Mike > Recent Status Updates

On one hand, Lear isn't a great writer (he just used an extended analogy that actually makes the thing he was describing more confusing), and I wish he'd stop using the word 'squaw'. On the other hand, this is some damn interesting philosophy. I wonder if he'll bring up Victor E. Frankel - there are a lot of parallels in their ideas.

I'm trying to put my finger on why this book feels kinda amateurish, and the only thing I can think of is that Brown (Lia Silver is a pseudonym) doesn't have a great sense of how to construct scenes. The scenes don't feel defined enough - they flow into each other without proper resolution, in an awkward mix of action and narrative summary. It's like a chapter-long run-on sentence.

The first chapter had some awkward exposition, and Collins' attempts to capture Katniss' voice in present-tense sometimes lead to some awkward run-ons and sentence fragments. Other than that, I'm having a lot of difficulty thinking of anything you'd call a flaw, or a problem with this book. I know this is kind of a cliché book to call your favorite, but... goddamn, there's a reason it's so successful.

I don't think I've ever seen such an on-point summary of how central culture is to how we understand and experience the world. It brings into sharper focus how devastating a genocide can be - there's loss beyond the tangible human loss for the survivors.

Rue's characterization is interesting, because in other hands, her portrayal might've been considered infantilized, and as a result, somewhat racist. But Collins is smart enough to give her a full palate of characteristics - remarkable, for how little time she's in the story. The result is that although she's physically small and weak, she's not helpless, and her weakness doesn't feel like it encompasses her.

On one hand, this series makes me happy because it's so good and I feel like I never read good books anymore. On the other hand, this book makes me sad because it's extremely depressing and all of the characters either die or spend the rest of their lives with PTSD.

Me, a thoughtful and insightful reviewer: "This is boring. I'm bored."

I've seen people complain that the book takes its time too much in the beginning, that Katniss doesn't get into the arena fast enough. But honestly, the parts in the arena wouldn't be nearly as engaging if we didn't have the context of the world Katniss grew up in, and the Capitol. People misunderstand why this book works - the stakes don't just come on a personal level, they're on a societal level too.

I wouldn't call Lear a great writer, from a technical perspective. But this certainly is an interesting question. I have no idea how 200 pages is going to be enough to even scratch the surface of everything there is to consider about it.

I can tell Smith doesn't want Anna to talk and think like a modern feminist, but she doesn't seem to quite know how else to write Anna's marriage to a man she barely knows. So Anna just doesn't seem to treat it like that big of an aspect of her life - I hardly know how she feels about it at all.

Returning to this book for the first time since I read Battle Royale, I can confirm that there is absolutely no way that Collins stole from that book, intentionally or not. Collins' inspiration for the Games was clearly Roman gladiator fights, and the two books are completely different in tone, structure, and theme. If their premises are similar, it's coincidental - this book doesn't feel redundant at all.

I don't even have any observations, I just really love this book. The Chaos Walking trilogy and maaaaybe V for Vendetta are the only other speculative fiction works I can think of that come to this quality level.

Smith literally just broke the fourth wall to "beg the reader's indulgence". This is aesthetic porn for fans of the pre-Victorian era.

I LOVE THIS BOOK. Usually, when I re-read a book from my childhood, it's not as good as I remember, but if anything, this is even better. I am convinced that this trilogy is the closest thing to perfection that YA will ever achieve.

I guess I can picture why you'd like this novel, if you're interested in books like Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre. This book doesn't really feel like either of those, but something about it just suggests a similar appeal to me. I like both of those novels, but I'm not inherently interested in that historical era, and that might be why I'm not very into this book.

I'm honestly surprised that so many people don't get the allegory here. Maybe it's just because I see this kind of politics a lot, but the allegory has to be the best thing about this book. It's just so ridiculously on-point, and it's the thing that makes this book truly great. (Although even if it was gone, Katniss as a character might be enough to carry the book on its own.)

This book is still a joy to return to. The exposition isn't quite as good as I remember, but the Katniss' characterization and voice are. There's a reason this is one of my all-time favorites.

There are interesting scenes here, and Smith's writing isn't bad at all. There are just too few interesting scenes to match the uninteresting ones, and the scenes don't fit together to form much of anything.

This doesn't hit me as hard today as it did when I was a kid. But I do believe that when people call this capitalist propaganda, they're missing the point, or at very least, being way too hard on this. This story is way more clearly trying to be about realizing that your society is corrupt than it is about communism.

I'm just frustrated with how aimless this plot is. It's not episodic exactly - one event does lead to another - but Anna doesn't have any sort of goal. Things just sort of happen to her, and she doesn't have much of an interest in controlling how they go.

This book is kind of difficult to read, because it makes you feel so sorry for Marcelo. He deserves better than this!

This book touches on a lot of big topics and questions for something only 300 pages long. I'm surprised that it doesn't feel forced, even if it does feel a tad bit over-packed.

This is not the best representation I can imagine (I don't like that Marcelo's asexuality is directly linked to his condition), but from an artistic perspective, this is easily the best YA book I've read so far this year. Stork really makes you care about Marcelo, and he manages to bring up a lot of weighty questions in a way that doesn't feel forced or overbearing. This book truly makes you think.

Hall is trying to make us believe that Gabe and Lia might not end up together, and even if I thought there was any chance of that happening, I still wouldn't care. Why should I? I barely know these characters. I just want this book to be over. No lightweight, fun romance should be this difficult to get through.

I guess this is pretty good. I believe Marcelo as a protagonist, which I guess is the most important thing. And Stork does a good job of showing how the minor characters are bad without making them evil caricatures. This is an understated novel, but I think it works - it lends the book a subtlety that most of these Serious Issues books don't have.

I guess I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic? Stork hasn't done anything egregiously wrong yet, and given the YA I've been reading lately, that's an accomplishment in and of itself. So I guess we'll see where this goes.

The prose and the characterization actually aren't bad, they're just not good enough to make up for such a meandering, uninteresting plot.

This feels very old-fashioned to me, like Smith was trying to write with the sensibilities of a 18th century French novel. I guess that's probably the point, but without an interesting story to back it up, it just ends up being boring. Anna isn't a bad protagonist, but she's not enough to save this book.

I swear, if I have to read one more chapter narrated by a goddamn park bench, I'm going to light this book on fire.

Knowing how this ends makes the beginning pretty unsettling. I mean, I guess it would've been a little unsettling anyway, but reading it like this makes it REALLY unsettling.