Saturday, September 29, 2012

Read in July 2012

1. Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
This felt like the middle book of a trilogy. I was a bit exasperated by such a significant part of the first book repeating itself, even if technically it was different this time around.

2. Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
I'm one of the ones who really liked this. It just works for me that everyone ends up totally messed up and traumatized. It works for me the way our sense of Katniss's power diminishes as the story pans out from her over the course of the trilogy. It's dark and it's not full of exciting climactic battle scenes the way I expected. Toootally works for me.

3. Making All Things New: An Invitation to the Spiritual Life, by Henri Nouwen
I really want to like his writings, because I like Nouwen excerpts so much, but his style just hasn't worked for me. Too vague, too oblique.

4. The Whale Rider, by Witi Ihimaera
The movie is not very much like this book, but in ways others than plot — and I like the movie a lot better. Hmm.

5. Cracked Up to Be, by Courtney Summers
A fast but involving YA novel. Emotionally weighty. I thought the construction of the main character's psyche was artful.

6. Your Native Land, Your Life, by Adrienne Rich
This felt pertinent to my life. It's more thematically unified than her volumes of poetry usually are — family history, reflections on her past and on what she wants her life to amount to. A whence/whither collection.

7. The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde
Lovely and jolly and witty and sarcastic, of course. A good bedtime read when you need to chase away mind-frights. I hope you've seen the film adaptation with Colin Firth.

4 comments:

  1. Tooootally agree re: Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

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  2. Finally, someone else who appreciates Mockingjay! An epic, riding-into-the-sunset ending would have been the last thing to fit the series' zeitgeist or Katniss as a character. Though, I do wish Finnick had gotten an exciting, climactic death. (I tend to prefer that for characters I'm attached to, if they have to die.) It's really the only thing I'd have changed about Mockingjay. Unless I killed Beetee instead, because I like Finnick better, but maybe we shouldn't go there.

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  3. You should try Bulibasha by Witi Ihimaera. So good, seriously.

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  4. Erin - I think it's to a large part because I know so many feminists who are open about being rape survivors...PTSD is real, yo. People don't just walk away from awful things unscathed.

    Jenica - Finnick, oh, the dear...he made me want to take up knot-tying as a destressor. I felt for him when he was being de-traumatized. But yes, heartily, and Erin and my other friend Anilee seem to be on the same page as well...

    Anon - I'll look it up!

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