The inevitable Hunger Games thread

sorry abt. poor editing above ^^^

@thomp: how old is your nephew? how is his reading?

I think the really good stuff ends up coming out in areas that aren't popular at the time, it just goes unnoticed a bit until things quiet down. I don't think the repetitive and increasingly sensational sf/f that's everywhere right now is going to be the stuff of this era that lasts -- not when we've got Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and some gender-bendy/LGBTQ "issue" books by Julie Peters and others that are also v good and will probably burrow into kids' thinking more deeply and, one hopes, lastingly, but aren't going to make headlines now.

And I normally dislike like "issue" books, I'm just sayin'.

i sort of wish i were reading diane wynn jones is basically my motto in life.

when was i ever dismissive about the literary merit of books for kids/young people? i haven't said a single negative thing on this thread . . . that i revived! how very district one tribute of you

i'm sorry. i said something negative about harold bloom

well, help yourself to that. he's kind of a turd.

i'm reading his new book alongside 'the hunger games.' definitely prefer 'the hunger games'

black jelly bean: cold oatmeal

why people get so defensive about their aesthetic tastes i'll never understand

i really enjoyed patrick ness's 'chaos walking' trilogy despite some incompetent and repetitive plotting. certainly i think its a little more sophisticated in how it approaches its dystopia & the way it presents moral questions to the reader than hunger games.

good call, lamp: I am actually thinking of reading the first novel in the series w/ my class in the fall. I think Knife of Never Letting Go raises some really interesting ontological questions.

qualmsley:i'd say that maybe for a lot of people 'aesthetic taste' represents a cultural investment or a hard-won knowledge and experience, and there's a lot of ego bound up in what is a kind of half- arbitrary judgement.

It wasn't even about my taste so I'm not sure what that was? It was about remy, are you serious that you expect literary erudition to shine throughout young adult novels? But let's agree that you're not going to understand what I was saying and I'm not going to keep trying.

fwiw i liked the first hunger games book & read it in a single afternoon. its working w/in a structure that i really like tho & i thought the simple, direct language a point in its favor. i did sort of think it was interesting how it seemed to be geared at readers who needed to be able to visualize the action clearly, & think it suffers a little emotionally/psychologically for that.

but honestly idk for a reluctant reader i think theres also value just in 'reading what everyone else is reading', in being able to take part in the conversation surrounding the books. helps make it more social/interesting/compulsive? this is just an idea i have about ~culture~ tho idk

Definitely, there's always the argument for encouraging kids to read whatever they WILL read, and to get the habit of reading and talking about reading, which conveniently dovetails with publishers' desire to sell a great number of copies. My cynicism about the second part shouldn't negate the good stuff about the first part.

remy my nephew is actually only like nine. but he's actually a moderately advanced reader for his age -- it's just that he seems to be rapidly losing enthusiasm & it seems kind of hard to find stuff that's suitable, neither overly-childish nor alien in its concerns. i'm not about to get him the hunger games, i gotta say

like okay when i was a kid i was hooked on dragonlance and shit by that age, that was easy enough;
but i don't know what to do w/r/t the 'repetitive and increasingly sensational sf/f that's everywhere right now', as laurel puts it, which seems to be what kids want to actually read (how long until the first zombie series for kids) (brb, writing to a publisher) --

like what you say about a. fowl: they sometimes seem more like a product than a series of books in their own right: seems to apply to about 75% of what's in the kid's section of the bookstore at the moment

Thread's already too long, but I thought the "Lemony Snicket" books were among the most subversive, post-modern, just plain smart and funny YA-ish books I've ever read.

Lamp: Agreed. I'm approaching these books as a teacher, if that helps to qualify my bile. I'm all for kids reading what they'd like, when they'd like. I don't totally buy the 'as long as they're reading' line, but I do think that independent reading – especially in the case of reluctant readers / LD kids – should be self-directed for a start, and gradually channeled into a careful, but not oppressive, appreciation for good books.

thomp: there's a lot of great realistic fiction for boys that is not reductive or lame, or overly issues-driven (ugh), which has not always been the case. YA sci-fi/fantasy is a mixed bag at best, but I agree w/ Laurel that it is not mostly lasting and some of it is passing fun.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth beat you to it.

I'm tired of marketable book series-to-film. I got over Harry Potter ages ago and Twilight was a pitiful joke. Hunger Games doesn't look much different. I miss when authors used to write individual novels rather than serials, I get tired of the sameness after the second book.

xxxp lemony snicket was like thomas pynchon jr. plotwise but i could never quite handle the prose.

not cuz it was so bad just because it was Always On.

I think the Snicket prose is part of the joke. It'll suddenly digress into a discussion of King Lear or the water cycle with no warning, just to keep you on your toes. If anything, it reminded me a whole lot of Tristram Shandy, right down to the black page.

Like, wheel-spinning as an art.

http://www.grimmstories.com/images/sprookjes/image055.jpg

I'm tired of marketable book series-to-film. I got over Harry Potter ages ago and Twilight was a pitiful joke. Hunger Games doesn't look much different. I miss when authors used to write individual novels rather than serials, I get tired of the sameness after the second book.

― Breezy Summer Jam (MintIce), Monday, July 11, 2011 12:36 PM (54 seconds ago) Bookmark

the 'best' part about the hunger games adaptation is they're making 4 movies out of 3 books

My daughters are both obsessed with what a spindle even is. Most antiquated fairy tale staple?

Now, see the L Snicket books are a good example of a successful book/series without too many predecessors that absolutely set off a mania for "wacky hijinx" stories involving groups of kids. That accounts for the Skullduggery Pleasant series, DEFINITELY, BIG-TIME for the "Secrets Series" (The Name of this Book Is Secret et al) by "Pseudonymous Bosch", and I'm sure for 17 other currently successful extended series, too.

The original had merits, but most of the other ideas that it made possible/successful will just be variations without the deftness or depth.

pseudonymous bosch is another pen name for daniel handler, aka lemony snicket. i think you're right about there being v. little precedent for series of unfortunate events, tbh

Oh bother, really? I read the first three and then was like, I don't know if I just lost the thread but I'm over this now.

i actually read two of the skulduggery pleasant stories, i quite liked them, it was a little odd that he was doing 'cthulhu ... y'know, for kids' but i gather that's a thing, right

i read daniel handler's grownup novel once, it wasn't very good

i associate the whole lemony snicket thing w/ the girls in my high school who were deeply in love with neutral milk hotel

I think I might have read the first Skullduggery but it was under complicated circumstances, and I didn't follow their success afterward.

Awww I was just going to say I wish D Handler would keep writing The Basic Eight only in a way that was eternally fresh and new!

Ha, on Wikipedia:

Bosch has been widely believed to be Megan McDonald, Rick Riordan, Heinrich Hoffmann, Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), Graeme Williams, Jon Scieszka, Trenton Lee Stewart, or Edie Bilmann.

That's pretty definitely non-commitmal.

Oh yeah, Trenton Lee Stewart, chalk up another one for the wacky hijinx.

the copyright is (c) daniel handler so i mean

Whoah that's funny, I'm holding 3 of the books right here and the copyright is under the pseudonym.

so the flashback-a-chapter rhythm is starting to wear on me. but she's maintaining a deep understanding of what it's like to grow up poor. starting to get curious about these underland books

so some spading reveals that handler isn't the author, and i'm kind of a chump. a handler friend/cohort (?) from WA named raphael simon is responsible

Haha I wd have been even more of a chump if I didn't realize one of my old idols was writing for us!

'the forest of hands and teeth' looks pretty interesting. i'm curious how you rate 'st. lucy's home for girls raised by wolves'

I wrote it down on my list but never got around to it, tbh. Seems like something I'd like if it's not too McSweeney's-y. I've enjoyed what I've read from Kelly Link, seems like this is in the same category?

I never read that Forest of Hands and Teeth, btw, or even heard of it -- I just googled "young adult" and "zombies" iirc!

the karen russell short stories have nothing to do w/ ya fiction?

depends on how you define it i guess

"Mr. Minotaur, could you kindly open this jar of love apples for us? Mr. Minotaur, when you have a moment, would you mind goring those wolves?"

but i'd define george saunders that way too, and flann o'brien. kids read wicked shit too

Oh sorry, I thought he was asking because they were cross-marketed or sort of "for girls of all ages" or something. Like that McSweeney's collection for kids. Uhh... Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out - WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LEMONY SNICKET