as comfortable as possible doing as little as possible. What will become of this washed up child prodigy and his increasingly lazy friend? (Side note: this book differentiates between a prodigy and a genius. A genius is unfairly more intelligent than most everyone else. A prodigy just learns things quicker, but eventually evens out with the rest of his peers). In his quest to finding meaning, Colin decides to devise a formula that will accurately represent all past relationships, as well as predict the course of those to come.

This book was an especially good read for me. I may not be a recent high school graduate trying to find my way, but I am a recent college graduate who is still searching. Even if you have your lives 100% figured out, which, I'm guessing you don't, this book is still hilarious and well worth the couple days it will take you to finish.   

A Healthy Dose of Pessimism to Brighten Your Day :)

Oh, the future. Having gone through college to study something that you find out that you hate makes one prone to not wanting to think about the future. Yet we speculate anyway. In my mind, I've lived out many lifetimes: sometimes as a world famous author, sometimes as a philanthropist, trying in vain to make the wold suck less, and sometimes just living a quiet, simple life, close to family and friends. But the point is, we always plan for the future to be better than the present. With every human advancement come opportunities to innovate, to improve. But what is the limit to human ability? H. G. Wells asks this very question in the classic The Time Machine.

I would say that H. G. Wells' The Time Machine is part Beowulf and part Idiocracy. Sounds like an odd combination, to anyone who knows both the epic poem and the movie of which I speak, but it really is quite fitting. The protagonist of this story, known only as "The Time Traveler," ventures to an unknown future, hundreds of thousands of years from his late 1800s setting. What he finds there is an eerie, complacent people, much like those in Idiocracy, who have advanced so much that the lack of need for innovation has left them simple-minded. This people, the Eloi basically go about their lives seeking pleasure and merriment, with nothing to fear...except for the dark. To defend themselves against this great evil and whatever in it may lurk, they all sleep en masse, much like the men in Heorot, terrorized by the possibility of ambush.

To me, the most interesting aspect of this story is it's modern day relevance. It is essentially a story of a factional populace that has grown to hate and fear each other. It becomes extremely difficult to objectively judge who is the villain and who is the oppressed. I love this, because, even though our society loves to villanize each other, none of us are as right as we think we are. The Time Traveler starts to see that the issues behind the division may be more gray than black and white, but as the only outside observer, he does not have the luxury of remaining objective, when those around him are not willing or able to see that as an option.

This book is science fiction at its best; it doesn't wave around its technology only to say "look at all the cool things we can hypothetically invent!" Instead, it uses the setting as a tool to tell the story. Through these absurd characters and locations, we are able to see traces of our own humanity. In this way, the story is able to be more didactic. It shudders and says: "This is what humanity has the potential to become."