Katniss Everdeen

I just re-read the Hunger Games trilogy. I first read them a year ago, but I sped through them so quickly that I found myself itching to give it another go just to pick up on the details that slipped through undetected. So I did.

A few days later, hubby and I were at Outback Steakhouse enjoying Friday Night Date Night. He's seen the first movie (the only one to be released thus far) and hasn't read the books. Both of us have seen all the Twilight movies, and neither of us have read those books.

I found myself explaining to him why I love Katniss, even though she has a lot of commonalities with Bella, the protagonist in Twilight (and I loathe Bella).

First of all, the love triangles. Bella professes to be "irrevocably," head over heels, in love with Edward. She wants to abandon her human life and become a vampire so that they can spend their immortal lives together. She is still in high school. She is also in love with Jacob, to the point where she can't sever ties with him and persists in pursing him, even though it makes things completely awkward. How can someone so young be so certain about love? How can someone so certain about love be so willing to hurt that person by pursuing someone else? It baffles me. I really can't comprehend how this love triangle can even exist. Going beyond wondering why either is wasting their time with her, I simply can't understand how she can be so certain, yet unwilling to commit.

Meanwhile, Katniss. She is taken from a life of poverty, yet stability, one in which she is independent yet partners with Gale to benefit both of them. Their partnership is platonic, yet based on mutual understanding, respect, and affection, to the point where feelings have been developed, though neither has acted. She is plucked from this situation and placed in an alternate reality, one in which her skills mean life and death in a way that is more immediate and gruesome than her "normal" life. Her partner, Peeta, is initially a relative unknown but through sharing of tragedy, cooperation, and respect, she develops feelings for him. Of course, being a teenager about Bella's age, she isn't sure what her feelings for either Gale or Peeta are, and she doesn't know what the feelings mean, and she certainly isn't willing to profess a desire for lifelong companionship with either of them until she figures things out. This, to me, is a deeply complicated and yet realistic love triangle. Though I hate Bella for her insistence on True Love, I respect Katniss for her confusion and her self respect.

It comes down to this. Without Edward or Jacob, Bella is no one. She has no independent identity, no personality, no way to define herself other than as being the lover of someone else. Katniss, however, is a kickass girl who is used to relying on no one other than herself and struggles with the idea of someone else stepping in to become her partner. She struggles with maintaining her identity while also becoming part of a couple, something that many people in real life identify with.

This is why, in my opinion, Bella is a terrible role model and Katniss is a great one.

BookSneeze

I just discovered a website that will give you free books in exchange for honest blog reviews about them. I am putting the information here in the hopes that when my life becomes less busy, I will find time to take advantage of it.

BookSneeze

Been a long time

I haven't written a post in a long time, but I haven't forgotten about this blog. Truth be told, I was feeling so bored and understimulated at work that I went back to school. Now my evenings and weekends are filled with reading for class and homework assignments. I miss reading for fun, but it will just have to wait.

Stay tuned, readers, if there are any of you out there. I will be back someday.

Suddenly, by Barbara Delinsky

I just finished the book Suddenly, by Barbara Delinsky. It was a decent read, but I wouldn't recommend it.

My biggest complaint was that all of the dialogue between characters seemed unnatural. Sentences didn't seem phrased the way that people would actually express themselves outloud; they didn't seem like things that people would actually say. They were wordy or threw around words, like "intricacies," that work well in written prose but not in conversations between teenagers and their parents. The way that most of the dialogue was written seemed immature, juvenile, not because of the topic but because of the writer's skill level. It seemed like the kind of dialogue I would have written in 10th grade, prior to my experiences with people and books at college, graduate school, and the "Real World."

My second complaint is that the characters were off somehow. It seemed as though the author was so in love with them that their portrayal wasn't completely accurate, in the same way that someone telling a story about an experience will enhance their own role or thoughts. Yes, the characters were flawed, but in ways that were predictable and shallow, as if the characters didn't know how great they were but the author and the readers did. They didn't seem like real people, but rather invented roles and categories.

In terms of the plot, the main plot and the subplots were predictable. Thirty pages in, it's pretty much possible to predict the ending. Once every conflict or issue is raised, the resolution is transparent. But maybe that's the way stories with happy endings must necessarily be. Anyway, reading the book, I was gripped with a bit of impatience as I waited for the inevitable "falling into place" of the different threads. Hurry up and admit you're in love, hurry up and accept your friend's death, hurry up and realize all the things you should about your friends and acquaintences. We all know it's coming, anyway.

That being said, the main underlying issue of the book was a provocative and creative one: When the close friend of several characters suddenly commits suicide without any warning signs, they must all struggle with the question of "why" and how it affects them. I read the book in its entirety because it was interesting, and I did grow to like the characters. The awkward dialogue was getting under my skin by the 40th page, but while it never went away, my irritation with it faded over the course of the book.

So it was a good beach read, a good rainy day read. But it was not intellectually stimulating, nor was it particularly satisfying in the end. When a book leaves me with a feeling of "That was nice, but I could do better," I don't think too highly of it. I prefer to be stunned by an author's cleverness, tricked or shocked by turns in the plot, emotionally wrenched by the characters' experiences, left thinking about my own life and the people in it. This book, while entertaining, did not have that effect on me, not in the least. A shame.

The Cellist of Sarajevo

I've got to be honest. I just finished reading "The Cellist of Sarajevo" by Steven Galloway, and although it gave a lot of insight into a modern-day war-torn area that I know little about, and although it presented interesting characters, overall it was a disappointing read for me. The main reason was a lack of rising and falling action. There's supposed to be a built-up of suspense, a climax, and a resolution. I applaud any author that successfully breathes new life into that formula and breaks free from pattern, but that didn't happen in this particular book. I could put my finger on the intended climax if asked to, but I can't say that the author successfully built up to it, and there certainly wasn't a resolution afterward. Each character's stories just incorporated the event and moved on without much turbulence. And then the book just ended. I'm not one to insist on happy endings or neatly tied up ends if ambiguity is more fitting to the situation -- and in fact, I like realistic endings more than happy endings -- but I do expect that the state of things is somehow different at the end of the book than at the beginning. Even if events aren't different, characters' interpretations or perspectives should be. I suspect that the author merely meant to showcase one event in the life of these characters and simultaneously depict how nothing really stood out in the grand scheme of war, but the effect was simply uninspiring.

Barbara Gowdy's "Helpless"

When I first finished the novel, the ending seemed remarkably abrupt, like there was one chapter missing. It was as if the author just closed her laptop and walked away from it, intending to come back to it but never getting the chance. She tied up the loose ends that needed to be tied up (the major plot resolution) and left the rest of the details to the imagination. My first response was “Did she just give up?”

But then I kept thinking about the plot. Like the other book by Gowdy that I’ve read, The Romantic, I kept thinking about this one well after I’d put down the book. And I found myself thinking about the characters, and what would have happened if she’d written out all the details.

Who would have found the kidnapper? What would have been said about him? Would people have been shocked at his identity? Or would they have nodded and said “Oh, that makes sense, I should have thought of it”? What would the little girl have told the police and therapist (assuming that she had one)? Would the police have figured out the exact truth of why she was held, or would the mystery have hung over their heads? And what would have become of the kidnapper’s accomplice?

Sitting at my desk at work with nothing else to do the rest of the afternoon, I found myself playing Spider Solitaire and running through the various scenes, conversations, and discoveries that could have been included at the end. And somehow, this satisfied me. Maybe this kind of rumination is what the author had in mind.

Bohjalian's "The Double Bind"

I just finished The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian. I've read several books of his, like Buffalo Soldier and Before You Know Kindness, so I had a sense of what it'd be like. It came highly recommended by someone whose judgment I trust, too.

For the most part, I liked it. I'm a psychology nerd and I love any kind of psychology thriller/ mystery/ story, so this inherently appealed to me. But I was SO disappointed when the end came and the twist that I was waiting for turned out to be something that I had already picked up on in one of the earliest chapters. I was waiting for the author to prove me wrong by some ingenious twist (since the person who recommended it to me said that there was a great twist at the end), but the actual ending was pretty similar to what I had in my mind all along, so that was a bummer -- despite the fact that it was cool from a psychology perspective!

Also, I would really have appreciated a heads-up as to the fact that Bohjalian expects the reader to have a good knowledge of the plot and characters of The Great Gatsby prior to reading The Double Bind. I read the book one summer when I was 17 and obsessed with literary classics, but it's been almost 8 years and my mind is way too cluttered with other stories to have kept track of any details. If I'd known that knowing that story would have helped my understanding of this book, I would have looked it up online before starting it.

All said and done though, a satisfying read.

Hotel Sarajevo, by Jack Kersh

I picked it up because it caught my eye on the shelf. I was looking for a completely different book in the K section, and this one said “Take me home!”

It lived up to its promise. Tragic, poetic, eloquent. Sad but beautiful. A real find.

On the back, it says “A haunting, masterful work,” and I would have to wholeheartedly agree. I’d read more by this author, but unfortunately some online searches haven’t uncovered much.

A Poignantly Incomplete Story: “Suite Française” by Irène Némirovsky

Wow. I am completely moved. I just finished reading “Suite Française” by Irène Némirovsky, and now I just don’t know what to do with myself other than sit here and think about the circumstances of this work.

I first picked up the work about a year ago, in the midst of graduate work, in hopes that I could squeeze in some pleasure reading during meals, since that was my only real free time with all my school obligations hanging over me. I got a few chapters in, but never really got hooked because I wasn’t able to keep track of characters or concentrate on the story, since I had so little time to devote to it. I renewed it once or twice, but when it became clear that I was getting nowhere with it, I returned it to the library unfinished.

I recently picked it up again, vowing to finish what I’d started. The author, Némirovsky, had Jewish roots, though she and her family had converted to Catholicism in the early stages of the Second World War, and was living in France. She penned the first two books of a series of five in the midst of growing political unease and chaos. She made notes and plans for five parts to the whole story, modeled on Beethoven’s Fifth, but only managed to complete “Storm in June” and “Dolce” before she was arrested and deported. Heartbroken, her husband, Michel Epstein, wrote letters begging various people to do what they could first to bring news of her fate, and then to release her. He cited her health, made delicate by asthma, the brilliance of her writing, her Catholic faith, and her lack of political affiliation with or loyalty to the Russians (with whom the Germans were fighting). He even begged for the opportunity to take her place in captivity and allow her to return to her children, whom she’d placed with a friend; this fact is especially poignant when one considers the fact that she’d already died at Auschwitz. Nevertheless, Michel’s pleas went unanswered and he, too, was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where he was immediately killed in the gas chambers. Their children remained in the care of Julie Dumont, who received financial help but still had to keep on the run. The children, Denise and Elisabeth, were pursued by the police, who sought to subject them to a similar fate as their parents. With the aid of nuns at a Catholic boarding school and various families in Bordeaux, they managed to stay far enough ahead of the French police and were never captured. In the midst of all the chaos, Denise kept with her a suitcase filled with her mother’s notebooks. It wasn’t until years later that she had the stomach to look at them and realized what they contained – not just notes, but a manuscript. And so, “Suite Française” was born.

It was this story that attracted me to the book, though I didn’t learn many of the details until reading the appendices at the conclusion of the novel. I was somewhat reluctant, however, due to lingering feelings of tedium left over from my first attempt at reading it. Fortunately, this time around I was able to devote significant time to the story and became immediately hooked. The characterization was brilliant, the links between the stories subtle but significant, the sense of injustice and inequality realistic and unsettling. It is both a cutting commentary and an accurate portrayal of history. “Storm in June” and “Dolce” both read as independent and self-sufficient novels, and yet they are inherently and subtly tied together.

Némirovsky’s personal notes about the story, including the three unwritten books, and its characters evoke a sense of tragic loss. Her arrest cut short a brilliant creative process that might have constructed an even more monumental manuscript. In the end though, we are left with a sense of what might have been, as well as wonder that the first two books even survived the war. The quality of “Suite Française,” written under extraordinary conditions, is itself extraordinary.

Book Snobbery

I have a friend that prides herself on the exclusivity of the books she reads. J.R. is a lot like me in many respects. She grew up in the same area of Western New York, she went to school for psychology and took literature courses along the way, and she’s a bit of a grammar queen. She loves a good book and when she finds one, the business of her life will go by the wayside until she finishes it, at which point life may resume. She emphasizes with characters, gets emotionally involved in the story, and tells other people about it.

But she is also highly, highly critical of books that she reads. If she doesn’t admire the writing style, like the story, or just plain doesn’t get sucked in immediately, she puts the book aside and says “That one’s not for me.” I’ve had conversations with her about this, and it seems to me like when she picks up a book, it’s as if she’s saying to the author, “Ok, show me what you’ve got. Please don’t disappoint me.” Granted, J.R. was much more involved with literature courses in college than I was. She seriously considered being a literature major, while I limited my courseload in that area to two courses, due to many reasons including dislike of certain professors, unwillingness to devote hours to writing papers about the books, and a simple preference for psychology courses over literature courses, when forced to make a choice. As a result, she’s got more experience than I do in critically analyzing literature at a university level.

Whether or not her preference for masterpieces comes from that background, I have no idea. But in my opinion, it’s the wrong way to go. A book can’t be adequately judged and considered without the reader having read the entire thing. Some books have slower paces than others, but it doesn’t diminish their quality. And some books aren’t written with the finesse of a literature major. Sometimes this is because it’s written colloquially, like “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker. Other times it’s because the book is a memoir of an ordinary person with an extraordinary life experience, like “The Glass Castle,” by Jeannette Walls. And maybe it’s just because the author isn’t a fantastic writer. But wouldn’t it be boring if every book had the same writing style? I have a feeling that J.R. wouldn’t have liked “The History of Love,” by Nicole Krauss, because it had some unusual typesetting and formatting in it, and a lot of it was narrated by a lonely old man – not an eloquent observer. But to me, that’s part of the charm of the book. I truly love books that are eloquently worded and structured and are masterpieces in themselves, but I think that limiting oneself to those types of books is a bad move, if not just plain boring.

Personally, I’m much more inclined to give every book a chance. I don’t love every book I read, but I appreciate them. I wasn’t a huge fan of “A Thousand Acres,” by Jane Smiley, but I read the whole thing. You wouldn’t walk out of a movie theater halfway through just because the story wasn’t sucking you in or because it wasn’t the best movie you’ve seen, would you? Isn’t that drastic a move reserved for the truly abysmal movies that would be punishment to finish? Obviously, watching a movie involves less time and effort than reading a book, but I’m inclined to put them in the same boat.

I would much rather read a wide variety of books, recommended by different people and of varying degrees of greatness, than just read the ones that earn awards. I like variety in books – a main reason that I couldn’t follow in my mom’s footsteps and stick to mystery stories, which get so boring to me after a while (she’s a bigger bookworm than I am, but she does tend to favor the same prolific authors at all costs). I like trying out new book styles as much as I like trying new kinds of ethnic foods, and though I don’t love all of them (Ethiopian food certainly isn’t my thing), I appreciate the experience. Sometimes I read old books just for the hell of it; for example, I recently read “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee, just because I felt neglected for never having read it in high school, and I just read “Sula,” by Toni Morrison, because I feel like it’s a cultural piece that should be read. But I also seek out brand new books off the presses and have to wait in line to get my hands on them at the library. Sometimes I like stories that press beyond the scientific possibilities that reality offers, like “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” by Audrey Niffenegger, or that take place in faraway lands, like “The Poisonwood Bible,” by Barbara Kingsolver, or that are autobiographies of ordinary contemporaries, like “Shutterbabe,” by Deborah Copaken Kogan, or that follow individuals and families over a lifetime, like “The Namesake,” by Jhumpa Lahiri. I even plan on reading the first Twilight book against my better judgment, because I can’t resist the pull of something that two intelligent friends have sworn by. If I hate it, so be it, but at least I’ll be able to say I tried it.

I may be making huge assumptions about J.R. and what she would or would not read. But I have had enough conversations with her to get the sense that she wouldn’t really give all of these different kinds of books a chance. I only recently discovered Barbara Kingsolver and love her books, and I have a feeling that J.R. would like her narrative style, as well. But I think she’s missing out on so many other stories.

But what do I know?