Category Archives: book reviews
May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor
Welcome to the 74th Annual Hunger Games!
The Hunger Games (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This post will contain spoilers and some unbridled squees, so if either offend you, do go away and read the book. Love and kisses!
I first heard of The Hunger Games a few months ago. I don’t remember if I saw the movie trailer first or if someone mentioned the book. I do know that when I first saw the trailer, Katniss’s reaction to Prim’s name being called covered me in goosebumps. When I read the book, I couldn’t put it down. Spouse and I spent Thanksgiving in Ohio at his parents’ house, and he bought me the book for a belated birthday present. I subsequently walked to the nearby Barnes and Noble and bought the next two in the trilogy.
Here is what made this book special for me, which are, consequently, the things I hope most that the movie keeps intact:
Movie poster -- so far so awesome. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Katniss Everdeen is a female character written by a female author the same way male authors write male characters.
For the first time in a very long while, I read a female protagonist I could relate to. She wasn’t obsessed with boys. She was a provider, a survivor. She adapted to her circumstances and fought for those she loved. Intelligent and resourceful, and willing to fight to the death to defend what mattered — willing even to defy the Grand Pooh-bahs of Panem when it meant doing what was right by Rue.
She is pragmatic and not depicted as being ruled by her emotions. She is courageous and compassionate, and while she is occasionally cynical and selfish, her “selfishness” is born out of a desire to stay alive to provide for her family. She is a hero, and it’s been a long time since I’ve found a one of those in contemporary culture.
She picks who is right for her.
This is a tricky one. If you haven’t read the trilogy in its entirety and don’t want me to spoil it, stop reading now.
When I first read the books, I started out rooting for Gale. He’d helped her provide for her family for years. He clearly had feelings for Katniss. But his reactions to her, his possessiveness when there was never an understanding between them, and his choices in the latter books turned me off of Gale. Peeta on the other hand loved Katniss her whole life.
Though Peeta had to go through the horrid ordeal of being turned against Katniss by President Snow, he came out of it with her help. Even in the first book, Gale’s ideals were shown to be uncomfortable for Katniss. His rants against the Capitol, his anger and tirades — Katniss didn’t want to be the spearhead of a rebellion. When it was forced upon her, she did her best even when people were determined to use her as a pawn, but Gale’s fervor became too much for her. I understand that, and that’s why I found the end ultimately satisfying.
My hope is that they will allow for the subtleties of those relationships to shine through in the movie, but of all the things I’m hopeful for, of that I’m most dubious about its realization.
Rue. Can we say rules? Image via teen.com.
Rue
Not only is Katniss’s relationship to Rue a clear analogy of her relationship with Prim in the arena, but it’s also one of the more politically charged situations that happen in the arena. When Katniss and Rue become friends and allies and Katniss displays such concern and care for Rue upon her death, it sparks a first in Hunger Games history: a gift from a district to the tribute of another district. Rue’s people band together to give Katniss a gift of bread.
And Katniss openly mourns Rue’s death by covering her with flowers and singing her to sleep. Aside from it being a poignant and beautiful moment in the book, I think on screen it could be affecting and truly spectacular if it’s done right. I hope it’s done right.
Awesome image of a mockingjay via hungergames.wikia.com
The Mockingjays
In the book, these little clever birds are the product of the Capitol’s muttations, the jabberjays, crossbreeding with normal mockingbirds. Instead of being able to spew back whole conversations, they are able only to repeat notes and songs. They’re also a powerful symbol throughout the trilogy, and I hope the film does them justice.
The Food
I know, I know. It’s a movie. And it’s called The Hunger Games. But the food is described in such detail in the books (clearly it would be a central feature for people who have always been hungry, much as in the descriptions of food at Hogwarts in Harry Potter), and it could be a great detail.
Katniss’s Personality
All those things I mentioned before about her pragmatism and her strength — I hope they do them justice. Hollywood has this tendency to make women in cinema more Megan Fox in Transformers than Sarah Michelle Gellar in baggy overalls in Buffy. Which is to say, they often favor sex appeal and shallow tropes over depth and well-rounded characters. I expect to see Katniss in some pretty shiny clothes during her stint at the Capitol, but one thing I really hope for is that they manage to display the depth of her character, flaws and strengths alike. Without trying to make Peeta into the hero of this show.
My Conclusion
Most of all, I’m just very excited to see this story brought to life. I’m going to the midnight showing tonight, and couldn’t be more psyched.
Have you read the books? What are you excited about? What do you most look forward to seeing? ARE YOU GOING TO SQUEE?!
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- Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (creativedeeds.wordpress.com)
- Reflections and Review on Mockingjay (alienredqueen.wordpress.com)
- Book Review: “The Hunger Games” (thecheapreader.wordpress.com)
- How to Survive The Hunger Games Movie Premiere (bradsdeals.com)
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Monday Man: Jenks
Good evening, gentle viewers! I confess it took me a wee bit of time to get around to you today, but I blame Tin Tin. And my sore muscles. And a nap. Nevertheless, here I am, and you look so charming today. Do you have snow? I don’t have snow. More’s the pity.
I was thinking around through the various fantasy series I read and have read, and I decided to go a wee bit unorthodox with today’s Monday Man — I opted to choose a pixy.
Jenks is way more badass than this. Thanks to pixie.wikia.com!
If you haven’t read Kim Harrison‘s series of books about The Hollows, I daresay you should put down this blog and go track down Dead Witch Walking and read it. They’re fun, quirky, and like to play with stereotypes before they eat them and stuff them into the Ever After.
Jenks is introduced in the first book — and the first imagery I recall of this introduction involves him sitting on Rachel’s hoop earring, muttering in her ear. He’s her backup (the only pixywho would even agree to take the hazard pay for such a job), and he sticks.
One of the things I find most interesting about Jenks is that in spite of his size (around 4 inches tall) and the bluebells and daisies sort of image pixies put off and the fact that he is only about 16 years old, his role is most assuredly that of a father figure. He looks out for Rachel and Ivy in the field and personally. He takes great pains to ensure that Rachel knows his opinions on her various suitors, and he is responsible for getting them out of more than one very tight and uncomfortable place.
Jenks has a massive family — something around 20 children — and a wife named Matalina whom he loves to distraction. He is fiercely protective and defends his land and their lives throughout the book series. At a couple points in the series, he is changed to human size, which has some serious and unintended consequences.
Jenks is highly motivated by his loyalty to those he loves — his family (both natural and adopted). His primary driving force is to see his wife and children safe, as well as Rachel and Ivy, though his dynamic with the living vampire often shifts based on his perception of her threat to Rachel. Jenks risks himself more times than he has children in order to perform his role. He is a bona fide hero, a diverse and interesting character, and — let’s be honest — quite the stunner.
Jenks, you are…
Even heroes are sometimes very, very small.
Related articles
- Every Which Way But Dead by Kim Harrison (caughtbetweenthepages.wordpress.com)
- Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison (caughtbetweenthepages.wordpress.com)
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Monday Man: Constantine
to Monday! To lighten the fact that you’re likely back at work and I’m not (come on, you get weekends), I bring you Monday’s new feature: Monday Man.
I'm sure Con will be happy about this.
The idea is simple. On Mondays, I will pick a male character in the urban fantasy (or sometimes other fantasy) genre to dissect. But not really dissect, because I don’t think I could even catch this one if I tried, let alone get him to hold still.
You could buy this for yourself for SolstiChristmaKwanzukkah! The image links to Amazon for your convenience!
I’ve just finished reading Sunshine by Robin McKinley, so it’s only appropriate for me to pick one of her characters to begin, no? If you haven’t read the book, I would get on that. I’ll try not to include any excessive spoilers, but a couple might slip in. Ready?
We first meet Constantine shackled to a wall with a warded anklet. He’s a vampire. Right off the bat, I loved that Robin McKinley’s vampires were not pretty. Their skin is grayish and dead-looking. They have no heartbeat and irregular breath. They move without humans being able to follow it, and when they nab Sunshine at the beginning, she doesn’t hear them coming.
Right away, it’s evident that Constantine doesn’t really have any desire to hurt Sunshine, which is already a nice contrast to her assumptions about suckers. He helps her stay untempting, and I liked the twist that humans have to invite the suckers to drink their blood or otherwise enter their bodies. (Ahem.) Granted, if you look into their eyes, they’ll be able to persuade you to give that invitation, but I am a sucker (mua ha) for anything that gives supernaturals a human-accessible weakness.
The situation in which Sunshine finds herself shows a lot about Con’s character. One of her captors makes the remark, “He likes old-fashioned things” right before making her dress in a red ballgown. It’s evident from Constantine’s careful positioning that he is trying to minimize any possibility that he would hurt Sunshine, both for her sake and because he has no desire to succumb to Bo’s game.
At one point, Con informs Sunshine that there is more than one way to live the life of a vampire. Though he never goes into detail about this, it’s inferred that they can survive on animal blood and that taking human lives affects not only their personality and level of evil, but their ability to age well. Con, it seems, has been very careful.
He’s also described as passing-ugly. Sunshine makes mention several times of his blatant Other-ness, differences in his body shape and movement that make him almost abhorrent, even though she is intrigued by him. It’s clear early on that he views their sort of forced bond as both necessary and a curiosity.
I love gray areas, and Constantine is a great gray area. He goes against the stereotypes of vampires in that world, and he makes his own rules, though he’s not overly aggressive about it. He also represents a darkness Sunshine fears and challenges her assumptions about what that means for her character. He has a lot of roles that don’t seem to fit, such as healer, though again it falls outside the lines of expectation, both for the reader and for Sunshine. Con is in many ways a contradiction, and I think that’s why I liked him so much. He managed to do all of that without being broody or maudlin, and I always appreciate a good self-actualized vampire. Above all things, Con knows his place in the world and doesn’t waste his time wishing for the sun or fat grandchildren.
I’ll close with a bit of fan art of the two of them. Con looks a little bit more ogre-y than I imagined him, and less stringy and lean, but it’s cool to see them depicted anyway. I give you: Monday Man!
Mmm, gray skin in the sunlight. How attractive. Image via fanpop.com
Related articles
- Chalice – Robin McKinley (booklolly.wordpress.com)
- The Hero and the Crown – Robin McKinley (booklolly.wordpress.com)
- On Bookstores, Books, and the Number 33 (emmiemears.wordpress.com)
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Second Childhood: A Moment of Literary Senility
Last week I stumbled across a very interesting blog called Broke and Bookish, which has a fun tradition of creating Top Ten lists each Tuesday on predetermined topics. The one for this week snared my attention, so I thought I would participate. I spend a lot of time thinking about the sorts of books that influence my writing, as well as the ones that lived right at hand during my childhood and adolescence, and this list describes those. Some are perhaps a bit embarrassing, but that’s quite all right. Perhaps you might even like to check some of them out if you haven’t read them yet — though I doubt you’ll track down all hundred plus BSC novels.
Top Ten (Or So) Childhood Faves
It goes without saying that I never once in my life have looked this sophisticated. Image via blogs.philadelphiaweekly.com
1. The Baby-Sitters Club, books 1-bazillion.
This series occupied many years of my childhood. I skipped over the Baby-Sitter’s Little Sister series, because even at age 7, I found it too juvenile. I loved the idea of young women starting a business and succeeding at it, and I read these books over and over again. I knew to always skip chapter 2, because it only described the club members (and I knew them well enough to recognize them if I passed one on the street). I longed to visit Stoneybrook and knew that all their phone numbers began with 555 long before I realized that was the go-to fictional number prefix.
I modeled my fashion sense after Claudia Kishi — on my 10th birthday, I wore (just picture this) a black leotard, black tights. Over that I wore a pair of knee-length white shorts and a pair of white socks. Black shoes. White plastic pearls. I also was known to create this outfit in red and yellow, which I called my “Ketchup and Mustard Motif.”
I was not very popular.
This is the copy I gave to my niece last year. Thanks, amazon.com!
2. Dealing With Dragons, by Patricia Wrede
Going with my trend of strong women, Princess Cimorene quickly became one of my first heroes. She wanted to fight with swords. She wanted to have adventures. She did not want to sit in a castle and embroider cushions, which sounded frightfully like a lifetime of hell to me as well. Instead, she volunteers to be a dragon’s princess, sends all her suitors away with a scoff, and saves the dragon king (who is female) from scheming wizards. What a glorious book! I might go read it again tonight.
Even the cover of this book evokes emotions I first felt 17 years ago.
3. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
I’m not quite sure if I’ve ever found a more pivotal book in my life. Some fiction reaches out and grabs hold of you, never really letting you go. The story of Jonas living his life in ignorance of color, animals, sunshine, and things we take for granted every day touched me in a way very few books ever have again. The Book Thief, which I mention often, wriggled into my heart in a very similar fashion. The realization of the ritual of “release” in the book and the sheer weight of one person bearing the memories of loss, war, famine, disease, and death — even tempered by love and kittens — was overwhelming to me, even as a child. If by some strange twist of serendipity, you have not read The Giver, I hereby give you leave to stop reading my blog, go to the library, and get it now.
This book taught me about switchblades! I got the image from
4. The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton
If you grew up in the American school system, no doubt you came across this book ad nauseum during those formative years. I am pretty sure I was assigned this book no less than four years in a row, and I probably saw the movie about eight times, if not more. And yet for all that, it was one of my favorites. I could relate to Pony Boy, growing up poor and the struggles he coped with, if not the violence. I didn’t fully understand just how poor we were until I went to college, so I was perhaps spared that sledgehammer when I read the book. I will say that I pronounced the word “Soc” wrong in my head for several years until I read a book by L.J. Smith that spelled it out “Soshe.” I have a warm place in my heart for this novel.
I wanted that pendant. Still kinda do. Image via paperbackswap.com
5. R.L. Stine‘s Fear Street Saga
R.L. Stine. This man woke a love of horror in me. My mom used to stare at me in wonder as I would devour one of his Fear Street books immediately before going to bed. I remember the imagery of purple rotting flesh, of maggots and empty eye sockets, blood and vomit and monsters. Again, as with the BSC books, I mostly passed over Goosebumps, though I did read them a bit later. I fell in love with the historically themed Fear Street Saga, which showed how Fear Street got its name and its horror-charged atmosphere, starting with the witch hunts of Salem, where a falsely accused Sarah Goode ended up burned at the stake alongside her mother, when her father was the real witch. He cursed the Fier family in return, starting a blood feud that would span centuries and destroy both families.
These have all been re-released, but oh, how familiar is this cover?! Image via Wikipedia.
6. Anything Ramona that came from Beverly Cleary’s mind
Not only did I fall in love with Ramona’s antics, but we lived in Portland, Oregon at the time, and I was obsessed with the fact that I lived in Ramona’s city. Did you know Klickitat Street really exists? Yep. I’ve seen it.
I loved tales of Ramona and her urge to “boing” Susan’s long curls. I loved learning via Ramona that the idiom “for the present” had nothing to do with gifts. I didn’t understand why her calling Beezus “pizza face” was such a big deal. I learned a lot from this little pest.
I also learned that even twenty years ago, Algernon would have been a very unfortunate name for a baby.
I wanted my name to be Rowan. I still remember the imagery of her sinewy feet. I wanted my feet to look like I could run like the wind. Image via amazon.com.
7. L.J. Smith‘s Night World — pretty much anything by this woman.
If R.L. Stine was my guru for purple flesh, L.J. Smith was my goddess of vampires. This was years before Twilight, around the time of the Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, but Daughters of Darkness was my first vampire novel.
Bam, snap. Love.
Her Night World series reigned supreme in my world. One of her characters was even from Montana (where I moved at age 11), though I remember getting annoyed that she was set in a non-existent county. Montana has 56 of them, and I thought she ought to have chosen a real one. I have waited almost 13 years (or more) for the release of Strange Fate, the conclusion to the series. If it doesn’t come out soon, I will cry.
So good. Image from book-covers.lucywho.com
8. Lynn Beach’s Phantom Valley
Are we there yet?! Three more. I read all of these books, from the chilling starter The Evil One to Curse of the Claw. They were chilling and terrifying, and I gobbled them up. Dolls that wanted you dead, mummy cats, youth-stealing witches, and mirrors that formed portals to other centuries — I couldn’t get enough.
These books have been out of print for some time, but I bought a few of them not long ago and am trying to flesh out my collection. They fed my love of the horror and thriller genre. Looking back, I really did love a scare at those young, tender ages. Probably explains why I’m such a weirdo.
Mmm. Druids. Image via paperbackswap.com
9. The Druid’s Tune
Almost there, phew! O.R. Melling can be credited for inciting a love of the type of fantasy where characters from our world end up plunked into another. Such is the case in this book, where two teens from modern America are sent to Ireland for the summer and end up transported into the time of Queen Maeve and Cuchulain, fighting over magical cattle. The book focuses on the mythological story of Tain Bo Cuailnge, and oh, did I ever wish for that kind of adventure to happen to me. I think I still get a little hopeful every time I wander a ring of standing stones.
Not to mention the fact that whenever that happens in books, the women end up with dashing suitors who find them otherworldly and charming. 
Read this series if you like fantasy at all.
10. David Eddings’s Belgariad and Malloreon
I don’t know how I missed this, but whilst searching for the image to go with this blurb, I discovered that David Eddings passed two years ago. I am suddenly quite devastated. He was my Tolkein, my Lewis. While I liked Narnia, I fell in love with Eddings’s world and characters. I grew up with Garion as he became a sorcerer and battled the Angaraks for the freedom of the West. This series is high fantasy with a dry, witty skepticism sprinkled throughout that is both refreshing and delightful.
I know Mr. Eddings was quite old, but this is heartbreaking. I don’t know how on earth I missed his death for two years. His writing style and wit will be deeply, deeply missed. He was one of the biggest contributors to my love of fantasy, and I’m rather shell-shocked to hear of his passing.
Well, that is a lengthy 10, gentle viewers. Bravo if you stayed with me till the end. There are probably a hundred other books that influenced me, from the Berenstein Bears to Laura Ingalls Wilder, from the Boxcar Children to Wayside School — so many books, so many beloved stories.
There is no doubt in my mind that books shape us. I believe my character has been wrought at the hands of authors and the characters they created for me to befriend as a rather lonely child moving from school to school every year or so. I credit the books on this list for helping me learn what I love to write, for always being there when I needed a friend, knowing that every cracked spine and dog-eared page is only a sign that, like the Velveteen Rabbit, my books have been brought to life with love.
This post can only be dedicated to David Eddings, master world-smith and purveyor of words. I am thankful for his life’s work.
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The Pyramid of Glasses
I just finished The Hunger Games trilogy and loved it. Even the things that the critics have used to skewer pieces of it didn’t bother me. I thought that it wrapped things up in a way that, while perhaps not 100% thorough, were believable in the context of the story. And now I’m back to a book the Science Fiction Book Club sent me a while back, Robopacalypse.
I like the book a lot so far. It’s a classic sort of diorama for a story — humanity versus machine, and it’s told in a similar style to World War Z, as an oral history of sorts. I was reading along today, completely engrossed, when this blog post sneaked up behind me and goosed me.
Actually, it was more like it burst the bubble of story that had walled me off into that world. And it wasn’t so much the blog post as the reason I’m writing it. Some people call it suspension of disbelief, others building a world or staying in character.
I call it the Pyramid of Glasses.
When you write fiction, each sentence you write needs to reside, breathing and beating within the world of your story. Each word, each phrase, each sentence adds a glass, painstakingly constructing this shining pyramid.
Photo by javno192
With every word we write, we build. We lay the foundation, then add on the layers, the multi-faceted texturing and dimensionality of our stories. Today I was reading a vignette in Robopocalypse where a teenager in London was outsmarted by his own cleverness and discovered that his elaborate pranks had inadvertently led him into quicksand — quicksand inhabited by an entity of malicious artificial intelligence. His dialogue is convincing — I actually took note of how the nuances of speech reminded me so much of my time in London.
And then I saw the unstable glass that brought the entire pyramid crashing down a split second later into splinters of glittering jagged edges.
Not champagne glasses, but you get the point. Photo by Ken Tuvman
What was it, you ask? What burst the bubble and knocked the teetering glass over to start the avalanche and buried my suspension of disbelief? It went like this:
“I was f—g brilliant, Lurker. I called the headquarters of the Associated Press and spoofed my phone as the Bombay consulate. I posed as a bloody Indian reporter calling from –”
“That’s great, mate. Fantastic. You want a f—-g cookie?”
Record scratch.
Pyramid gone. Pile of broken glass. Did you catch it? If you’re familiar with English speech patterns at all, you probably did.
British people don’t have cookies. They have biscuits. That one little word ruined my moment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite fond of cookies — but in all the time I’ve spent in Scotland and London, I’ve never heard one of the natives use the word in normal speech.
You see, some people might gloss over that sort of thing. The editor didn’t catch it. The author didn’t catch it. But it’s the author’s job to catch it. It’s the author’s job — that’s you — to make your Pyramid of Glasses shining, stunning, and flawless. No teetery bits that can send the lot of it crashing to the ground.
I can accept that perhaps the word is becoming more common, as language tends to fluctuate and transmogrify itself into a new beast when it comes in contact with media and outside influences, but it still strikes me as a very out of place word. And as a reader, you can’t really control when the world of the story you’re reading comes crashing down. Plot holes do it too — like if a character’s car is totaled and she has no time to get a rental, but somehow drives to a meeting the next day. It is a record scratch. It stops forward momentum, and while you can get it back, it’s far better to just weed that stuff out from the start of it.
The average little plot hole is just a bump in the road, but it can grow if you don’t pay attention to it. Writers have to be even more cognizant of subjects they are less than familiar with, and dialects of characters are a huge part of that. My stories have a few Scots in them. Before I ever let my book go to press, I am going to make it my mission to have a few Scots read it, just to make sure that the language is correct. The same goes for the Polish bits (except for the part about having Scots read over those bits). As we write, it’s our job to be as meticulous and painstaking as possible as we pile those glasses on top of one another. If we’re lazy, it will all come crashing down around our readers’ ankles. It’s a fickle thing, but carelessness with our pyramids can turn a potential bestseller into a C-list out of print mass market paperback.
It’s far from impossible to build a Pyramid of Glasses — you know your world the best, and you have the means to explore the glasses that have uneven stems or cracked bases. Repair them or replace them.
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NaNoRebel Challenge — Guess Who’s Purple?
Okay, so I’m a lazy pants.
Maybe not lazy, and I’m certainly not pants, but I admit I fell behind a bit on my posts regarding NaNoWriMo. Sowwy. Still love me?
In spite of my lack of postage (return to sender), I have been chugging away at my word count, and early last week I crossed the 50,000 threshold. I forgot winning started on the 25th, and so I just now validated my words. And this is what I saw:
Look at me, my bar is purple!
Very exciting. I also got this handy-dandy doodad for the road:
Weener! Oscar Meyer.
All of that is very exciting. That also brings me to the detail of stats. If you recall from waaaay back at the beginning of the month when we began this challenge, the goal was to average 1,500 words per day and spend at least an hour a week doing something that refuels you. So without further ado, here’s the final info:
Average words per day: 2029
Hours spent at Panera: 34+
Coffee ingested: several gallons
Panic attacks: 0
Bread bowls devoured: 2
Nights past 4 AM: 5
And in case you were wondering about what I’ve been doing to refuel lately, here’s the most recent acquisition that has occupied my time like Wall Street:
Cannot. Stop. Reading.
I had a friend who didn’t really like the second and third books, but I am really enjoying them all. So with all the elation from my bar turning purple today, I’d like to take a minute to review book one of the trilogy, The Hunger Games.
I’ve always been partial to dystopian futuristic stories. Something about them, the grit of survival, the bare-bones attitudes of the characters always sucks me in. I heard of this book a while back, but it wasn’t until I saw the trailer for the movie that it really caught my attention.
“Primrose Everdeen!”
Those are the words that snared me, and when they were followed by the cry of, “No! I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!” I knew I had to get the book.
I wasn’t disappointed. That desperate, guttural cry that leaves Katniss’s throat when her sister’s name is called, condemning her to fight to the death in the 74th Annual Hunger Games against twenty-three other tributes from the country’s twelve districts was only the beginning of the story, and yet there’s so much subsumed within that moment that I was hooked.
For one thing, I am enthralled with the character of Katniss Everdeen. The trilogy is written by a woman, and the protagonist is a young woman. I’ve been yearning for something like this for quite a while — a female hero written as men have written male heroes for centuries. There are others out there, but I fiercely loved reading Katniss’s story. It resonated with me because she thinks like me. She’s pragmatic, stoic, strong, and flawed. She is rarely emotional and often gruff. While I don’t resemble her much on the outside, reading her thoughts was like reading a transcript of what goes through my head about life and its trials. She’s someone I would aspire to emulate. Her dogged determination is something to be envied, and she is a hero I think will inspire both male and female readers. She’s not over-sexualized. She’s attractive, but that’s almost never the focus of the story. The focus is her drive to protect her family and herself.
The story itself has many levels of political intrigue, nuance, and some very 1984ish doublespeak as Katniss tries to navigate a path that is fraught with traps and snares from all sides — both literally and figuratively. I think I enjoy it so much because she is flawed. She doesn’t know what she’s doing for most of it, but she keeps trying — oh, she tries. She fights. She doesn’t give up even when it seems like every step she takes brings some new terror onto her head and everyone around her has their hands on her to push her in some new direction of their choosing.
I haven’t been able to put the books down, and that is something I haven’t felt in a while. I plowed through all three in a few days in the midst of turkey, poker with the family, and a bit of an excess of port.
Katniss Everdeen. She’s already been added to my wall of heroes. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I have. This holiday season, buy someone a book — one with a binding and covers. Give someone something to hold on to.
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Oh Frabjous Day! A Tribute
I have a thing for Lewis Carroll. I love his whimsy, even if it was probably opium-inspired. I love that he made language his own, as if the words passed through him like a sieve made of Wonderland. Today is about language and its many mutabilities.
Also, if you are one of the many people who found their way here yesterday through one of my dear friends sharing my blog — thank you most sincerely for visiting. I hope you’ll be back many times.
Now. Off to Wonderland and a small town in Nazi Germany to explore two great writers and how they make words breathe.
This Way.
The best writers push you down through the rabbit hole until a new world swirls around you, tugging at you from all sides, insisting that you hear what it has to say. They bring new places to life so that you cannot help but chase, chase their words from page to page, flitting through wonder and tension alike.
As you follow, the story takes place around you. You become a part of it, living and breathing and laughing and crying along with the inhabitants of this world until the end leaves you satisfied and longing, at once joyous and saddened to leave the pages for reality once more.
I used to think writers made new realities, that whatever gave us the stories simply opened us up to those worlds. Maybe it’s true.
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves
And the momeraths outgrabe.
Perhaps one of the most-used and loved poems in Wonderland: The Jabberwock. Somehow reading it, you can’t help but know what it means somewhere deep inside, like the strangeness of the words whispers to you. Something creeps around the edges of your mind and you know very much that you would not wish for a frumious bandersnatch to come anywhere near you. Language is a responsive thing, and those like Lewis Carroll know how to coax it and wheedle it into saying just so what they wish to say.
One writer that I’ve mentioned here before is a man named Markus Zusak, who wrote a book about a little girl in Nazi Germany who happened to steal books. It’s a story told by Death, who gets lost in colors as a distraction. A distraction from what?
It’s the leftover humans.
The survivors.
They’re the ones I can’t stand to look at, although on many occasions I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs.
Which in turn brings me to the subject I am telling you about tonight, or today, or whatever the hour and color. It’s the story of one of those perpetual survivors — an expert at being left behind….
I saw the book thief three times.
The leftover humans. The words chosen to describe these survivors makes you see it as if they are indeed encased in Tupperware — a type of Tupperware that hides them from Death, though unbeknownst to them, Death has his eyes on them anyway. He can’t look away. At first glance, the subject matter of such a book feels almost unbearably grim. It’s only when you keep reading that the colors show you the wonder in it, as bright and shining as Wonderland in the height of splendor.
It’s all in the words. Allow me to show you a little more.
Yes, it was white.
It felt as thought the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it had pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice.
As you might expect, someone had died.
The story of Liesel (for Liesel is, of course, The Book Thief) is somehow very akin to the story of Alice. Both are young, yellow-haired, and a little selfish at first. They both have their own worlds, wrought in painstaking detail from words that drape across the windowsills and lurk in basements with dirt floors with Cheshire cats and caterpillars.
There is somehow as much wonder in book told by Death in the darkest era of humanity as exists in a land of it. I dare you to go plunge into both, just as Alice did.
We are all very small here.
