Better Late Than Never: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay

So, yes. I'm a little behind the times. By the time I read the Hunger Games trilogy last month, I was pretty sure that every person in this country who had any inclination to read said trilogy had already done so. That being said, it was actually a wonderful time to read the books: they were all already out, so I got to devour all 1200 pages of Hunger Games/Catching Fire/Mockingjay goodness in only four days, and I got to see the movie a mere three days after finishing the series. That week was a Hunger Games whirlwind for me, and all my coworkers teased me as I would exclaim things like 'It's just like the reaping!' or 'Arrie, you have the same personality as Haymitch!' (Sidenote: They loved all of this. We took 'Which Hunger Games Character Are You?' quizzes together, and we all went to see the Hunger Games movie at midnight, despite having to work the next day)

So, if you didn't catch this already, I really enjoyed the series. Before reading it, it was one of those super popular books that I felt really unconnected to, as if I was on the outside of a phenomenon and just couldn't get into it. One of my very good friends from college, Maggie, actually wrote her whole thesis about the Hunger Games and the fan community that surrounded the novels. Despite the fact that Maggie and I love a lot of the same books (Portrait of a Lady! Harry Potter! Northanger Abbey!), even her love of the series didn't get me to read them (to be fair, she never asked me to). So what did? Two words: book club. My book club has the power to make me start any book, regardless of how petulantly I have been refusing to read it (although it cannot make me like or finish a book - the bratty woman in this book made me stop after 15 pages). So, when my book club picked all three Hunger Games books as the March selection, I swallowed any misplaced refusal I'd had over reading these uber-popular books.*

And... I'm really glad I did. I read these books directly after finishing Wuthering Heights, and it was quite refreshing. Wuthering Heights was enjoyable, but it took some slogging through at times, and I just flew through the whole Hunger Games trilogy. It felt so good after the slow march of Emily Bronte to read a book that was so easy to read, so exciting, and so plot driven. Although the writing was uneven at times (especially in the first book), and the characters weren't the best developed ones in the world, I still found the narrative really compelling (for most YA novels I generally judge them and enjoy them based on the plot rather than writing or character development). For the four days I was reading the books, I found myself wanting to do nothing but find out what happens to Katniss & Co, to the extent that I would sneak in pages at work because it is too hard to focus on menial tasks when the fate of Panem is at stake!

The Hunger Games series has been so throughly analyzed all over the place that I'm not sure there's much for me to say. Besides, you've probably already read them and have your opinions anyway. I guess I'll say that I liked the first book the best, followed by the second, and liked the third book least. I didn't find the ending of the series to be inappropriate or not fitting to the rest of the series, but I did have very conflicted feelings about it. So much so that I had to call Maggie after finishing and sort through my feelings about it.** In simplest terms, here is my opinion: the ending fits, and Suzanne Collins obviously achieved what she was looking to achieve, but I didn't enjoy reading the last book as much as the first two. To me there are two axes upon which you can judge a piece of literature: how well the author executed what they set out to do, and how much you enjoyed the thing that they produced. In the case of these books, I think Collins did a great job of doing what she set out to do (and ultimately I can't really imagine the books ending a different way). As for my enjoyment of it... It's still kind of up in the air. I liked Mockingjay and its ending intellectually, but in terms of my actual enjoyment of it as a book... It's still hard for me to pin down how I feel. But maybe that's a big part of what makes this series so compelling? That it's not so simple of a situation that you can sort out your feelings about it? Any thoughts?

* To read a bit about Maggie's thoughts on reading a book after it's been popular for a long time, and my thoughts (pre-reading Hunger Games) about why I hadn't yet read The Hunger Games, see Maggie's post here (my thoughts are in the comments section).

** To read Maggie's thoughts about talking to me after I read the series, and some expansion on my thoughts about Hunger Games and enjoying vs. appreciating literature (as well some thoughts on the next book I'll be posting about), see Maggie's other post here (again, my thoughts are in the comments section).

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

After a winter of reading lighter novels and memoirs, my literature major alarm went off, and a little guilty part of my conscience started screeching "Read a classic! Read something with substance!" So, I pulled a book off my shelf that I've been meaning to get to for some time, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and dove in. This is not to say that Wuthering Heights is the greatest capital-L Literature ever (not that I really care about these sorts of things too much), but it's a classic and something I felt compelled to read at least once in my life. So, I did. And now I feel sated.

Now, I think when most people think of Wuthering Heights they picture this: Heathcliffe looking crazy and dirty standing on the moors yelling "Kathy!" and Kathy standing on the moors looking mostly clean and proper yelling "Heathcliffe!"And maybe most people will also think of how Kathy and Heathcliffe are connected in their very soul and that is why their love is such a big deal blah blah blah. And this is definitely half of the story. The other half of the story is that KATHY AND HEATHCLIFFE ARE AWFUL AND EVIL AND TOTALLY F-ED UP AND NO ONE SHOULD WANT TO HAVE LOVE LIKE THEM. I mean REALLY.

Heathcliffe, right before running off with his future wife, HANGS HER KITTEN using his handkerchief. Kathy spends the majority of the novel being mean and holier-than-thou to everyone in her whole life, treating people as if they are dirt and only exist to please her. And they torture each other! Even after one of them has died! It's just awful! I kept thinking throughout the whole thing - how did this novel come to be a part of our cultural conversation when it comes to love? This is not love, this is self-centered torture.

Going off of that for a moment, can we please acknowledge how weird it is that Stephanie Meyers supposedly structured the second book in the Twilight series around showing how her hero and heroine are connected like Kathy and Heathcliffe were to each other? As is that is a good thing? Dear Stephanie Meyers, can you read? And if so, why would you ever reference this novel that is so clearly not about good love in trying to promote the worth and value of Bella and Edward's relationship? Were you trying to make your readers contemplate the self destructive and negative aspects of their relationship? I think not, given that I cannot imagine you trying to speak to your readers on a deeper level given that you struggle so much on just the surface level of your narrative. But maybe the love trainwreck that is Wuthering Heights actually fits the love trainwreck that is Twilight more than you could have predicted? ... Okay, rant over.

All that being said, I actually quite enjoyed reading Wuthering Heights. Although the main characters are awful, it's an interesting and compelling narrative that spans 30+ years, using a frame tale that consists primarily of a nurse retelling Heathcliffe's story to a new tenant of his, long after Kathy dies and things have gotten screwed up with the following generation. The framing gets a little silly and exhausting at times, as there are times when the present day gets mentioned with no purpose aside from just reminding the reader that they're getting told a story, but I enjoyed the nurse's voice and was glad she was my main point of contact with the story, as she is maybe the only likable character in the whole novel.

I'm not sure I'll ever go back to Wuthering Heights, but I'm glad that I read it, and I feel much more in the know surrounding many cultural references that stem from novel. It was an interesting deconstruction of the traditional love story, and I'd recommend if you're into the classics, and up for a slow march through 30+ years of dysfunction and revenge.

Daughters of the Revolution by Carolyn Cooke

I feel very conflicted about this book. There were things about it that I loved, but just as many (if not more) things that I hated. Daughters of the Revolution was the second book I read for my book club this year (the first was A Cook's Tour), and every person in the book club hated it. In fact, everyone (except for me) actually stopped reading it at one point or another because they were just so over it, and so unwilling to waste their time finishing it. And I do understand why.

The first, and most obvious, problem with this book is that it has the worst synopsis in the history of the world. The description on the dust jacket makes it sound as though the story revolves around a character (Carole Faust, a young black woman who is admitted to an adamantly all-boys school through a clerical error) who is mentioned in about 20 of the 173 pages. It is like the publisher sent a sample chapter of this novel to the description author, and they formulated the whole description around that one 10 page chapter. If I were Carolynn Cooke, I would be furious, because the description is really a horrible representation of the novel (it doesn't even mention the two main characters!). This discrepancy was maybe the biggest problem, especially with the women in my book club, because the synopsis makes it sound like the book is really about what it means to be the first girl let into an all male school, along with gender/race politics in the late 60's and 70's. This is what the women in my book club wanted, and it is not what they got.

Daughters of the Revolution reads more like a collection of short stories circling around a set of central set of characters than a novel. The vignettes jump around in time, beginning in 1963 with the death Heck Hellman (who is husband and father to our two main characters, Mei-Mei and EV, respectively), and ending in 2005 with the death of Goddard (God) Byrd, the former headmaster of the Goode school, which Heck attended (if you can't tell, the names are symbolic in the least subtle way). Cooke's only published work outside of journals before DotR was a collection of short stories, so it makes sense that the novel takes this form.

What I did enjoy about this novel was Cooke's writing. The imagery was beautiful, and Cooke is clearly a gifted writer technically. During the portions of the novel that I enjoyed, her prose was able to transport me to a place and feeling outside of myself. Much of the novel seemed almost in a slightly surreal, dream-like state, as the chapters are narrated by different characters and the reader is forced to view the world through their somewhat distorted lenses. There were flashes of excellence, but those are not what stick in my mind.

What I did not enjoy was that the narrative did not sit together well enough, or accomplish what it seemed to want to. Now, I often like narratives split up temporally or with different narrators, so it's not that that bothered me. What ultimately bothered me was that I didn't feel like Cooke accomplished a novel that made these different times and different narrators come together as a whole. There were beautiful moments, and I could definitely see what she was hinting at and trying to get to, but I don't think that this novel ever really pulled it together. Also, there was a lot of sex and sexuality in this novel - group sex, sex with tweens, moms sleeping with their daughters' boyfriends, and more. Sexuality doesn't bother me in art as long as I can see what purpose it serves, but I just couldn't see a way in which all the sex really added to the novel. Mostly, it was just the outlet of the totally screwed up, main characters, who I never really liked. It's fine that they're screwed up, I just didn't feel like the novel actually explored the roots and effects of this dysfunction in a satisfying way. It all just seemed a little shallow to me, and I really thought there was a potential for depth, which is maybe the most upsetting thing.

So, obviously, I have a lot of feelings about this book, but I'll shut up about it now. Ultimately, I probably wouldn't recommend it unless you want to wallow in the disjointed dysfunctional sexuality of unlikeable characters for 173 pages. Which you might. I'll leave you with a quote, which is fairly representative of some of the things I didn't like about the novel: "If Pilgrim had looked up, he would have seen that EV's face expressed no particular joy or tenderness at the sight of him; she wanted more. At least I hoped she did. (I'd tried to raise a greedy, lusty girl—which EV so defiantly was, especially as a child.)"

Bossypants by Tina Fey

My second book of the year was a gift from my brother this Christmas. As I unwrapped the present, he explained that he got me the book because whenever he thinks of me, he pictures Tiny Fey on 30 Rock singing "working on my night cheese!" in a Snuggie™ (As seen on TV!). Because I am that cool.


Bossypants was unlike any book I've read before, because I've never read a comedy memoir before. It was light and fun and I finished it in couple days, which was heaven after how long it took me to slog through A Cook's Tour. While not as funny as 30 Rock, I thought that Bossypants was smartly written, and its self-deprecating tone rang true with all my previous experiences with Tina Fey (Mean Girls, 30 Rock, etc). The genre was interesting, because the movement between sincerity and jokes felt like I was getting to know Tina Fey better while simultaneously being held at arm's length. Ultimately, though, I think she revealed and did not reveal appropriate amounts of what a celebrity should let their fans know. Also, what she did reveal in this book made me like her even more than I already did. I bet we'd make great friends, Tina and I.


Jared and I both read this book this week, and one of the more interesting things we talked about was that this book, although fun and amusing, will not hold up well with time. A lot of the jokes are referential to culture, music, and celebrities, so in a few years they will be dated and a reader may not get what was funny about those jokes in the first place. There were some referential jokes that even I did not get, pointing out to me that Tina Fey and I are truly from different generations. If someone who has been alive for half of Tina Fey's life doesn't get some of her jokes, there will be less and less overlap in cultural knowledge the farther we get out from the publishing date. That doesn't necessarily make this not a worthwhile book, just something interesting to think about.


I would recommended the book to anyone who likes 30 Rock, Tina Fey, or wants something that's quick, fun, and easy to read. It wasn't a revelation, but definitely a nice snow day read.

A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain

It took me a really long time to finish this book. I generally like Anthony Bourdain and the language was simple, but it still took me over two weeks to finish a 274 page book (I spent 4 days on the last 20 pages!). This is really unheard of for an English major who is used to reading almost 300 pages in an evening.

Now, just because it took me so long to finish the book doesn't mean I hated it. I generally enjoyed most of it, and honestly I don't think the book really had enough substance for me to hate it. The real problem was that this book had no forward motion. Every chapter was an entity entirely separate from the rest of the book, so when I finished one section I didn't feel compelled to continue on to the next one. Bourdain slaps on an intro that attempts to tie the chapters together because each one is a part of his 'search for the perfect meal,' but the fact is that the book is just a bunch of separate short stories which he ties together with a forced feeling and overly sappy 2 page conclusion.

 Bourdain wrote the book during the year that he travelled around the world filming his first show, A Cook's Tour, that ran on the Food Network for a season in the early 2000's. Each chapter is set in a different country and you follow Bourdain as eats a huge variety of food (the still beating heart of cobra!), meets colorful characters, does some crazy things (jumping into a Russian lake frozen over with ice after being in a sauna for an hour, etc), and generally gets drunk all the time. So, as anyone who has seen A Cook's Tour or No Reservations could tell, the book really reads as though it is a mishmash of episodes from a TV show. While Bourdain is good at translating these escapades into writing, I just couldn't help feeling as though I'd rather be watching these adventures on the screen. Getting a huge list of the foods he's eating, most of which are unfamiliar to me, just doesn't do the same justice to the experience as actually seeing the food, and watching his reactions as he eats them. While I do like getting Bourdain's genuine opinions and feelings, instead of something edited down by the Food Network or Travel Channel, the book felt a little incomplete without having seen the series also.

I don't mean to sound as though I really disliked the book, it just didn't hold my attention as much as I thought it would when I began reading. That being said, it was generally enjoyable: I learned some cool things about other cultures, built up an appetite to be a little more daring in my culinary choices, and realized with more urgency that there is so much going on in the world that I would really like to see (damn you, Bourdain, and your all expenses paid trips around the world!!). If you're interested in food, travel, and you like No Reservations, you'll probably like this book.

Note: I haven't actually read it, but I've heard from multiple reliable sources that Bourdain's first book, Kitchen Confidential, is awesome and probably a better read than A Cook's Tour.