2009 Reading #110: Catching Fire
Dec. 19th, 2009 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snurriBooks 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
102. Brown Harvest by Jay Russell.
103. Dab Neeg Hmoob: Myths, Legends and Folk Tales from the Hmong of Laos, Charles Johnson, editor and Se Yang, associate editor.
104. Summer of '49 by David Halberstam.
105. The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter.
106. Black Betty by Walter Mosley.
107. She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea by Joan Druett.
108. Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel Pinkwater.
109. Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock.
110. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. These books, man. Holy crap these goddamn books. I feel pretty incoherent trying to talk about them, because my enthusiasm is at full gallop. (Given that I spent a sizable chunk of my day today reading this entire book today, I should probably wait to cool off before talking about it, but I won't.) Back in September I read the first book in this series back to back with Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go; I loved The Hunger Games but disliked the Ness intensely. At the time I chalked it up to feeling manipulated by Ness's authorial hand, but that doesn't really wash, in the end--storytelling is manipulation, after all, in that we all choose what information to share, and we all try to guide our readers' emotional responses. No, I think that where these books differ (for me) is that, in Ness's work, there's nothing but the vicissitudes of narrative fate to (poorly) conceal the manipulative authorial hand; with Collins, there is the structure of a dictatorship, and the Games themselves, putting the characters through their paces. Collins is actually peeling back the curtain, showing us the people who are manipulating appearances and events both, whether it's composed, heroic Cinna and the rest of Katniss's sheltered but sincere design team, or the blood-and-roses menace of President Snow. The tension here is constantly being ratcheted up, and coming from unexpected directions--in fact, once we're back in the arena much of the urgency of the narrative actually falls away, because we know (at least in part) what we're in store for. But what leads up to that, and what it leads into, is subversive and socially aware in a way that I'm not sure I expected. There are times when Collins's world feels a bit too glossy and unsubtle; but overall, this is a hell of a series, and I can't believe I have to wait until next August for the third book.
See? Incoherent.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
102. Brown Harvest by Jay Russell.
103. Dab Neeg Hmoob: Myths, Legends and Folk Tales from the Hmong of Laos, Charles Johnson, editor and Se Yang, associate editor.
104. Summer of '49 by David Halberstam.
105. The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter.
106. Black Betty by Walter Mosley.
107. She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea by Joan Druett.
108. Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel Pinkwater.
109. Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock.
110. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. These books, man. Holy crap these goddamn books. I feel pretty incoherent trying to talk about them, because my enthusiasm is at full gallop. (Given that I spent a sizable chunk of my day today reading this entire book today, I should probably wait to cool off before talking about it, but I won't.) Back in September I read the first book in this series back to back with Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go; I loved The Hunger Games but disliked the Ness intensely. At the time I chalked it up to feeling manipulated by Ness's authorial hand, but that doesn't really wash, in the end--storytelling is manipulation, after all, in that we all choose what information to share, and we all try to guide our readers' emotional responses. No, I think that where these books differ (for me) is that, in Ness's work, there's nothing but the vicissitudes of narrative fate to (poorly) conceal the manipulative authorial hand; with Collins, there is the structure of a dictatorship, and the Games themselves, putting the characters through their paces. Collins is actually peeling back the curtain, showing us the people who are manipulating appearances and events both, whether it's composed, heroic Cinna and the rest of Katniss's sheltered but sincere design team, or the blood-and-roses menace of President Snow. The tension here is constantly being ratcheted up, and coming from unexpected directions--in fact, once we're back in the arena much of the urgency of the narrative actually falls away, because we know (at least in part) what we're in store for. But what leads up to that, and what it leads into, is subversive and socially aware in a way that I'm not sure I expected. There are times when Collins's world feels a bit too glossy and unsubtle; but overall, this is a hell of a series, and I can't believe I have to wait until next August for the third book.
See? Incoherent.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-20 12:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-20 05:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-20 05:57 am (UTC)"Yes, that's a great book! Wait, it's not part of a series, I don't think. Wait, yes, hunger games? This book is about eating, it must be the same thing! Wait, no, my book is non-fiction. Dammit!"
http://tinyurl.com/oqhvgq
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-20 06:15 am (UTC)