The Hunger Games

[adcooper]

Now that I'm overseeing the teen collection at the library, I thought I should read some of the books there. ;D I've heard different things about the Hunger Games series, so picked one up, half expecting to hate it. I'm hooked. Okay, NOT brilliant prose, but not bad. Since one of my top criteria for readability these days is good storytelling, I have to hand it to Collins for producing these page turners. I also like it that the moral dilemmas are truly puzzling. I'm halfway through the third (final) book, and hope she doesn't cop out and wrap it up too neatly. We shall see.

Anyway, I guess there will be a movie next year, not surprising since the books are already so cinematic in tone and style. But I'm disappointed to see that Woody Harrelson will play Haymitch, a character I see as much lumpier than hunky Harrelson.

[HokieThea]

My daughter finally talked me into reading The Hunger Games a few months ago,and WOW, I could not stop until I had read all three! The storytelling is stellar, and the story itself is brutal yet thought-provoking. I have to say, though, that the third book was a bit of a disappointment. I think the shock value of the first book is diminished by the last one.

Speaking of teen oriented books, have you had a chance to read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children? Really good book, for adults also.

[chaosmom]

A girl here at work got me started on these. I finished the first and immediately wished I had purchased the second before starting the first LOL. Getting started on the second now but I'm not finding it has quite the grip on me that the first book did. Read that one in 6 hours on my patio one morning.

[chaosmom]

A girl here at work got me started on these. I finished the first and immediately wished I had purchased the second before starting the first LOL. Getting started on the second now but I'm not finding it has quite the grip on me that the first book did. Read that one in 6 hours on my patio one morning.

[niaru]

I've heard good things about this series but I didn't want to get into another Twilight (which I read because my then pre-teen was reading it). Maybe I'll try it if you guys liked it!

I just finished A visit from the Goon squad by...oops, can't remember...but for me it was just ok.

I've started Sarah's key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Very good story so far on a difficult subject (the Vel d'hiv' round up in Paris in 1942). I wanted to read the book before watching the movie.

[Bara]

What on earth are you talking about?

[niaru]

What do you mean, Bara?

[Katelyn]

Sarah's key is very good!!

[niaru]

Have you seen the movie, Katelyn? I want to.

[Lis]

I've both read the book and seen the movie, I liked them both.

[RacetrackRejects]

Niaru, did you try these? Much better than the Twilight books.

I just read all three of these last week and I loved them. A lot of people didn't like how the story ended (who she ended up with), but I thought it was the right choice.

[ClaireLV]

The first in the trilogy was fantastic. LOVED it. The second and third were disappointing in comparison though. Have you read the Scorpio Races, Ad? I love YA fiction and don't mind at all having to read it for work lol.

[RacetrackRejects]

I agree that the 2nd and 3rd weren't as good, but I wasn't sure if it was the events going on those books that didn't peak my interest as well the first book or if they just weren't as good. I feel the 3rd book ended up abruptly with everything wrapped up so quickly. I wish she would write another book focusing on what exactly happened, in more detail, after the bombs went off until the last scene we are left with in the book.


Edited to add I'm already annoyed at the movie because in one trailer, I noticed something they've changed from the book. Katniss has the mockingjay pin and is giving it to Prim to put on saying "as long as you have this, nothing bad will happen to you" and Prim has it on at the reaping, but in the books Madge gives the pin to Katniss when she is saying goodbye before heading off to the Capitol.

[niaru]

Yes I read them a while ago, and I enjoyed the 1st one but the other 2 were disappointing. Especially the last one. It felt like the author had gotten bored with it and was trying to finish quickly.
Too bad.

I don't know if I'll watch the movie(s)...maybe much later, once the books are only a distant memory!

Claire, I might have to try the Scorpio races...heard good things about that one too, almost bought the Kindle edition today!

[RacetrackRejects]

I just checked out The Scorpio Races online and I can't wait to read it (only $3.99 for Kindle). I was so in love with the author's description of how the book came to be, there is no way I can't read it now, plus it has horses..lol.

Thanks for suggesting it Claire.

From the author's website:
"“The reason why I wrote The Scorpio Races is because of a piece of advice I was given or read or found when I was a teen. I wish I could remember where it came from, but it was this: write the book you've always wanted to read, but can't find on the shelf.

Well, the book I always wanted to read had water horses in it. It's a tiny corner of Scottish and Irish and Manx mythology: swift and beautiful horses that jump out of the ocean and attack people or cattle. The legend was more complicated than that, though — the horses had their own kind of magic. Some of them turned into young men and attempted to lure women into the ocean with them. Some of them appeared as cute little ponies and tried to lure children onto their back. My particular favorite part of this legend was the line that said that as more children climbed onto the pony, its back would lengthen to accommodate them. Later, the victims' lungs and livers would wash up on the shore.

I tried to write about them when I was in my teens. They weren't the focus of the novel, merely one of the many faerie creatures in it, and the novel failed disastrously. There are a lot of reasons why that book didn't work, but it can basically be boiled down to this: it wasn't Maggie enough yet. It was fun, but anybody could've written those versions of faeries.

Then, after I finished the mammoth draft of a faerie book that was eventually rewritten entirely under the guidance of Editor Yoda (becoming LAMENT), I started on a sort of standalone sequel to this giant novel. It was called THE HORSES OF ROAN and it was yet another attempt at writing about water horses. I was closer this time. I was chiseling away with my writing, becoming a writer that only I could be, instead of the writer I thought I ought to be, or the writer the manuals recommended. It really was closer. There are still parts of that book that I'll cannibalize for others.

Here's photographic proof of my obsession. Back then, as part of my quest to become a better artist, I was doing monthly artist studies, eventually creating a piece in the style of whoever I was studying. That month I was studying my long-dead artist boyfriend, John Singer Sargent. The subject I chose? Water horses. This painting, "The Horses of Roan," (which is giant — 40" wide) is still in my living room. It was closer to the Maggie-Idea of water horses than any of my novels had been, but I wasn’t sure why.

`

THE HORSES OF ROAN was set in the marshes of Virginia and used the man-to-horse shape-shifting element and it was close, like I said, but still, someone else still could have written it.

Fast forward five books later. By now, I've been to the UK several times, enough times to know that a sizable piece of my soul is somehow lodged there in one of the rainier corners. I've also written the Shiver trilogy and watched more hours of carnivores pulling apart prey animals than I care to mention and I'm well aware that I have a fascination with the beauty and the horror of nature. And I'm also sort of kind of house-hunting, and I realize that my desire to get as far away into the country as possible is not one shared by absolutely everyone on the planet. I find myself explaining why I'd sacrifice convenience to live out in the middle of nowhere, and explaining my childhood growing up with cottonmouth snakes under the porch and no neighbors that I could see and grocery stores one hour away and sitting on the deck listening only to crickets, and further away, more crickets. And, finally, I have four siblings, two of them ten and twelve years my junior, and they're going through late teenhood, and all our conversations are at once familiar, funny, and aggravating.

And now I was ready to write the book that only I could write. Because if it was about these things that were eating at me, it would have emotional truth, and no matter how great your plot or your hook or your legend is, if you don't have the emotional hook, it's just not going to mean anything to anybody else. It might be fun. But it will also be forgettable.

So I wrote a book that was about siblings and how it looks when they are your best friends and entire social network and what happens when one leaves. And I wrote about Thisby, a tiny island in the middle of nowhere, a rocky little bit of a place that looked a lot like where my soul was lodged 3,000 miles away. I wrote about why some people left and why some people stayed, the hardship and the beauty of it. I wrote about deadly carnivores that weren't villains and humans who were.

Oh, and it had other Maggie things in it: I adore race movies and I'll watch absolutely any one of them that comes on. Days of Thunder, Herbie, The Black Stallion. I love reading about descriptions of food, so in that went. I love old magic that looks like superstition until suddenly, in the dark, it's real. I loved the horses that I had growing up and in college, though I remember just how much work they were too, in the frosty mornings when your fingers are too cold to work. And, of course, the ocean, too. As a child we used to vacation in North Carolina and I would sit for hours just watching the ocean, making up stories about horses springing from the foam, watching each wave curl in differently. I nearly drowned as a kid and so I both loved it and feared it. It's hard to forget that sensation of warring emotions, equally matched.

And of course, finally, in chapter 46 of The Scorpio Races, I wrote the scene I'd been imagining since I was my daughter's age: a herd of water horses tearing in from an angry sea. Chapter 46 isn't a very long one, and it wasn't late when I wrote it, but after I finished the last sentence of it, I closed my computer and had to stop writing for the night. It's a weird feeling to finally do something right after doing it wrong for so many years. I knew before that that The Scorpio Races was the best thing I'd written so far, but that was when I really realized I'd written the book I'd wanted to find on the shelf all those years ago.”
"