All of the Reading

So as I may have mentioned in a previous post, I spent the couple of weeks between getting back from Paris and the start of school watching tv shows and binge reading. So its time for another fun and entertaining book review post!

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins

Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol - a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel in the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before...and surprising readers at every turn.

I really enjoyed this book. Like the first book, I had already seen the movie before reading the book. However, after finishing the book I rewatched the movie, harassing Melissa by texting her all my observations. I was cataloguing things they had changed, and thinking about why they would have done so, which is just an interesting exercise in itself. Overall, they did stay very true to the books, and much of the dialogue is word for word. Though they did remove some of the more disturbing aspects, and changed other things to amp up the drama.

But this a book review not a movie review (the movie is really good though, much better than the first). The book was really good. Katniss is an enjoyable character to read, and while I think Collins' writing style tends towards the simplistic and cold, you get throughly swept up in her struggles that you are really too wrapped up to engage in any real criticism.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins

Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.

It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans--except Katniss.

The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss's willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay--no matter what the personal cost.

I think Mockingjay was probably my favourite book in this trilogy. I know a lot of people who were fans of the series consider this their least favourite. And I understand why. SPOILERS. After the trauma of going back into the arena, and being forced to kill and fight for her life again, Katniss demonstrates some serious PTSD, something that remains throughout the whole novel even as she tries to fight this war for her family and friends, resisting becoming just as much a pawn of the rebellion as she was for the capitol. It does result in quite a few slow periods, and a lot of Katniss kind of hiding in closets, but I appreciated the reality of it, and I think it makes you feel her pain so much more than having her being unrealistically strong in the face of adversity and not demonstrating the symptoms of PTSD that she does. There are some extremely disturbing parts of this book, of course, but I don't think Collins uses those unnecessarily or simply to shock. In all three books, I also really appreciated that Katniss doesn't know what is going on a lot of the time, and thus neither does the reader (something that has been changed in the movies, as the viewers are given scenes showing the decisions of people in power). But the books are entirely from Katniss' perspective, and I really like that we never know more than she does, and she often doesn't know nearly enough, as every faction attempts to exercise its control over her.

I really do recommend these books. They are really good and will seriously take you no time to read.

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media--as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents--the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter--but is he really a killer? 

As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn't do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?

I know I mentioned Gone Girl the last time I did a book review post, but I finally finished, and can now provide a much better review of the novel. I was really drawn into this novel in the first half, stunned by the twist in the middle, and then in the second half found myself growing increasingly disinterested, before the ending made up for all of it. SPOILERS. In the first half you are lead to believe that Nick killed his wife (which the savvy reader is going to assume is false just because it is to obvious). However, he is just such a selfish and terrible person that you find yourself thinking he has done it anyways, just because you start disliking him so much. Then, in the middle, you find out that Amy is alive and framing Nick for her murder as punishment for being a douche and cheating on her. Which, at first, I was totally down with, as I had spent the previous half of the book discovering what a tool Nick was. However, by the end of the second part I came to dislike Amy just as much as Nick, so by the climax, when Amy murders an old friend of hers and lies to make it look like she was kidnapped by him, I honestly didn't know what I wanted to happen, because they were both such awful people that I didn't want either of them to remain unpunished, but having them both go to jail would be immensely unsatisfying (too neat) and either one of them going to jail alone would have been annoying. However, Flynn creates the perfect ending when Amy gets pregnant and their punishment becomes a lifetime with each other. I loved the ending. I spent the last ten pages of the novel just grinning - really makes up for the second half which I struggled with, as I really don't like reading books where everyone sucks. However, I do get why a lot of people don't like the ending, as it is very much a horror-esq ending, which a lot of people don't go for, but they are apparently rewriting it for the movie, which I do not approve of.

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves— (fingersmiths) —for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways...But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.

This was a book that had been on my to-read list for a long time, and was another book that I had seen (the BBC miniseries) before reading. I would recommend reading it before watching it, as the twist is so excellent. But it had been long enough since I watched the miniseries that I couldn't remember the details, and was drawn into Water's excellent novel with ease. The characters are great, the setting is wonderfully drawn, and the story is unexpected and compelling.

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

Days before his release from prison, Shadow's wife, Laura, dies in a mysterious car crash. Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.

Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, AMERICAN GODS takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what and who it finds there...

The UK edition I bought was about 12,000 words longer than the original, and I cannot imagine it without a single one of them. I cannot recommend this book enough. It was so good. There is a particular scene (people who have read it will know exactly which one I'm talking about) that I remembered vividly from when I started reading the book about five years ago but never finished, and having now managed to finish the book, I doubt I will ever forget it.

Incredibly original and imaginative, with an ending that I totally did not see coming, American Gods operates on a huge field of characters who are strange and compelling, all revolving around Shadow, an ordinary human man who gets sucked into this huge cosmic mess, the battle between the old gods brought over to America by the immigrants, and the new gods, the gods of chrome and steel. This was one of those books that I kept looking at the pages left and thinking no, I don't want it to end! (which wasn't enough to stop me from reading the whole thing in about three days).

Zombie - Joyce Carol Oates

Meet Quentin P., the most believably terrifying sexual psychopath and killer ever brought to life in fiction. The author deftly puts you inside the mind of a serial killer--succeeding not in writing about madness, but in writing with the logic of madness.

Zombie was a (predictably) very disturbing book. I don't know that I would recommend it to anyone who wasn't into horror, but for all its grotesqueness, it is very well written and a blessedly short read (I started and finished it on the train between Bath and London).

I don't want to talk about it.

Looking for Alaska - John Green

Before. Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. Then he heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.

After. Nothing is ever the same

While I loved John Green's newest novel, The Fault in Our Stars (the movie trailer is now out and it looks like it will be just as heartbreaking as the novel. Awesome), I haven't really enjoyed his other books that much. Both An Abundance of Katherine's and Looking for Alaska involve a self-involved adolescent male narrator with terrible attitudes and relationships with women. Overall, this was a quick read, and a relatively amusing story, but it didn't elicit any feeling in me with more strength than it did annoyance. SPOILERS. Alaska is a complete MPDG - the kind of girl whose only "flaws" are those which make her mysterious and cool, and whose basic function is to exist for the narrator or protagonist to fall in love with it, and then, as Alaska does, die to catalyze a journey of self growth in our male protagonist. It was all terribly cliche and insulting and I did not like it.

Related: Melissa, Alix, and my YouTube channel is still ongoing, though we have now changed the format to a single person review three times a week, which I think is going to work better. The reason I bring it up is because I did my video this week on Looking for Alaska and the phenomenon of the MPDG.

In conclusion, American Gods for all of the awards.