Page by Page

Mockingjay

I know I don't post here about every single book I read, but it appears I've been remiss -- it looks like I didn't post at all about The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins or its sequel, Catching Fire, both of which I read this spring.

On Friday I read the final book in the trilogy, Mockingjay, which just came out.  Like the first two, it was impossible to put down and so many of the chapters end on cliffhangers so I was eagerly rushing to see what happens next.

It's hard to talk about Mockingjay without giving away the plots of the first two books.  Suffice to say the trilogy is set in a world run by a totalitarian government that, to assert its power, forces each of the 12 districts to sacrifice two of its children once a year to fight to the death in what's known as "the Hunger Games".  The first book covers the protagonist, Katniss, volunteering to take her sister's place when her sister is chosen for the Hunger Games.  Katniss' love triangle, her alliances with the other teenagers competing in the fight, and her canny strategizing are all explored.

Catching Fire is the story of what happens after Katniss defies the evil rulers of her country.  But it isn't until Mockingjay, the third book, that a full-scale rebellion starts to take place.  But the rebels have their own agenda and soon Katniss -- though opposed to her leaders which have put her in a fight to the death -- starts to question the ethics of a war in which many innocent are likely to die.

These are marketed as young adult books, but I would not recommend them for younger children.  There is a lot of violence, and Katniss herself perpetrates some of the violence.  As you can probably guess from my description of the plot, these books are bleak.  They are depressing.  But they're also well written, with lots of plot twists and turns.  I knew Mockingjay was coming out last week and I was going to give myself time over the weekend to read it but ended up finishing the book late Friday night because, again, I could not put it down.

Book club meeting Thursday!

The Page by Page Book Club will be meeting at 7 p.m. on Thursday at George House.  This time we'll be discussing The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I finished over the weekend.

Hmm... trying to figure out what to say about this.  This book was not what I had expected.

To start with, for those who haven't read it, there will be stuff in this book that offends you. There was stuff that offended me, and I don't consider myself all that easily offended.  There is a lot of swearing in this book, and frank references to sexuality, and at times these things do seem to be there mostly for shock value.  Had I realized the extent of all this I would have chosen a different book.

That said, the reason I chose this book is that it's a Pulitzer Prize winner, and I can see why it won.  Despite the coarseness at times there is real beauty in this book, too.

The story follows several generations of a Dominican-American family both in the Dominican Republic and in the United States. Oscar is an overweight amateur fantasy novelist and geek who dreams of being the next J.R.R. Tolkien.  But the story is not just about him but his sister Lola, their mother Beli, and a whole cast of characters that really felt like real, believable, three-dimensional people. Junot Diaz' ability to create complicated, flawed, compelling characters was astonishing and I found myself thinking about these people days after I'd finished the book.  In addition, the Dominican Republic is a country I had known little about prior to reading this and it was interesting to learn about it.

I enjoyed getting to know these characters.  I won't easily forget them, and that to me is the mark of good fiction writing, that the fictional characters appear so real that you forget they aren't real people.  Like I said, I can see why it won the Pulitzer Prize -- there is a lot of beautiful, nuanced writing here.  But I think the swearing and so on will alienate a lot of readers, and I found myself really wishing for less of it.

At Thursday's meeting we'll also be previewing next month's book, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.  It's set in New York City in 1974 and includes the true story of a man who walked on a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers that year.  The book, written post 9/11 but set 30 years earlier, has been described as an authentic look at New York, a city I've enjoyed visiting.  The book received the 2009 National Book Award.

I'm also hoping that at Thursday's book club meeting we can talk about where we'd like to see the book club go in 2011.  The theme this year has been award-winning literature but I'm open to suggestions of what people would like to read in the future.  Please, come join us!