The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins

So, admittedly, I’m a little late to the party on this one. I’ve seen the movie, had the book on my Kindle for over a year, but still didn’t read it until now. All I can say is: wow. I was hooked from the first chapter. Katniss Everdeen comes across the page and out into real life. At no point did I question the reality of this made up world, which is just a display of Suzanne Collins’ mastery. We start in District 12 of Panem (a name I can’t help but think has it’s roots in the word bread in foreign tongues). Katniss is a 15 year-old illegal hunter in the woods just outside the boundaries for her District. She hunts with her good friend Gale Hawthorne, so that they can provide for their fatherless, poor, starving families.

Katniss’ status as a survivor is set up well in the first chapter. Actually, I’m really amazed at the brevity and economy Collins implores in her writing. It is as if no word is wasted. Everything reflects on something else, revealing only the marks of a great writer. The Hunger Games start when Effie Trinket pulls names from two bowls, one for male, one for female. It is the 74th Hunger Games, a gladiator style reality show where children from all twelve Districts of Panem are chosen to fight each other to the death until there is one lone victor, who is conferred then with riches for the rest of their life.

Katniss is not scared for herself, but her sister, Primrose. It’s Prim’s first year being in the bowl, and having lost their father to a mine explosion and their mother to an ensuing depression Prim is more daughter than sister to Katniss. When Prim’s name is called Katniss doesn’t hesitate and volunteers to take her place. Her sole mission in life being to protect and comfort Prim. Alongside her is called Peeta Mellark, a boy she has a mysterious past with and who is the local baker’s son, and thus has never known the hunger and lengths of survival that Katniss has.

The two are paired with electric supporting characters, Haymitch their drunken mentor and sole victor ever from District 12, Effie, Cinna and Portia their stylists, as well as not so sympathetic characters such as President Snow, and pretty much everyone from the Capitol. So starts the fight to survive in an arena where nothing can be seen as safe.

The thing I loved about this book is I haven’t been so involved with a book, so on edge, so curious as to what is going to happen, since I read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I even at one point broke down and asked my two sisters for general information as to what happens, since they had already read the entire trilogy, and this is with having seen the very faithful movie myself! Quite simply, read this book. Suzanne Collins accomplishes a feat so few can do. She creates an entirely new world, and makes it real, really real, so real that you genuinely care about these characters and their fates in the arena, and afterwards. The characters are vibrant, the backdrop is lightening. I haven’t had the joy to read something so good in quite a while.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
By Robin Sloan

I picked this up, well actually I downloaded this onto my Kindle and let it sit there for a few weeks. In a way this book is lucky. Prior to this book I had only finished two books on my kindle, The Silver Linings Playbook and The Pillars of the Earth. My Kindle has been known as the place books go to die. I download them with the best of intentions, but just never get around to actually reading them. I have an immensely full library of unread and forgotten books. I think this is because as much as I want to be a techie about this, as I am with most things, I’m fundamentally not. I’m a traditionalist.

Anyway, I let this book start to go the way of so many others that I own on my Kindle. But, the title drew me in. Let us not forget that you can’t judge a book by its cover, but almost everybody does, and this book had an interesting and pleasing cover.

Our protagonist, Clay Jannon, is out of a job due to the economy downturn, and in a moment of desperation (we’ve all felt those moments these days, I’m feeling that pinch right now) he impulsively walks into an odd looking bookstore advertising a help wanted sign. It is oddly placed, practically in an alleyway next door to a strip club, and it is oddly run by the eccentric Mr. Penumbra. The only skill one must have to get the job is to be able to climb a ladder, which instinctively made me think of the scene in “Beauty and the Beast” when Belle is swinging and singing around on a ladder in the bookstore. Clay gets the job, as night clerk, and the adventure begins.

What follows is a dream if you are a museum studies or library science student or grad. The book speaks our language. Not that outsiders won’t get it, they most certainly will. But, it is at time an inside look into the book trade, museums, and dun, dun, dun, Google (a librarian’s greatest asset, yet mortal enemy). Clay spawned by the interesting customers he encounters at all hours of the night picking up books and returning others, all a part of a secret library group the bookstore has going, begins to suspect something fishy is going on, and while building an online 3-D model (to better facilitate the finding of books) of the store stumbles across something with huge implications that he doesn’t quite understand.

Soon, he is off on a quest, a quest that includes appropriately a Warrior, a Wizard, and a Rogue, as well as an old Wizard to enlighten them along the way.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is told at lightning speed. It has false peaks of tension, which just make the story even greater. It is written in a smart, witty, and fun commanding style that keeps you totally engrossed in the story. I couldn’t put it down. Now my Kindle count is up to three finished books, and I damn proud of it. I highly recommend Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore to anyone who loves books, epic quests, thrillers, and plain old good stories.

The Silver Linings Playbook (Movie)

“The Silver Linings Playbook”

Written and Directed by David O. Russell

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Robert DeNiro

Even though this is a bookish blog, I decided to start including some reviews of movies, as they are my other great passion (actually they may be an even bigger passion than books). The movies I review here will be movies based on books, to keep in theme with the blog. Due to the horrendous lack of creativity in Hollywood these days, most movies now are based on books. Just over the holiday weekend I saw Lincoln (based on a book), Silver Linings Playbook (based on a book), I was forced to go see the final installment of Twilight because of a friend (based on a book, and it sucked), and now we have out Anna Karenina (book), and I also recently saw Skyfall (based on a character from a book). So you see, Hollywood is relying more and more on books to make their movies, so there might be quite a few reviews that find themselves here. Now on to the review…

Let me start out by saying I’ve never been a big Bradley Cooper fan. I remember when he was on Alias, and my sister went ape-shit for him. His eyes were just so blue, his hair so blond, etc. She was bought. I however found his character on the show to be kind of an annoying whiner, and so I have always thought Bradley Cooper was an annoying whiner. I wasn’t pleased at all to find out the movie I most wanted to see out of anything starred Bradley Cooper. I was pleasantly amazed. He gives a strong performance as Pat Solitano, a man who has just spent 8 months in a mental hospital at a court order. If you read my review of the book you might sense some departures from it. I think part of the reason I loved the book so much after seeing the movie was it was not the movie.

David O. Russell takes the bare outline of the book to make his film. Amazingly, I don’t think it tarnishes the book in anyway. The movie captures its essence. I just think making a movie true to the book would have been hard to get the audience involved, solely because film is a different form of narrative than a book. In the book we can be inside Pat’s head, in the film we have to interpret what Pat is feeling and thinking by how he looks and the oddball things he does. That’s the main major difference between books and film, and between the first person narrative book and the ensemble cast film.  

To tell the truth I knew nothing about this movie, other than the Jennifer Lawrence was in it. Ever since I saw “Winter’s Bone” I’ve been mesmerized by her on screen. I think she has a talent that comes around once in a generation, and I can’t wait for the film that truly lets her range be displayed. This film attempted that. Lawrence plays Tiffany. A woman who has lost her husband and finds herself in a similar place as Pat. They are both trying to make sense of this new world they find themselves in, without the old familiar routine of life, without their significant others to help them through it all. There is one point where Tiffany tells her sister Veronica “You’re killing me.” She more screeches it silently. At that moment Tiffany’s pain knocks you out. You know she’s dying (not literally, but figuratively), and the way Lawrence plays it makes the moment come across as one of the truest in the film.

The film diagnosis the mental illness Pat suffers from, while the book never does. In the film he is grappling with Bipolar disorder, and I have never seen a more true representation of Bipolar than in this film. They even get the drug cocktails right. It shocked me to learn that the character was Bipolar, and I pessimistically settled in for an out there portrayal, but it is so true it is scary. Cooper does an excellent job portraying a young man trying to get his life back while everybody else has already moved on.

Now, I’ve read some reviews in which the reviewer states that this film is anti-meds and displays Pat getting himself together without their help. That lady must have missed something, because after a very significant battle with his parents you can tell Pat resolves to take his medication even though he doesn’t want to, and by the way, his reason for not wanting to deal with the side effects and the film even gets that right.

In conclusion, I highly recommend this film to anyone who wants a good laugh, has ever dealt with bipolar disorder, and who loves Jennifer Lawrence because she delivers an amazing performance. If she isn’t nominated for something I am going to be pissed. Bradley Cooper is worth seeing as well. He has officially won me over. The Silver Linings Playbook, while it commits the sin of deviating away from the book, it does so in a humorous, heart-wrenching, and honest as all hell way. Do yourself a favor go see this film.  

The Silver Linings Playbook

The Silver Linings Playbook

By Matthew Quick

I came across this book while watching the credits role for the movie version of it, starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence (one of my favorite young actresses), and written by David O. Russell. My review of the movie will be up shortly. I will say though that I loved the movie so much, when I saw it was also a book I went home immediately and downloaded it to my kindle. Although I prefer books to tablets, I just couldn’t wait to read this particular book. And, now that I am finished reading it I am still so consumed by it that, even though I am at work and could get in major trouble for writing this now, I’m writing my review of it, because it is just that damn good.

The book is about Pat Peoples, a man who has just been released from a mental institution after, we eventually find out, four years of stay. What I loved about this book was how it captured mental illness, especially after coming home from a hospital. There is a childlike wonder to the world as all that is once familiar is suddenly brand new again. Quick, masterfully captures that wonder and tone.

The book has been described as The Perks of Being a Wallflower for adults. I agree with that somewhat. It has the same pull, because we are seeing things through Pat’s eyes only. All the information we get is through his filter. This technique is hard to do well, because inevitably even the most skilled writers slip up. But, Quick maintains throughout a solid representation of Pat’s world, through Pat’s eyes. Of course another hallmark of this technique is being able to take the information that Pat gives you and piece together his puzzle before he can even see it. While you are able to do this at some parts, and I love it when I am able to guess the surprise, other parts leave you reeling at how unseen they were.

I applaud Quick. Without giving anything away, this book is so well written it hurts. Pat is trying to get back to the life he left, with no recollection of why he had to leave it in the first place, and no idea why he can’t see or talk to his wife, plus he has a girl that mysteriously follows him on the daily runs he takes. It is a book about a second chance at life, and about learning to accept the things you cannot change, and figuring out how to change the things you can. I highly recommend this to anyone, especially Eagles fans (the book may turn you into one), and anyone who has ever grappled with a mental illness. It is well done, a swift read because you can’t put it down, and book that lingers with you, as all great books do.

A Room of One’s Own

Sorry I’ve been absent in recent weeks. I’ve been learning that a manuscript is never truly finished, and the rounds of editing are busy, burdensome, and after a bit quite boring. One thing that never loses its electricity though is that you have a real live living organism in your hands, and it is growing and changing everyday, every time you work with it. It is an exciting time. I finally got a break though to write a bit of a blog post due to extremely sorrowful circumstances. My Aunt Deborah passed away on September 26, 2012, after a valiant fight with cancer. She is loved and adored by all her family, which includes one sister, four brothers, her only son, and countless nieces and nephews. She was an indispensable member of our family, who fought for her life with strength and dignity, eventually leaving this world behind to join two of her brothers and both her parents in Heaven, beginning, as the scriptures say, her everlasting life.

It was during driving up to her funeral from Virginia to New Jersey that I decided to forgo music and tune in to an audiobook. I originally wanted to find something on the history of Loudoun County, Virginia so that I could be learning valuable information that would serve me well in my second job at Thomas Balch Library. But, wouldn’t you know, there are no audio books on the history of Loudoun County, Virginia.  So, I took stock of what I had. Instantly I was drawn to Viriginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. It was read by the divine Juliet Stevenson, whom I highly recommend for any audiobook. She has a delightfully English accented voice, and does an amazing job on that other famous Virginia Woolf book, Mrs. Dalloway.

A Room of One’s Own deals with the subject of Women and Fiction, in a dazzling style only Virginia Woolf is capable of pulling off. The book was first published on October 29, 1929 in England. It was based on a series of lectures given at Newnham and Girton Colleges at Cambridge in October of 1928. Both Newnham and Girton are women’s colleges at Cambridge, or at least they were then. In the book she describes “Oxbridge,” (a combination of the words Cambridge and Oxford, the two oldest English speaking universities in the World) and while I am aware that she gave the lecture at Cambridge, as an Oxonian myself, I prefer to believe that she is describing Oxford in talking of the ancient colleges and the Bodleian in illustrating the old Library that keeps her out and their books in. She starts her lecture listing all the different ways a lecture on “Women and Fiction” could be given. Is it about how women are presented in fiction? How women have written fiction? Or a mixture of both? Woolf then asks for the license of creativity afforded a novelist to tell the truth of Women and Fiction through the use of Fiction. Basically, saying that through the use of fiction, or lies, one can glean truth that straight facts could never deliver, and I for one and compelled to agree.

Woolf then, with great skill and artistry, paints a picture for us all of the luxury and riches afforded to men, and the basic necessities women of learning are forced to fight for. What Woolf proceeds to do is not just talk about Women and Fiction, but she subtly points out the gross inequalities of women and men, and makes that point that in order to write fiction, true fiction, a woman needs money and a room of one’s own. Her masterful conclusion being that men are naturally given money and a room of their own, while women are bogged down by expectations of how women should behave, how a wife should present herself, how a mother should raise her children. While men are free from these expectations to do as they please.

Woolf doesn’t just write on Women and Fiction, but the postion of women at that time in general. They didn’t have examples of strong independent women to follow. They didn’t necessarily have ready access to higher education that wasn’t some form of a finishing school. They had to fight for their right to write. And, Woolf does that here in the most sublimely quiet way. This book, this lecture isn’t just about Women and Fiction, even though it is wholly about that, it is also about the condition of women throughout the ages.

In hearing it read to me so beautifully by Juliet Stevenson, I was struck by the masterful language, the visceral images painted with Woolf’s words, but mostly at how privileged I am to live in this day and time where I could get and education just as good as the education given to the men in my class, and I could have a job to support myself, hell two jobs to support myself, and still have time in the evening to at least contemplate my writing, if not go the extra measure and still write something. The book felt all at once horribly dated, yet horribly current. Women still need money and a room of one’s own to write. I believe that wholeheartedly. While that playing field between men and women in regards to writing fiction now seems level, it is not. Women still have to fight a bit more than men. Just take J.K. Rowling as an example. She used her initials instead of her name Joanna Rowling to dupe male readers into reading her book instead of passing her over, not all that different then the ploy George Eliot used to get her work read and published.

I guess my point is, having it come to it crumbling and fumbling my way through, not have painted a picture of such profound beauty the words themselves seem sacred as Woolf did so well, my point is that I agree with Virginia Woolf then and now. I think this book should be read for what it has to offer readers by way of opening one’s mind to a new understanding, but also because it is so well written it almost hurts to read knowing I will never be that gifted. It is a pleasant read, especially on an almost October day, and a beautiful book to listen to on a long drive to a sad place. I strongly suggest everyone pick up a copy of A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. It is the type of book you’ll go back to time and again throughout you life. My first time reading this book was when I was 21, three years ago, vacationing alone in Paris and Amsterdam. The book itself, coupled with the sincere rush of independence I felt touring the most beautiful parts of Europe alone, makes this book one of my favorites not only because of its content and author, but also because of the lovely memories of sitting in a Parisian Park on an almost October day, reading one of the greatest texts English literature has to offer. I swear those days are the closest thing to perfection I know.

Writing a Book in a Month

About a month ago I started this job as a temp. One of the projects that quickly came to the forefront was writing and editing a book to be published for my employer. All I will say about said book is that it deals with empowering minorities in one of the world’s biggest organizations. I’m not sure how much I am allowed to give away. Anyway, it dealt with around 30 ethnicities strikingly different from my own, whom I knew nothing about. But, on my first day I had a ten minute convo with my boss, was sent to a computer and ordered to write on.

Being the docile little creature I am I immediately set to work on research and writing for ethnicities we couldn’t get authors for. It turns out we couldn’t get authors for a total of 17 profiles. So, I am the sole author for those profiles. I was writing at about 2 1/2 per day, and about 10 per 5 day week, when I got another job at a library, and my week was cut short. In addition, my second week there we met with Publishing, which put the fear of God into me  about citations, and now I fear I’ve delivered a way over cited mess. But I got my first taste of real world workings of book publishing, deadlines, editing, and writing.

Last weekend, the long weekend, I spent writing and editing so that by yesterday we could have a compiled first draft. I was the lone editor for the first draft, but this draft will go on to get further editing from experienced editors that truly do this stuff for a living. By the end of the day yesterday we had our first draft done. I had edited and written a book in a month exactly to the day.

There are questions I have about how all this came to be. This is a job I was recruited for, didn’t have to interview for, didn’t have to apply for, and was called about it on a Thursday, once I agreed to the terms I thought would get me an interview, I was told I was starting Monday. Then, on Monday when I showed up knowing nothing at all about this job, the job turns out to be a writing/editing job, my dream job. My dream in general. A job that would see me published as both an editor and writer. I cannot emphasize how much of my life goal, my life dream that is. And recently, because of this job I’ve been getting increasingly religious. Now I’m looking for God’s imprint on all the paths my life is taken. A month ago I would have screamed bullshit, but I can honestly say that I see him there.

With this job, with the organization I work for, it’s as if he is saying I sent you to Catholic University for two years and you didn’t listen, and now I sent you here so you can accomplish your dream, so you must listen. The thing is I don’t know what I am listening to. I just know I was suppose to ghost-write the book’s introduction, but my supervisor loved it so much she let me take credit, and said the book could have two introductions. And I’ve only been at this a month, grasping around in the dark, hoping beyond all hope I’m doing it right.

This project is why I’ve been away from the blog for so long. It feels like an eternity. And I wanted to post but I didn’t quite know what to write. Other than that I wrote a book. I did what my sixth grade self set out to do. I did it in a month, and I did it under extreme pressure. It feels like I climbed a mountain, and after scaling that feat I’m back at base camp wondering, now what?

For anyone interested this book should be published sometime in January. And while it is an educational material, you know everyone and their mother that I know is going to get a copy. That’s how damn proud of this work I am.

Deadlines are for Winners

So, I have reneged on my promise to consistently update the blog. I haven’t even been here all week. I have a good reason why. I have been writing a book, basically, for one of my jobs, and the deadline is quickly approaching. Even this weekend is a strong working weekend to get this done by Friday. While I believe you cannot rush an artist, the powers that be do not feel the same way. Still, I haven’t missed a deadline since my sophomore year  in high school, so I am certainly not going to miss this one. Along with being one of the writers, I am also one of the editors, so I get to spend the rest of today and tomorrow avidly editing a whole book. While I could complain about this for miles, I am actually quite honored and feel really privileged to be a part of this project, even if it means my blog gets neglected. So, that is why there has been no updates, and unfortunately I cannot write a new post, back to work I go. Have a good Labor Day for all you Americans! I promise things will get back to normal soon!