The Hunger Games (Hardcover)
by Suzanne Collins
Scholastic, September 2008
384 Pages

I admit, I’m late to jump on The Hunger Games bandwagon. I wasn’t really aware of the series until Catching Fire was released last year and all the book bloggers I follow were acting as if this was the next best thing since sliced bread, or whatever the literary equivalent would be. It still took me a year to get around to becoming interested enough to take the plunge and read the first book.

Before I get started I have a question I need clarified. This book is about twenty-four kids of various ages (from 12 to 18) brutally murdering each other while everybody watches and cheers them on. Did I get that right? Is this really what the book is about? I can see how one might consider The Hunger Games to be a social commentary on how we as a society have become obsessed with “reality” TV shows like Survivor and Who Wants to be The Biggest Loser?. It could have been a Modest Proposal lampooning reality TV. Instead it fails because one of the reasons this book is so damn compelling is because it’s set up like a reality TV show.

Back to the book at hand, The Hunger Games follows Katniss, a sixteen year old girl from the poorest of the 12 districts, who volunteers to take her sister’s place in the annual Hunger Games. Once inside the arena, she must stay alive in the wilderness while making both allies and enemies. Peeta was also selected from District 12 and his intentions are in question throughout the entire novel. Is he a good guy? Bad guy? Is he in love with Katniss or is it just a ploy for ratings? Again, all good trademarks of “reality” TV shows. The novel is really well paced and full of action. There are explosions and danger around every corner. The reader never knows when Katniss is going to be attacked and by who.

There is an abrupt ending that left me annoyed. Had I read the book when it first came out I would have been downright livid. Luckily, the entire trilogy has been released so the only thing holding me back from finishing the series is the two books I am currently reading.

I do have one MAJOR complaint about the book. If you are one of the few who have not read it just stop reading because the following contains spoilers.

My biggest complaint was that it was too convenient for Katniss not to kill anybody. I know she is the main protagonist and the reader must be able to relate to her, but she hardly makes an attempt to win the games. The other contestants die at the hands of each other while Katniss just sits up in a tree and waits. Since there can only be one winner, the reader goes through the book thinking Katniss and Peeta will have to fight to the death at some point only to have the rules changed and suddenly there could be two winners conveniently saving the two main characters. I just wish that Suzanne Collins would have pushed the character a little bit further and made her actively try to win the games instead of just winning almost by pure luck.

They’re also making a movie based off of the book.

Oh wait, wrong movie. My bad.

Second Opinions:
Bookish Nose
The Broke and the Bookish
Fyrefly’s Book Blog
Dreadlock Girl
Whimpilsive

Company (Hardcover)
by Max Barry
Doubleday, February 2006
338 Pages

It’s Monday. It’s the start of another work week. For most people there are five days to go until the weekend when we can forget about punching the time clock and working for “the man”. Don’t fret though, I have a book that changed the way I viewed work place monotony that I recently re-read, and I must share it with you.

First, some backstory. A few years ago I was working at a big corporate bank. For the sake of avoiding slanderous lawsuits I will refer to this big corporate bank as BIG BANK. I was working in the credit card phone customer service taking incoming calls and hearing people complain about their APR or how they maxed out their card or how they need an increase in their credit line so they could buy a Playstation 3. I did this for eight hours a day, five days a week. I felt as if I was shackled to my desk by the cord of the telephone headset I had to wear. Then along came Max Barry’s Company.

In Company, the fictional company of Zephyr Holdings has just hired Jones as a Sales Representative. The company has had a hiring freeze in effect. To get around the freeze Jones is hired and categorized as paper for the copying machine. Once he settles in he goes around asking questions like “What do we do here?” and “Who are our customers?” and quickly discovers that nobody knows the answers. Possibly worse, nobody cares. His co-workers accuse him of rocking the boat and that the only reason he’s asking such questions is because he’s new. Things don’t add up and as Jones investigates Zephyr Holdings, he discovers the true purpose behind the company’s insane business decisions. Insane business decisions like having the receptionist on the first floor tell a majority of the company that they’ve been laid off or why the buttons on the elevator are upside with the ground floor being level 30 and the top floor level 1.

What I love most about Company is the way Max Barry is able to explain the logic behind the company’s thought process. The reader is suppose to relate to Jones and agree with him that the company is making some real bad decisions and their problems could easily be solved if they used some common sense.

Anyway, back to my job at BIG BANK. I was reading this book and I started to notice some parallels between BIG BANK and Zephyr Holdings. It was then I realized that my time at BIG BANK was over and I put in my two weeks notice.

I highly recommend this book in general and especially to anybody who is disgruntled at their job.

Note: He did a reading at Google which is worth checking out.

Read my thoughts on Vol. 1 – 3.

* * * Also, potential spoiler alerts I guess. * * *

Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together
The volume is pretty good. We learn, much to Scott’s surprise, that Ramona dated a girl who is one of her seven evil exes. In addition to fighting her, Scott must also fend off attacks from a mysterious ninja-like figure. Ohhh, Mystery. Not much happens in this book I feel. It feels as if this book is just filler for the series as we get closed to the end. Scott get’s a job, busts out the L word and moves in with Ramona. I guess that’s considered “getting it together”, hence the titled.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Universe
Mayhaps the darkest volume in the Scott Pilgrim saga. Something’s up with Ramona, and I’m beginning to think she’s not all that great. She’s started to open up but is still too damn mysterious at this point in the story. Anyway, in this volume Scott fight’s some robots and a pair of twins. The twins are the evil exes, the robots are just there to be robotic-like. I did find it funny that in this book we would often find Scott fighting robots in the background while other people carry on normal conversations as if nothing odd is happening. It was funny at first, but it drew the relationships to the forefront of the story which may or may not be a good thing depending on your point of view. I do like that Kim Pine get’s more story time here. There are even hints that perhaps Kim and Scott will end up together.

Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour
First off: It’s not. His finest hour, that is. If you have been follow Scott Pilgrim’s adventures from the beginning you would know this book probably contains the Scott vs. Gideon fight. Until now very little had been known about the mysterious 7th evil ex and how they all banded together to form the league of evil exes. The story picks up after the cliffhanger in Vs. The Universe and Scott is trying to live his life without Ramona. He’s not doing a very good job at it. One thing leads to another and the epic battle commences. What I did not like about this book is the sense of finality that it gave. You know how the finale of a TV show tries to wrap up all the lose ends in the final episode? It’s kinda like that where we are constantly encountering characters who tell Scott what their plans are for the future and how they don’t involve him. If this were a TV series you could easily follow any of these characters and start a spin-off feature them. It’s annoying because everybody ends up conveniently happy, unlike real life. Another issue I had was Gideon wasn’t nearly as cool of an evil ex as the first six. As it turns out, he’s just crazy. Almost James Bond villain crazy. I just wanted something more logical than Gideon having a hard time getting over the girls that dump him. Lastly, while the previous books had their fair share of video game references, this volume felt sorely lacking in that department. There were some, it’s a trademark of the series after all, but they did not stand out as much as Ramona quoting Monkey Island or Scott noticing a Save Point.

To sum up, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour isn’t. It’s a conclusion to the series and is overall too convenient of an ending and lacks the charm of the previous books. It’s sad that Scott Pilgrim ends on such a flat note.

Second Opinions:
Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

The upcoming movie is suppose to have a different ending from the books, so maybe the movie will give me the closer I am looking for.

Have you heard of this little known comic series called Scott Pilgrim? Not many people have, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t. I hear they might make a movie about it at some point. Again, these are just rumors.

Well, anyway, with the comic series having finally wrapped up. I thought I would re-read them all. Being forced to wait a year in between books makes it difficult for me to remember certain characters and plot events and whatnot.

Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life
The Scott Pilgrim series is apparently about this 23 year old guy who starts dating a 17 year old high school student. Wait, check that. Scott Pilgrim is apparently about this 23 year old who starts dating a 17 year old high school student but then starts cheating on her by totally sleeping with this girl he meets at a party. I know that the above statement is not what Scott Pilgrim is about, but if someone just randomly picked up this book and started reading without having a friend tell them what it was about or without reading the back cover, then this is what I would think the plot is about. It’s not until near the end up the book that seven evil ex-boyfriends is mention. I find it odd that the book opens with Scott’s relationship with Knives (the high school student). To me that suggests that she plays an important role in the story. That, or the entire first half of this book is just filler. Couldn’t we have just started with Scott met Ramona (the party girl)? That would have made more sense.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Wold
Now that we’ve got the introduction to the series under our belt, Vol 2 can just jump right in to the meat and potato of the series, so to speak. In my mind this book is still trying to find the proper balance between drama/action/comedy. While the drama and comedy are there, the action is a bit of a let down. Vol 2 does contain my favorite fight scene in the whole series when Knives attacks Ramona in the library. I think the outfit Knives is wearing and Ramona’s ability to kick-ass come as a nice surprise to the reader. The Scott vs. Evil Ex battle in this book is an incredible let down. Halfway through the ex gets killed in a pretty pathetic skateboarding accident making him the most forgettable of the ex’s. The rest of the book is about Scott’s band and his need for a haircut.

Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness
Vol 3 is my favorite book in the series. I think it is the most well balanced. Todd, evil ex number #3, who was shown in the final pages of Vol 2, is a vegan and just happens to be dating Scott’s ex, Envy. I liked that, unlike the previous books, Scott and Todd have multiple confrontations instead of just one fight that was over way too quickly. I actually felt that defeating the evil ex’s was the main plot instead of just a convenient hook used to draw the reader in to Scott and his friend’s relationship drama. The relationship drama is extra heavy in this volume due to the inclusion of Envy, the girl who broke Scott’s heart prior to the start of the series. Her and Ramona have a pretty cool fight involving a rather large hammer. There’s now a duality in the series with Scott fighting Ramona’s exes and Ramona fighting two of Scott’s exes thus far. We could look deep into this a suggest that what Bryan Lee O’Malley is trying to say that in every relationship a person can not help but at some point have to confront the exes of the other person in either a symbolic, physical, or hypothetical fashion. Or, we could just see it as an excuse for Ramona to kick-ass and establish her as a strong female character.

Anyway, I’ll post tomorrow about the remaining three volumes.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson (Hardcover)
by John Green and David Levithan
Dutton Juvenile, April 2010
310 Pages

This is the story of two characters named Will Grayson (hence the title) that do not know about the other. One Will Grayson is your typical high school student who has this mad crush on a girl and eventually they date. By his side his his best friend Tiny who is 1) not tiny at all and 2) a flaming homosexual. Tiny’s quest throughout the corse of the book is to put on a school musical about himself that he wrote and plans to star in. The other Will Grayson is a moody high school student who is so horribly in the closest that he’s nearly been granted legal residence there. One thing leads to another and both Will Grayson’s happen to wind up in the exact same porn store at the same time. Other Will Grayson starts dating Tiny and as with most gay relationships in high school, drama ensues.

Since the book is written by two author with John Green writing Original Will Grayson, David Levithan writing Other Will Grayson, you can expect it to be slightly untraditional. The chapters alternate between the two Wills. At first it can be slightly jarring but it’s easy to pick up on the changing of tone and voice. The chapters for Other Will are written without the use of caps and read like his internal thought process. It works because the main focus of this story, in my opinion, is Other Will Grayson and his conflict with being gay and his relationship with Tiny. The Original Will Grayson is kind of forgettable. I finished the book a couple of weeks ago but I can not remember much about what his whole plot was. Other Will was much more interesting and complex and you didn’t know how his story was going to end.

Tiny, who would I guess be the REAL main character, plays an important role in the lives of both Will Graysons. His quest to find love and to put on the musical play about his life is the thing that ties all the story lines together.

All in all I thought the book was enjoyable but not nearly a memorable as John Green’s previous work. His version of Will Grayson is forgettable and nearly indistinguishable from John Green’s other male leads in his previous books. I can’t speak about David Levithan’s books and how this compares because I am unfamiliar with his works. Interestingly enough Will Grayson, Will Grayson does not inspire me to check out his previous work.

It may sound like I didn’t like Will Grayson, Will Grayson, but I think my main problem with it was that there was nothing to make it stand out. It’s a story about the high school drama of two very different Will Graysons. Read it if you want, but this book doesn’t stand out in the piles of YA fiction. The only drawing power of this book comes from the two well established authors.

Second opinions:
Firefly’s Book Blog
Reading Local: Portland
Bookfoolery and Babble
books i done read
Zen Leaf
Stuff As Dreams Are Made Of

Here’s John Green reading the beginning of the book!

Fish (Hardcover)
by Gregory Mone
Scholastic Press, June 2010
256 Pages

After the family horse dies, Fish, aptly named for his natural swimming ability, is sent from his family’s farm to the city to earn money as a delivery boy. But after some mysterious coins that Fish was tasked with delivering get stolen, he inadvertently joins the crew of the Scurvy Mistress. Reluctant at first, Fish soon finds himself more at home on the sea than on dry land. He befriends his fellow pirates and naturally makes a few enemies just by being there. Now Fish must help the pirate captain unravel the clues leading to Chain of Chuacar, a valuable treasure not seen in many years, and prevent the mutiny being led by the first mate.

I typically don’t think that young adult fiction and pirates are two things that go together considering that pirates aren’t the most ideal role models for kids. However, this book does a good job of trying to stay faithful to pirate mythology while not encouraging the less favorable aspects of it. For example, after Fish is forced in to a fight, he opts to  take a pacifistic approach in combat. His friend Daniel begins to teach him “non fighting” skills that reads as a form of mixed martial arts of some sort that is unnamed in the book. Speaking of naming things, there were a couple of small references in the book that annoyed me. Nora, the ship’s cook, apparently invented the sandwich and the pirate named Jumping Jack invented a form of aerobics that he quickly named after himself. These aren’t big deals but they broke the flow of the story. Kids who read this book and are less fact snobbish then myself probably wont care and may even find it amusing.

In the end this is a fun read for kids/young adults who are fascinated by pirates. The chapters are the perfect length and full of action and adventure. This is not a boring book.

P.S. Have I mentioned that I like books about pirates?

In The Bucolic Plague, Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s latest memoir, he and his partner impulsively buy a farm in Sharon Springs, New York. Hilarity ensues.

I’m tempted to just finish my review right there, but I guess I should say more. Okay, so Josh Kilmer-Purcell wrote the book called I Am Not Myself These Days about his life as an alcoholic drag queen with a drug addicted male escort of a boyfriend. It still stands as one of my favorite books. I am pleased that he returned to memoir style writing after a brief forte into fiction writing with Candy Everybody Wants.

Like I said, Josh and his partner Brent buy a farm. It’s clear that they did not think the idea through because they have a really hard time getting the farm up and running. Not only that, but they must make the farm profitable if they want to keep it. Their solution, raise goats and grow tomato!

Overall I really liked the book and managed to read it over the course of a couple days. As I read it I liked the tension that builds as you wonder if they’re going to be able to pull this off and keep the farm. It has many ups and downs. It wasn’t all goats and giggles. There are parts that are not comical at all such as the deterioration of Josh and Brent’s relationship due to the pressure of running a farm. I started wondering if the farm was going to cause the end of their relationship.

I enjoyed reading this book and found it to be a very touching story about two gays guys who buy a farm and the troubles that come with it.

Their farm’s website is beekman1802.com

Oh, they also have a reality TV show on Planet Green and you can watch the first episode online at Planet Green’s website.

I normally dismiss historical-fiction because I fear that it will be really, really boring and that I might accidentally learn something. So when I got The Fiddler’s Gun I was conflicted. On the one hand I hate history and on the other, I love pirates. I was conflicted until finally my love of pirates won and started to read the book.

It was pretty awesome.

There was the initial culture shock from reading about people who didn’t know what a large hadron collider was but then I realized historical-fiction isn’t that much different from science-fiction and was able to continue reading with no problems.

Anyway, The Fiddler’s Gun (which takes place somewhere around 1755) is about a Fin, a tomboyish girl who lives at an orphanage in America. She in constantly defying the nuns and getting in to trouble. That trouble causes her to be banished to kitchen duty where she befriends Bartimaeus, the book with a mysterious past. One thing leads to another and Fin kills some English soldiers and is forced to run away. She is mistaken for a man and joins the crew of the Rattlesnake. Luckily she feels right at home aboard a boat full of men. Then they become pirates and fight people who don’t like pirates.

Like I said, it’s pretty awesome.

I know my description above probably wont sell you on this book. But it is a very beautifully written book that is chock full of adventure, drama, and romance.

My one complant, and it’s a major one, is that after 300-ish pages of rooting for Fin to get the happy ending she deserves, I find out that this is a two book series. And the second book, Fiddler’s Green, isn’t out yet. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Anyway, I don’t think I can recommend this book enough. I went in to it with low expectations (again, historical-fiction) and, like a ship being hit with a cannonball, I was blown completely away. You should pick up a copy at The Rabbit Room or even get the Kindle version for less than the cost of a gallon of gas.

Second Opinions:

Booking Mama, Book Journey, My Friend Amy, Pick of the Literate

Death is a hot topic right now. Seriously, if you are a writer quit whatever you’re writing and switch to a death story. Don’t believe me? Consider The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Her Fearful Symmetry, and Spooky Little Girl. Ghosts may be the new vampires.

Speaking of Spooky Little Girl by Laurie Notaro, this is Laurie’s eighth book and her second fiction novel. In SLG, Lucy returns from a Hawaiian vacation only to discover that all of her possessions have been tossed out on the front lawn and her fiance isn’t answering his phone. With nowhere else to go she movies in with her sister.

She then proceeds to get hit by a bus and is killed.

When she wakes up Lucy discovers that she must complete ghost school before being sent back to the world of the living to complete her unfinished business. When she gets back, she is forced to haunt her ex-fiance and his new domestic partner (who is female).

I really like Laurie Notaro’s writing. Sure, I am the completely wrong target audience and when I went to her reading at Powells recently, I may have been one of the only few guys in the audience. But Laurie’s writing is funny regardless of your gender.

One of the perks of writing fiction as opposed to non-fiction/memoir like Laurie’s previous books is that she is allowed to exaggerate the characters she uses in the story. This helps make them more memorable like Nola who is obsessed with gross reality TV shows or Martin, the fiance, who is obsessed with his job in at the produce department. Each character stands out on their own and help SLG have a great cast to follow.

Anybody who read Laurie’s first fiction novel, There’s a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell, should recognize the character of Ruby Spicer who met an unfortunate demise by spontaneous combustion at the end of the first novel. She is back in SLG as a ghost teacher who serves as a mentor to ghost Lucy. Ruby seems a lot more mellow in this book. Maybe death does that to people.

While I de prefer Laurie’s memoir books to her fiction, her second fiction novel has shown real improvement of her first attempt at fiction. Spooky Little Girl is as a well-rounded, light-hearted ghost story about getting closure and haunting people you hate by deleting their TiVo. If you ever get a chance to see Laurie Notaro read, do so! She is hilarious in person.

Also, can we drop the term chick-lit? It’s emasculating.. to dudes.

Second opinions:
Book Divas, Bewitched Bookworms

Updating this blog is kind of like reading Generation X by Douglas Coupland. I started it a while ago but had to put it down when I got busy with school. While finishing Generation X is low on my list (I wasn’t really enjoying it), regularly updating this blog is something that I would like to do. Having said that, I have a bunch of books I want to talk about. Starting with…

I had to read this book for a class on British women writers. Of the books we read, White Teeth was probably the most modern of them all.

The story of White Teeth centers around three difference families over the course of many generations. The novel starts with the history of how Samad and Archie became friends during world war 2 and how each of them eventually married and had children. Their offspring are the stars of the story because most of the novel revolves around them and their search for cultural identity. Samad tries to raise his two sons, Millat and Magid, in the muslim tradition. However, as they grow old the sons lean towards ideologies vastly different from their father. One son becomes a scientist, and more shockingly to Samad, an atheist. The other son joins a fundamentalist group the believes in the most extreme measures to promote their ideals.

One of the main ideas this novel puts forth is the of how kids get raised and identify with the culture that surrounds them regardless of what their parents would like. Is it possible to identify as both Muslim and British? Muslim and Atheist? There is cognitive dissidence between many of the ideas brought up and what the characters are trying to do is find some sort of common ground where they are content with who they are.

This book was long, 448 pages long. Reading it in a two week period and quickly turning out an essay about didn’t leave me much time to sit down and process it. However, I did find the characters in this novel interesting because it centers around cultures and classes that I can not easily relate to. I’m also a fan of novels with multiple characters and story lines that all come together at the very end and you see how everybody’s actions and decisions effect everybody. That to me is good story writing as it demonstrates that Zadie Smith knew what she was doing while she was writing.

I’d probably go ahead and recommend this book, but I a

cknowledge that not everybody will enjoy it. It’s long and, at times, a little boring.

For the class we also watched the BBC adaptation of the book which you can to on Hulu.

Second Opinions:
Panorama of the Mountains,  Life Wordsmith