Book Review: The Panem Companion, by V. Arrow

Certain popular books just cry out for deeper analysis. What does the United States’ obsession with the Twilight series mean for our perceptions of women and of healthy relationships, for example? Why have the Harry Potter books held such a grip on not just children, but adults, for literally a decade?

Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy is perfectly deserving of critical analysis–its statements on race, justice, economics, war, and media are thoughtful without being preachy. Written by V. Arrow, a Hunger Games superfan and critical reader, The Panem Companion is a great introduction to some of the deeper themes and sociopolitical commentary found in THG.

While other reviewers may have found this book dry, I went into it expecting a compelling critical analysis, and for the most part, that’s exactly what I got. I also thought that Arrow’s voice was wonderful: informative without being condescending, funny without needing to try too hard, sensitive without pandering. You can tell Arrow loves THG, yet is also willing to analyze and critique it, something that many fans aren’t necessarily able to do.

Top Ten Tuesday: Characters Who Remind Me Of Myself Or Someone I Know In Real Life

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week, they post a topic and encourage fellow bloggers to list their own top ten answers. This week’s prompt was to list the top ten characters who remind me of myself or someone I know in real life. What a challenge! I tried to go with my gut on this.

1. Katniss and Prim, from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I know some people felt that Prim was not a fully-realized character, but I always liked her and felt that the relationship between her and Katniss was a realistic depiction of a protective older sibling-innocent younger sibling dynamic. While I can relate to that–being the mad protective older sister to a sweet younger brother–this comparison is definitely a bit of wish fulfillment. I wish I was as awesome as Katniss!

2. Sarah, from Little Children by Tom Perrotta 
In our introduction to the character of Sarah, I cringed because I saw so much of myself in many of her thoughts and actions…especially upon just graduating from grad school and feeling pretty lost.

Applying to graduate school seemed like the perfect solution for escaping the rut she was in–a way to recapture the excitement of college while also making a recognizable version of adulthood…Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D program, though, she discovered that she’d booked passage on a sinking ship.

She was a failure, a twenty-six-year old woman..who had just discovered that she wasn’t nearly as smart as she’d thought she was.

Here’s to hoping that my life turns out a little better than poor Sarah’s does.

3. Sansa, from A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin
My friend S and I have a theory that if you were raised as and continue to be a “good girl”–a girl who is obedient, who follows the rules, who doesn’t cause trouble–you will relate to Sansa, as we did. While some readers think  of her as weak or stupid, she is just a girl who doesn’t understand how the world really works. I may not be quite as naive as Sansa is, but I do follow the rules and probably feel far too entitled to certain things because of that.  (I’m actually really excited to see where her story arc ends. I hope it’s with her on the Iron Throne.)

4. Kristy, Mary Anne, Stacey, and Claudia from The Babysitters’ Club by Ann M. Martin
Slightly embarrassing, but…my three best friends from my hometown and I all grew up reading the Babysitters’ Club series (and watching the television show!) and realized that we fit some the four original characters pretty nicely. I was Mary Anne (nice, shy, unpierced ears, boyfriended up). My friend J was Kristy, being loud, boyish, and bossy. Friend C was Stacey, with blonde hair and love for New York City and singing. Finally, friend R was our Claudia, being very artistic and a very unconventional dresser! We may have even discussed creating our own babysitters’ club at one point…

5. Lena, Bridget, Carmen, and Tibby from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares
Same group of friends, same deal!  Though this didn’t divide up as cleanly as Babysitters’ Club characters. I was a mix of Carmen and Lena, friend R is Lena/Bridget, and friends C and J are both Tibby. We actually sewed together a pair of pants (that were a hideous mix of four different fabrics) and sent them around one summer. I think I wore them in Mexico when it was my turn!

6. Felicity, from The American Girl Dolls series
This may be another case of wishful thinking, but I always identified the most with Felicity. (Note that this was in the old days when there were only five dolls: Kirsten, Felicity, Samantha, Addy, and Molly!) Like Felicity, I rode horses, got annoyed at my sibling, and considered myself a bit of a badass. I also coveted the life-sized version of her fancy blue dress.

7. Belgarath, from The Belgariad by David Eddings
Perhaps because he was the one who got me started reading fantasy novels and one of the first ones he gave me was The Belgariad, my dad and the character of Belgarath are very much linked in my  mind. Though he’s powerful and smart, Belgarath also has a fun and mischievous side. I don’t always get my dad’s humor, but he and this ancient wizard have a lot in common.

8. Richard Papen, from The Secret History by Donna Tartt 
What I see in Richard are the parts of myself that I don’t really like, reflected back at me. His desire to fit in, his ability to lie easily, his inability to ask for help, his insecurity, his longing to be “better”–I’m ashamed to admit that I experience all of these things. Pretty sure, however, that I’d never participate in and help cover up the murder of my friend. Like, 100% sure.

9. Taryn and Jimmy, from Fierce Moon by Kira Lerner
This one is sort of cheating: it’s one of those Books By You that you can personalize with your own name and information! This was a gift from evil, evil friend C (aka Stacey McGill), who knows both my love for werewolves and my awkwardness about reading romance. In this story, I was a lonely librarian (fairly accurate) sent to the past to help solve a mystery with my soon-to-be lover Jimmy, a Victorian werewolf detective (fairly inaccurate). It was equally hilarious and mortifying. Highly recommended.

10. Walter, from Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Like Richard Papen, Walter’s character highlights some of the tensions I see in myself. I do environmental nonprofit work, and have often grappled with the question of selling out myself–it’s common when huge projects are funded by the likes of Shell, BP, Toyota, and other companies. I have a lot of the same fears as Walter, though (thankfully) my relationship to my significant other is much better than Walter’s with Patti. We also both love birds! But I like people, too, and don’t consider overpopulation the end-all, be-all issue that Walter does.

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I’d Recommend As Good Beach Reads

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week, they post a topic and encourage fellow bloggers to list their own top ten answers. This week’s prompt was to name the Top Ten Books I’d Recommend as Good Reach Reads! This was a bit tricky for me, as I tend toward serious or dramatic books, and I usually think of beach reads as being light and easy-going. But I persevered!

1. The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, by Melissa Bank
I picked this up on a whim in a used book store in Quito, Ecuador. It knocked my socks off. This chick lit provides some deep insights, while still being funny and sad by turns.

2.  The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
If it’s a hot day, this book will cool you down (considering it takes place during winter in Vermont!). It’s also an incredibly addictive tale of friendship and murder.

3. Ghost, Interrupted, by Sonia Singh
I read this a few years ago, but I remember it as being a fun and surprisingly cute take on the idea of ghost hunters, with some interesting commentary on cultural differences. It’s a quick and easy read with enjoyable characters and a nice, neat storyline.

4. The Other Boleyn Girl, by Phillipa Gregory
Probably not the most historically accurate retelling of the saga of Anne and Mary Boleyn, but it’s certainly entertaining! (For a more serious take on the Boleyns, check out Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall.)

5. Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916, by Michael Capuzzo
What better subject to read about while splashing around in the ocean? Even better if you’re vacationing on the New Jersey shore (where these attacks took place).

6. Prep, by Curtis Sittenfield
While you may not find the 14-year old narrator of Prep likable, you can sympathize with her experiences as a middle-class student at a private boarding school. It’s a glimpse into an elite world through the eyes of an outsider, and I always find that fascinating.

7. Lost City of Z, by David Grann
The true story of a 1920s adventuring party lost in the Amazon while searching for an ancient civiliation. Preferably read on a neotropical beach.

8. Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
If you feel like tackling some some complex beach reading, I think Life of Pi is a good place to start. Though on the surface the story is fairly simple–after a shipwreck, a boy and some zoo animals are trapped together on a lifeboat–the dreamy writing and magical realism make it very memorable.

9. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, by Avi
Get into a beach mood by reading about a female teenage pirate. This was a favorite when I was a kid!

10. The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
I doubt I’ll be the only one to list these books! The Hunger Games and Catching Fire especially would be great to read while playing in the sand. (Just watch out for killer monkeys.)

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I’d Play Hooky With

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week, they post a topic and encourage fellow bloggers to list their own top ten answers. This week’s prompt, inspired by spring fever, is to choose the top ten books you’d play hooky with–which I took to mean the kind of fun, engrossing, maybe even slightly trashy books that cause an afternoon to fly by, despite the many pressing obligations you’ve got waiting for you! (Being in graduate school and working on my thesis means I don’t often actually get to play hooky from school…)

The Top Ten Books I’d Play Hooky With

1. The Zona, by Nathan Yocum
A futuristic dystopia, a cruel theocracy, and badass “Preachers” who roam the former Southwestern U.S. looking to eradicate “sin?” Why wouldn’t you want to play hooky to read this book? Check out my full review of The Zona here.

2. The Hunger Games Trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
As everyone and their mother knows by know, these books are wonderful, and best devoured whole. It might be because I just saw the movie this weekend, but The Hunger Games have been on my mind and I think I’m due for a reread, especially of the second and third books. I imagine I’ll be ducking out of some responsibilities in order to make this happen.

3. A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin
My boyfriend and I read this entire series (well, minus A Dance with Dragons, as it hadn’t yet come out) over the course of two to three weeks. They’re not for everyone, but I love gritty fantasy, and the way Martin deconstructs classic fantasy tropes is masterful. I have no problem saying I’m addicted to this series.

4. You Suck: A Love Story, by Christopher Moore
Moore is consistently hilarious, and You Suck delights in poking fun at vampires, vampire hunters, San Francisco, teenagers…basically, anything and everything in his path. While this novel is the second in his A Love Story trilogy, it works as a stand-alone book as well.

5. I Was Told There’d Be Cake, by Sloane Crosley
Short story collections always whiz by me, and Crosley’s makes for some fluffy, sugary reading. While it isn’t one of my favorite books, it would be perfect for a lazy spring afternoon’s worth of reading.

6. The Strain, by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
You may know del Toro best as the director of such films as Blade II, Hellboy, and Pan’s Labyrinth, but he’s also a writer! In The Strain, the first of a series, he introduces us to some very ugly, very hungry vampires and the team of scientists and academics that stand between them and total domination of New York City. I still haven’t read the others in the trilogy, but this one is definitely worth reading if you’re a horror/thriller fan!

7. Savage Grace, by Natalie Robins
I’ll let GoodReads handle this one: “A spellbinding tale of money and madness, incest and matricide, Savage Grace is the saga of Brooks and Barbara Baekeland — beautiful, rich, worldly — and their handsome, gentle son, Tony. Alternately neglected and smothered by his parents, he was finally driven to destroy the whole family in a violent chain of events.”

8. We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver 
While in the end I really disliked this book and found the narrator to be unbearable, I can’t deny that I read it obsessively for a few days. This tale of a mother struggling to explain and cope with the violent actions of her son is certainly gripping, despite my annoyance at the epistolary style and pretentious voice.

9. The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston
I purchased, started, and finished this book in an airport in North Carolina. Focused on the spread and containment of a deadly African virus in the U.S., and based on a true story, I couldn’t put this one down.

10. The Passage, by Justin Cronin
Another vampire book, though much more serious and “literary” than del Toro’s take. I still found it, for the most part, it be fast-paced and contain enough mysteries that I had to keep reading.

Hunger Games Hilarity

Want to pretend you live in the world of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games? Discover your Hunger Games name, courtesy of the gals over at Forever YA. It’s lol-tastic!

Mine is…

Riemet B. Runcalla!

Yikes. Something tells me I’d be dying in the first few minutes into the Games. What’s your Hunger Games name?

A heaping spoonful of Books on the Go

                        

I spotted my first ever real-life sighting of someone reading Going Rogue, by Sarah Palin, on the subway today! I felt like I had caught a glimpse of a rare bird.

An older dude sitting on one of the benches on the 1 platform was reading Live From New York, an oral history of NBC’s Saturday Night Live plugged as ”the juiciest treasure trove of backstage gossip, sex and drugs since The Andy Warhol Diaries,” according to Publishers Weekly.

Also, adorably, I saw a mother pull out the first Harry Potter book and pick up where she and her son had left off, right on the subway. The kid was transfixed.

The young woman next to me in a nice green winter coat was reading a hardcover copy of Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I attempted reading that once and put it down after 20 or so pages. Is it worth trying again?

An older woman across from me was reading The Hunger Games, sans dust jacket. I totally wanted to give her a high five.

AHHHHH

The third Hunger Games book title and cover have been revealed! Wiggity WHAT?! It’s over at Teens Read and Write, but I’m reproducing it here so ya’ll can see:

What do you think? I actually…um…think it’s kind of uggo. SORRY! ::ducks:: But it doesn’t really match the look and feel of the previous two books. And I’m going to get a bit bird-nerd on you and tell you that the mockingjay is not rendered very realistically. It looks almost computer graphic-y. I like the title, though; iconic and makes sense to anyone who’s read the books.

Thanks a bunch to Aleksandra of Aleksandra’s Corner, who tipped me off to this!

Review: The Hunger Games

Finally read the book that everyone and their grandma has already finished…The Hunger Games! I initially stayed away from it because of all of the hype, and because I don’t read much YA anymore (my stint working in the kids’ section of a library fulfilled that urge). Nonetheless, because I never met a book about a bloody dystopian future I didn’t like, I broke down and bought it. And despite telling myself I wouldn’t, I read it in a day. Spoilers ahoy!

Quick summary time: Thanks to an unspecified apocalypse, the United States no longer exists; instead there is Panem, made up of 12 poor Districts and the Capital, the decadent and oppressive ruling state. As a result of crushing the Districts’ rebellion, every year the Capital demands tributes in the form of a girl and a boy from 12 to 18 years old. These tributes from each District are forced to compete in the Hunger Games, where the goal is to be the last one standing.

So yeah, it’s somewhat similar to Battle Royale, but with some very major differences: The Hunger Games has Americans teens instead of Japanese, much less gore and violence, no sex, and no rule that at least one person has to be killed a day. In Battle Royale, you get to know a whole swath of characters well; in The Hunger Games, there are two main characters, with the other tributes remaining mostly sketches. I’d call The Hunger Games Battle Royale for the younger set. But uhhh not too young because kids still die, some in particularly nasty ways.

 Where The Hunger Games really succeeds, for me, is with heroine and narrator Katniss. She is HARD. CORE. And unlike other “OMG look at what a badass magical female hunter hero I am” characters, Katniss is NOT ANNOYING. That gets caps because so many other iterations of this kind of character are grating. Katniss isn’t. She’s gritty. She’s dirty. She’s starving half the time. She hunts and trades out of complete necessity. Her life is hard, and you really believe it. Everything she has, she has earned with blood and sweat. (I also LOVED Katniss’s lingering feelings of resentment for and distance from her mother. So angsty, so teenage girl, so believable!) In a literary world that seems flooded with Bella Swan knock-offs, it’s refreshing to have a strong, intelligent, and independent female character whose life doesn’t revolve around her vampire/werewolf/fae/mermen suitors, and who isn’t defined only by her relationships to men. Because choosing who you’re going to be with 4-everzzz kind of takes a backseat when a pack of kids are trying to fucking kill you with spears. Priorities, people, priorities.

The other characters are great too, though they all tend to be dunces when it comes to emotions and stuff (like I have any room to talk–repressing your feelings FTW!) Peeta’s cleverness and will to survive were a nice compliment to Katniss’s own; I liked that he couldn’t rely on his physical strength since he was so outclassed by almost everyone else. (To be honest, though, I went back and forth between admiring him for playing the game the only way he could, and being annoyed at him for being weak. ) I imagine him being a hard character to write, but that’s just me. Gale was cool for being the male version of Katniss. And Cinna, for being a Capitol/Hunger Games lackey, was unexpectedly interesting. Seriously, A+ for Susanne Collins for creating some believable, well-rounded characters that the reader quickly becomes emotionally invested in.

The only part of The Hunger Games I didn’t like was the appearance of the wolf “muttations” near the finale, and not because they ended Cato. They actually yanked me out of the flow of the story, and brought up questions that there wasn’t time or space to address. Were they wolf muttations mixed with the dead tributes’ DNA? Or were they just given certain aspects of the other tributes (eyes, hair color) to fuck with the survivors? Were they created after those tributes were killed, or before, and just held in reserve–and would that mean there’s wolf Cato, Peeta, and Katniss in some lab somewhere? Is this a new thing for the Hunger Games, or has it happened before? And the most important question of all: UM, WTF? I really would rather that they were straight-up muttations, without the aspects of defeated tributes. Because a giant wolf with flowing blond fur and green eyes was LOLZ-worthy, and I’m sure that was totally NOT the reaction that Collins was going for.

Heeeeeere's Glimmer!

It seems weird to complain about something being unrealistic in a book that freakin’ has kids killing each other in a game televised for a post-apocalyptic US, but whatevs. I make no apologies: the wolf muttations were lame.

It’s really a minor quibble though, the fact that I just wrote a thesis about it notwithstanding. (I like to complain!) A day after I finished The Hunger Games, I had ordered the second book in the series. If that’s not a stellar recommendation, I don’t know what is.

Bookwanderer Rating: Four out of five stars

Bookwanderer Tagline: Come for the kids killing each other, stay for the character development and interpersonal drama!