The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

So, it took the announcement of the iPad to convince me to put the Kindle app on my iTouch and try out reading a whole book on a computer screen. I’ve done it before, when I was too cheap to buy a copy of Sense and Sensibility or Vanity Fair, but it was last night, when I was trapped at Robb’s computer for hours, trying to beat a PITA piece of malware, that I finally gave in and put a real book on my iPod to read, while I sat still and babysat install and boot scans and whatnot. (I did win in the end, for those who are concerned about such things). So this is two reviews in one, first my thoughts on the book, and my thoughts on reading a book on my iPod.

First the book; I’d gotten good reviews of the book from friends, and was eager to give it a try. I’ve had a bad opinion of this author for absolutely no reason based in reality since my bookstore days; honestly, I think I just never liked her cover art. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but I am here to tell you that bland, boring covers mean that I tend to just keep walking. I had an idea that this was going to be a very different sort of book, but I could download a free sample to read, and that was pretty damn good, so I paid $9. It would have been worth $18 if I had paid the hardcover price.

The story is about Katniss, a young girl in a world where two children are chosen each year from the twelve Districts to fight in the Hunger Games, a kind of American Idol of Survival. Katniss, her mother, and her sister, have lived on the knife’s edge of survival for a long time; when her younger sister, Prim, is chosen by lottery for the games, Katniss takes her place. She is whisked away to the Capital, where she is primped, pampered, and made ready for the Games. Her companion from her district is a boy named Peeta, a boy who saved her life a long time ago, who knows more about her than she does about him.

Much like Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series, you don’t have to dig deep to find the allegory here; the surface story is about a girl doing what it takes to survive, but the real story is about the society that does this to children as punishment and entertainment. About the people who don’t see what a horror is being inflicted upon innocents. Katniss is a strong female heroine, comfortable and strong in the wilderness, hunting and protecting herself with ease; she’s a bit unfeeling at points, and then strikingly soft in others. More than one point of this book moved me absolutely to tears. And, the real test of any series book, as soon as I read the last words and realized there was a sequel, I was searching the Amazon site to see if Catching Fire was available for the Kindle app (it’s not, nor is it in paperback, as it only came out in September). Bah! Where’s my instant gratification?

My only real complaint about this book is that it’s a great example of why authors are always told not to write in the present tense. Because everything is so immediate, the author has to go into such literary contortions to explain things that happened in the past, or even thoughts the character had of two minutes ago, that I start noticing tenses of verbs, and that’s a bit like seeing the guy who’s holding the rope that’s dropping the house on the witch, you know? Grammar and word choice and all that — it’s incredibly important, but it’s the work that you should be doing where I can’t see it.

As to the experience of reading a book on an electronic device: I thought I’d miss more. I thought I’d feel disconnected from the text, that I would miss physically turning pages, that I’d be upset not to have the experience of picking up a book in the store, running my hands over the cover, flipping through those first few pages; I missed none of it. I don’t think it would replace the experience of buying physical books for me, but it could certainly cut down on the number I actually buy, in the same way that Netflix has reduced the number of DVDs that I purchase. I watch them, see if I want to own them, and buy them or not. I can imagine reading books on my iPad, and purchasing the ones I really love, the ones I will read again and again. For the first time, I can imagine a wold where print and e-texts can coexist, and possibly even compliment each other.

In other news, Lucy continues to grow (and grow!). She’s singing half a dozen songs now, sings her alphabet (minus E, F, and G, which do not meet her approval), and counts to ten (except, sometimes, 4, 5, and 6). She sits in a regular chair to eat dinner, except when she consents to use her booster chair, but do NOT discuss her high chair with her. She has been informing me for a month now that “When Lucy get bigger, Lucy gonna have a little gui-tar and a little compooter.” She’s turning into this tiny person in front of my eyes, and it’s blowing my mind. It kills me that I never have time to talk to you all about her anymore. I don’t know if anyone even reads this blog anymore. (That’s your cue to say hi if you’re still checking in).

Anyway, times are good for us, which is nice. Every year, we pay off a little more debt, get a little more solid ground under us, feel a little more secure. Baby steps, you know?

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