I Have Many Books (But I Don’t Have Paper Towns Yet)

In response to John Green’s offer to give away a copy of his latest book Paper Towns I wrote a song about me not having said book. Yet. I have his previous two books, though. If you haven’t heard of John Green, I suggest you check out An Abundance of Katherines. It features eloquent German insults, but is ultimately a young adult novel. With math.

Writing the lyrics to this song was fun, because I could arrange the actual books accordingly. Once I had recorded everything I made a little video to illustrate this process – and also to clarify what I’m actually singing about.

Download “I Have Many Books (But I Don’t Have Paper Towns Yet)”: mp3 (more music)

I have the best German fairytale, the best Scholastic book
I have comedies and screenplays that are really, really good
I have My Heart So White and a book about you
About the end of the world and about aliens, too
I have Looking for Alaska as you can see
An Abundance of Katherines belongs to me
I have many books from A to Z
But I must confess I don’t have Paper Towns, yet

I have books that sound dirty but are really all right
I have books that sound nerdy but are dirty inside
I have Reasons to Be Pretty, I have reasons to be smart
I have books about emotion but none about art
I have Looking for Alaska as you can see
An Abundance of Katherines belongs to me
I have many books some of which are red
But I must confess I don’t have Paper Towns, yet

I have The Devil’s Dictionary and books about Gods
The complete works of Shakespeare, a book about odds
I have books that are funny and some that are sad
Some are amazing and some are rather bad
I love Catching Fire; I wonder how it ends
I have The Elements of Style in your pants
I have Looking for Alaska as you can see
An Abundance of Katherines belongs to me
And for full disclosure I also have The Fountainhead
But as of now I don’t have Paper Towns, yet

(words and music by Johannes Schult)