I blew through the first two Hunger Games books over the last few days… just started the third today and should have a verdict by the end of the weekend.
The second one definitely dropped off a little, but the first might be one of the most fun things I’ve read this year, YA/Girls label be damned.
Fun isn’t quite the word I would use for Hunger Games, myself. Like several recent YA series/trilogies, it’s impressively brutal to the characters. Katniss will have severe psychological issues for a long, long time.
Yeah, I obviously meant more for the reader than the characters. It’s the pacing that really does it for me, I think. I do a lot of my reading on my Kindle while I’m spinning or on the elliptical at the gym, and it’s really, really obvious when a story is dragging along for one reason or another. Once the books (or the first two at least, I am 20% into the third) get the setup out of the way, they are pretty well full speed ahead, and “boring” never really enters in to it. They’re also of an appropriate length where they can maintain that sort of pace without needing more than short breaks before the climax. That’s what I mean by fun - fun for me!
Okay, so, malkav, I read the rest of the third book today. And I am completely on the same page as you now. The level of “dark” increases exponentially, oh, within a couple of chapters of where I had stopped last time.
That said, the first is still the best, but I’m not as down on the third book as it seems a lot of people are.
My review of Catching Fire, the second Hunger Games book:
1st half-- “Which boy do I like? I can’t decide!”
2nd half-- Gladiatorial games and bloody revolution! YAR!
Guess which half I liked more.
Also, the lead character is now kind of annoying and stupid. I’m glad people aren’t telling her what’s going on, because she can’t be trusted, but I’m sad that I have to see everything through her eyes because, frankly, I’d rather hear about what’s going on from, say, Haymitch.
Then again I’m a 47 year old man who likes to drink, so Haymitch and I have more in common.
On to the third book!
I’m not sure I’ll continue with Reamde; it’s like Stephenson is trying to write a Douglas Coupland novel, only without Coupland’s charm and light touch. The Russian mobsters just showed up… /snicker
I reecently finished up the second book in the Kushiel’s Legacy series, Kushiel’s Chosen.
Now, when I read the description for the series, I thought it was eligible for an Angie book: the protagonist is a magical holy courtesan who gets off on being a submissive. It takes place in an alternate universe France populated by descendants of Jesus and some of his rogue angel friends.
Instead, I was surprised at how well written the two books I’ve read so far are. The complex politics and intrigue are up there with Martin, and the premise doesn’t quite end up as silly sounding as the way it gets described.
I read Tales of Mystery and Terror by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle over the weekend. I hadn’t read him in quite a while and I had read mention of one of the stories in this book, so I took the opportunity to reacquaint myself. The stories, for the most part, hold up well. [I]
Brazilian Cat[/I] is still my favorite with its claustrophobic ending, though I enjoyed the Lovecraftian The Horror of the Heights wherein an early pilot goes hunting for things in the sky and finds them. The Leather Funnel was a bit too Victorian to really achieve what could have been. The Case of The Lady Sannox was a great little EC Horror style story. The New Catacomb draws inspiration from Poe’s Cask of Amontillado. The Terror of Blue John Gap is basically Horror of the Heights except in a cave.
You can read it here for free or it audio is your preference you can DL individual stories here.
I’ve gone from Doyle to Endore and am currently reading The Werewolf of Paris. A classic of the genre with which I am unfamiliar. I’d only started it last night so I don’t have too strong an opinion of it just yet.
The blurb for that one said she feels “pain as pleasure,” which sounded more like it would get on the nastier end of S&M, which is why I put the book down like it was radioactive.
It ends up being not quite as graphic as one would imagine - a lot of it gets glossed over. There’s a couple of scenes with flechettes, but most of it pretty tame, tamer than what you’d see at the Folsom Street Fair in SF.
I also recently zipped through the Hunger Games trilogy, and file myself in the camp that considers the first book a much better affair than the second two. It was a lot more focused and tightly paced, and the other two increasingly suffered from trying to bite off more than they could chew–trying to grapple with deeper themes, but not really having much interesting to say about them. But I don’t regret having read the whole thing at all, which puts it ahead of plenty of other trilogies.
Finished book 2 of Nisioisin’s Zaregoto series, The Kubishime Romanticist. I gather that the first two books barely even touch on the main plot of the series, like some anime that obstinately refuses to divulge what it’s actually about until the first season is over.
This book was appalling in many ways, but I’ll read any more books in the series that are translated. The ultra-passive-to-the-point-of-insanity “I”/Ii-chan narrator from the first book is now a college freshman, and shows himself to be full-bore sociopathic and totally messed up in ways that weren’t so obvious in the first book. He’s a guy who can break all the fingers on both of his hands to make a point in a conversation, who would rather be left alone in his bare 6 tatami apartment cell than make friends, and wonders with infinitely more good reason than the average freshman if there is any point to his bothering to live anymore.
“I” is the ultimate unreliable narrator. He’s not unreliable just because he’s got a terrible memory or because he’s got something to hide – both true – nor even because he lies a lot, to himself and others – also true. He’s unreliable because he doesn’t even know himself what the hell he is doing or why, and if you ever wanted him to do something, you’d better not rely on him to do so – he might just take the day off or sleep late instead.
The book is a sort of anti-murder-mystery. It’s got implausible coincidences, character motivations that are absolutely inconceivable even after they are explained, murders galore, and more pretentious Japanese dialog than you can shake a stick at.
Despite all that, it’s fun to read. The blue-haired genius otaku girl Kunagisa is mostly but not completely offstage in this book, but the other characters are all all typically bizarre, from Ii-chan’s serial-killer mirror-image quasi-friend to the World’s Greatest Private Contractor who is trying to hunt him down, both of whom are really minor side characters.
Yeah, the first few of these are alright, then the series gets less and less interesting (or at least it did for me). The first one especially is damn decent.
I finished Gun, With Occasional Music. It was also decent. I think I’m moving on to Skippy Dies next.
I just finished Terry Pratchett’s “Mort”, which was fucking fantastic. Now I’m onto “Sourcery”, which is pretty funny so far. You can totally tell Pratchett’s writing took a turn for the better in the last book, and I’m really enjoying the ride so far. :)
I’m in the middle of the new edition of Kim Newman’s Nightmare Movies, which for my money is the definitive study of the post-1960s horror film. I read the original back in the 1990s and am surprised at how much new material is here; he’s added an entire book’s length to this edition.
I read that when it came out and, yeah it’s fairly amazing. If you can find a copy, check out Johnathan Rigby’s English Gothic and American Gothic.
English Gothic is an insanely detailed write up of the Hammer era in UK horror while American Gothic covers from Edison’s Frankenstein to the 50s, before the take over of Sci-Fi Horror (such as Them, for example).
Added to the to-buy pile. I didn’t even know it was translated.
Yeah, just came out. There’s something about the style that appeals to me. I liked Death Note: The Other Note better than this second volume of Zaregoto, though.
And 30% of the way in The Werewolf of Paris, we finally have our werewolf.
The werewolf seems almost incidental to the rest of the book right now like an afterthought to these tales of provincial living. We have the man whose aunt has died and his inheritance depends on his joining the priesthood (which he cannot do due to an old injury; something about priests cannot say mass unless they are physically pure). We have the woman who was raped by a priest who then turned into a sex crazed maniac who gave birth to the werewolf. These are really well done and quite detailed sketches of characters as they move in an out of the tale proper.
I can see why this is highly regarded.
Finished Coraline by Gaiman. Fast read, great style, and in his afterword he sums it up quite well – it’s an adventure book for kids and a horror story for adults.