Mockingjay Hypocrisy - Reading 'The Hunger Games'... from the Capital

Yes, it's true... Hunger Games mania is in full roar. And it's all a bit silly.

Don't get me wrong - when I read The Hunger Games, I fell in love with it too. Suzanne Collins hit upon a winner with it. It's a real page-turner, a quick read and I'm all for getting teens into reading - especially reading books with a kick-ass female protagonist in a not-so-distant-future dystopian United States.

The film came out, and it was remarkably faithful, but with it comes all manner of the problems that occur whenever something blows up into the mainstream -- including merchandizing, screaming fangirls, and hundreds upon hundreds of 'TEAM PEETA' Facebook statuses.

I'm in the middle of Catching Fire at the moment, and when I ran across this passage I couldn't help but laugh. We are the Capital, and most of us don't even realize it.

Review: Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

I've been feeling weary of genre fiction lately. I used to be a huge sci-fi and fantasy buff, but the past few years I've been more in the mood for something more literary and... cerebral? I guess I just prefer nice writing over heroes and rocket ships. But, if you look hard enough, turns out I don't have to pick one over the other.

Perdido Street Station is, in a nutshell, about an overweight scientist in a fantastic city. But it's a thousand times more than that.

It has a million different plots and subplots, some of which get unsatisfactorily dropped partway through, some which disappear and then resurface long after you've forgotten about them. But it is the world and the characters that really shine in this work.

I'm inclined to describe it as fantasy, or urban fantasy at first, because it has magic and fantastic creatures, but it has shades of steampunk and science fiction as well. The universe of New Crobuzon is as vivid, expansive, and colorful as anything by Tolkien or C. S. Lewis, but even more interesting because technology mixes with magic and half a dozen alien races mingle together within one extraordinary city.

Most of the main characters aren't particularly likeable; they're all flawed in some ways and it adds an interesting dynamic to the story. Even though there are more 'alien' (in the book they're referred to as 'xenian' and it's not clear whether they're extraterrestrial or native) characters than human, they're all written with lifelike qualities and it's not until Mieville mentions wings or antennae that you remember the person speaking is not actually a 'person' after all.

I got out of Perdido Street Station exactly what I wanted from it - an enjoyable read, the way I used to enjoy science fiction and fantasy when I was younger. My tastes may have evolved from Orson Scott Card to Margaret Atwood, but I can still enjoy a good story with magic and monsters and fantastic elements. I'm relieved!

"I am compelled to worship this extraordinary presence that has silted into existence at the conjunction of two rivers. It is a vast pollutant, a stench, a klaxon sounding. Fat chimneys retch dirt to the sky even now in the deep night. It is not the current which pulls us, but the city itself, its weight sucks us in. Faint shouts, here and there the calls of beasts, the obscene clash and pounding from the factories as huge machines rut. Railways trace urban anatomy like protruding veins. Red brick and dark walls, squat churches like troglodytic things, ragged awnings flickering, cobbled mazes in the old town, culs-de-sac, sewers riddling the earth like secular sepulchures, a new landscape of wasteground, crushed stone, libraries fat with forgotten volumes, old hospitals, towerblocks, ships and metal claws that lift cargos from the water."

Length: 7/10 It's quite a thick volume, but it doesn't drag at all once you get into it. You just keep wanting more.
Grade: 95. Perdido Street Station is a gripping read, a beautiful world, and best of all just downright fun to read.

~Joy

Review: The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence (Librivox)

I always have a book I'm reading, and I always have a book I'm listening to as well. Librivox is a fantastic resource for public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers. I'm a knitter, and I like to listen to a book while I knit. Recently I finished listening to The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence.

I had already read the fantastic Women in Love for a history class before reading The Rainbow. Lawrence's Women in Love details the most recent generation of the Brangwen family, sisters Ursula and Gudrun. The Rainbow is the story of three generations of Brangwens, from the Brangwen sisters' grandparents to the sisters themselves.

In a nutshell, The Rainbow is about a family's lives and loves. The book has a very grand scale because of the amount of time it encompasses, and the number of different people experiencing love and desire in similar and different ways.

Because the book spans three generations, one must be careful to keep the characters distinct. I found it a little difficult, especially with the first generation of Brangwens and the second. When you categorize characters into wide boxes such as 'the husband' and 'the wife', since most books only have one of each of those characters, it's easy to get them mixed up when a book has several of each!

I found Lawrence's writing style generally pleasant, though sometimes getting a bit too philosophical for me. In Women in Love, every conversation the sisters or their men had was a Very Deep One indeed, and there isn't as much of that in this one, but plenty of introspective internal dialogue. Reading either book will certainly get you thinking.

I might never have read this book if I hadn't found it as a free audibook on Librivox. I like to unwind by knitting and watching TV or listening to something, so I enjoy audiobooks very much. The quality of Librivox audibooks can vary, even from chapter to chapter with a single book. This recording was all done by a single reader, which was nice. The quality is generally good, though some people might find the reader's voice a bit grating. There were a few mispronunciations I found occasionally distracting, but for the most part the reading is fluent and easy to understand.

"Indeed, it was true as they said, that a man wasn't born before he was married. What a change indeed! [...] When he was a child, he had thought a woman was a woman merely by virtue of her skirts and petticoats. And now, lo, the whole world could be
divested of its garment, the garment could lie there shed away intact, and one could stand in a new world, a new earth, naked in a new, naked universe. It was too astounding and miraculous."
Length: 5/10 (1 is the Cliffs Notes, 10 is Shakespeare's entire oeuvre) The book is hefty enough, but it feels like it goes quickly because it's like three stories in one book.
Grade: 90%. The Rainbow is a wonderful, enjoyable, rewarding read.
~Joy

Movie Review: The Time Traveler's Wife

Doing something a little different today because I recently went and saw the new film The Time Traveler's Wife. The film, starring Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams, is based on the novel of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger.

A few summers ago, over the course of three days, I devoured this monster 560-page romance-cum-SF novel, the very first novel of the author and only one to date. Her next novel, a ghost story by the name of Her Fearful Symmetry, is set to be released at the end of September.

The film version of The Time Traveler's Wife just came out, with a mostly starry cast and a bit of fanfare. How does it stack up to the novel that left me with summer reading whiplash?

The Time Traveler's Wife is, in a nutshell, a time travel story and a love story like nothing you've ever seen. It's a classic story of true love with a very large twist. It's incredibly hard to explain -- Every time I try to explain the plot of this novel to someone, I am met with blank stares. Sorry. Basically, my advice is to read the book, then you'll understand.

The movie version of The Time Traveler's Wife manages to remain more faithful than most movie adaptations I have seen. Much is cut, but little is changed and the soul of the story remains intact. The emotional impact is somewhat lessened on the screen, but... well, I still cried.

Reading the book The Time Traveler's Wife, I spent three days spending 40 years (give or take) with the characters, feeling the love between them and living their lives with them. The movie manages to fit the plot into a scant 100 minutes, leaving me feeling rushed and like something was missing. You can't do a massive book like this justice in just an hour and a half.

The acting was wonderful, particularly the adorable child actor portraying Alba. The only time I felt pulled out of the world of the movie was seeing Ron Livingston (of Office Space fame) in the role of Gomez - an important character in the novel, reduced to a face and a name in the movie. All characters who are not Eric Bana or Rachel McAdams get precious little screen time in the movie, because the movie has no room for anything but the main couple's relationship.

Length: Too short. There's a lot to the book that made it such a gripping read, that stuck with me long after I had finished reading it. The film was very enjoyable, and very good, but somewhat forgettable. I don't think people will be talking about it years later.
Grade: 89/100. Scores better than most adaptations of novels. The filmmakers committed no mortal sins. However, it really should have been longer.

~Joy

Review: A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby

I love Nick Hornby. I read High Fidelity and About a Boy, and saw the films for each (starring John Cusack and Hugh Grant, respectively), and loved them both. A Long Way Down is one of Hornby's more recent novels, released in 2005.

A Long Way Down is, in a nutshell, about suicide. Or a lack thereof. The story is told from the points of view of four different characters, each of whom seeks to end their life at the beginning of the book. Of course, they don't, or else it would be a rather short book indeed.

The book is long on Hornby's characteristic sharp wit and English phraseology. He tells the events from each character's eyes distinctively, from the demure, homely churchgoing Maureen to the American guitarist-cum-pizzaboy JJ. Not only do the voices of the characters show through in their respective chapters, but subtle changes in the writing itself show how each of the characters acts: for instance, troubled teen Jess never cared to learn how quotations marks are used, so she doesn't use them.

Each character has their own voice that rings true. You could almost believe that Hornby really was an 18-year-old-girl, or a scandalous TV talk show host like Martin Sharp (whose name draws many puns in tabloid headlines). The characters are multidimensional and interesting, and it's intriguing to read on as more and more secrets are revealed about their lives and their pasts.

Unfortunately, the best part of the book is the first scene. The characters meet, a friendship is formed, and then... and then what? The book is divided into three parts, and each part is weaker than the preceding one. And in the end, well, perhaps it is symbolic of life in general, but there is no real satisfactory conclusion to the book. It ends, and perhaps the characters are a little better off than they started, but nothing is really solved. They just live to fight another day.

"Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned, found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning that life is hollow, dismal, brutish, and short."

Length: 3/10 (1 is Goodnight Moon, 10 is The Lord of the Rings) This took me 4 or 5 days to read through, pulling me in with the rapt attention that Hornby's novels always provoke in me. It's not a very thick book, and you can get through it pretty quickly.
Grade: 84% A Long Way Down starts out fabulous with a great concept and living, breathing characters, but starts losing steam as the story progresses without a satisfying conclusion.

~Joy