Every once in a while, awash with the sense of being overhwhelmed by technology, it is necessary to indulge oneself in the old-fashioned pastime of reading.
And I don't mean reading blog posts. Or Facebook.
Sometimes, the only thing keeping me sane is the thought of escaping somewhere to read a book. You know, those cardboard-enclosed cubic collections of paper with random bits of ink scattered across the surface like so many Egyptian heiroglyphs. (It always strkes me odd that they don't have hyperlinks in them, so the pages don't automatically update when the words are tapped with a finger.) There are these buildings called "libraries" wherein they are housed. Quite interesting, actually. If you can get past the rows and rows of computer terminals where people come to work on their resumes, they have shelves full of these odd little devices.
I was perfectly happy with the set of books which had been nabbed during my latest sojourn to the Land of Words: a Dave Barry anthology (always good for a gut-buster laugh session); Carrie Fisher's latest memoir; Bob Green's memoir about his dad and Paul Tibbets; and an anthology of newspaper articles from H.L.Mencken.
Dave Barry's book, Boogers Are My Beat, was one I had checked out before, but wanted to check out again so that I could re-read his tribute articles to the people who died on 9-11. While I do enjoy reading his humorous works, his serious essays have a certain tone which reminds me of his real skill as a writer.
Carrie Fisher's book, Wishful Drinking, was hilarious, but definitely not for those wishing to avoid colorful phrases. As in, lots of bad language. The girl has a mouth that just won't quit. And while her story is sad and poignant, the reaction one comes away with after reading it (and wanting to wash one's eyes out with soap and water) is that, although it's a shame she had such a horrid home life as a kid (at least from the standpoint of having no real father in her life) and we all wish she could've had the dream life we always imagined for her (after all, it's Princess Leia!) instead of getting to the point where the only thing she could do to keep sane was to scramble her brains with electro-shock therapy, we do wish she'd find a better way to communicate than by lacing her narrative with expletives. One does feel rather soiled after reading it.
Bob Green's memoir, Duty: A Father, A Son, and the Man Who Won the War, was a bit odd, since it dealt both with his father and Paul Tibbets, who was not his father. Jumping between the story of his relationship with his father and his interviews with Tibbets left one wondering which of the relationships was more important. And some of the questions he asked of Tibbets were badly chosen, considering how much information about the man was already publicly available. One doesn't need to harp on his connection to the bombing of Hiroshima over and over again; it's obvious he's said all that he's going to say about it.
Still, it was interesting to read how Bob developed a relationship with the man late in life, and how it intertwined with the relationship he had with his dying father.
The Mencken, unlike the others, which are far shorter in both length and depth, is the most interesting of the lot. It is a collection of H. L. Mencken's newspaper columns stretching from the beginning of the 20th century to just past its midpoint; from the early years of America's imperial ascendancy to the post-War days of the Cold War. And it covers a lot of ground. Nearly every political gathering of consequence (both Republican and Democratic conventions); the struggles for and against Prohibition; the precursors to the Civil Rights movement; his views on religion, marriage, community, duty, government, and politics; and all of it spiced with his marvelous cynicism, his effortless crafting of phrases, his masterful artistry with words. His prose doesn't just speak, it sings in operatic tones.
After all that, it was, of course, necessary to move along to the next exciting project: The Hunger Games.
Cheryl had purchased the Hunger Games trilogy at Costco a week or so ago, so it was obviously time to read them. Once she and the kids were done.
The kids have known about - and read - the books since they first started getting popular three or four years ago. We adults had been putting off reading the books for awhile, but since someone went to all the trouble of making a movie version of the first one (and I assume the others will be made into movies as well), we figured it was about time to read them.
So far, I've finished the first one. And it was ... OK.
It's difficult to put myself in the mindset of a young adult reading the book for the first time, which is the mindset required in order to understand why the books are so popular. Frankly, I wasn't taken immediately by the writing style or the story. Having read quite a few dystopian novels, there wasn't anything in the first book which had a particular appeal, although there were plenty of sci-fi techno advances thrown in to spice things up a bit (like genetically-engineered animals with special abilities, silent hovercraft, and things of that nature).
Stylistically, Suzanne Collins writes in a straightforward first-person manner with a good, consistent character voice. It is easy to leap into the mind of her narrator and main character, Katniss Everdeen, and see the world through her eyes. But, at the same time, given the limitations of that approach, it is more difficult to become immersed in the universe of the story when one is limited to seeing the world through the eyes of the one character, especially after one has gotten spoiled by certain other authors whose third-person omniscient style lends itself more easily to being pulled heart and soul into the universe of the book(s).
It is easy to see why young girls would be drawn to the character: she is strong, independent-minded, highly-capable, skilled in ways that most young girls are not (at least these days), loyal, devoted and courageous. When put into a dangerous situation, she manages to find a way to survive. And it doesn't hurt that she has two (!) young men vying for her attention.
It is also easy to see why young men would be drawn to the character: she is strong, independently-minded, highly-capable, skilled in ways that most young girls are not (unless they are into archery and self-defense), loyal, devoted and courageous. And pretty. And, on the surface, not interested in young men. Which, oddly enough, makes her desirable. Because there's nothing more challenging to young men than winning the affections of a young girl who says that she is not interested in them. Go figure.
The story is well-told although the language is sometimes a bit advanced for a character born and raised in the Appalachian hinterlands; one wonders if her first birthday gift was a thesaurus. Yet the story moves right along, there is plenty of action to keep things interesting, just enough introspection to make the character somewhat mysterious, and a sufficiently inconclusive conclusion (to the first book) which makes the reader want to find out What Happens Next.
I'm looking forward to reading the next exciting volume. Soon.
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