The inevitable Hunger Games thread

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

never heard of that. don't read much mcsweeney's

i was asking because it's next on a y/a recommendation list after 'the hunger games' a friend gave me

i think forest ov hands & teeth looks interesting too, if i get around to the rest of this reading list i'm constructing myself, i don't know, i'll put that on it i guess. i feel like having a binge on straightforward, like, stories and shit.

my objection is that these books are just ... easy fiction, kind of pandering 'boy stuff' w/ lots of graphic violence that milks video games and episodic TV for ideas and is otherwise woefully ignorant of the larger literary tradition or canon. it is written in present tense and basically free of any device or craft beyond basic storytelling aptitude. it perpetuates the same limerence-drenched soap-opera shit that's saturated YA for the past half-decade, and does a lot of the ham-fisted world-building that passes for 'imaginative' and refuses to allow the reader to experience wonder, confusion, or ambiguity.

Remy, I tried reading the first book in this series and did not finish it due to the reasons you have listed above. I found it to be astonishingly poor writing, the acclaim this series received is baffling to me.

Betrayal. That's the first thing I feel, which is ludicrous. For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first. Between Peeta and me. And trust has not been part of the agreement. We're tributes. But the boy who risked a beating to give me bread, the one who steadied me in the chariot, who covered for me with the redheaded Avox girl, who insisted Haymitch know my hunting skills . . . was there some part of me that couldn't help trusting him?

On the other hand, I'm relieved that we can stop the pretense of being friends. Obviously, whatever thin connection we'd foolishly formed has been severed. And high time, too. The Games begin in two days, and trust will only be a weakness. Whatever triggered Peeta's decision -- and I suspect it had to do with my outperforming him in training -- I should be nothing but grateful for it. Maybe he's finally accepted the fact that the sooner we openly acknowledge that we are enemies, the better.

that whole chapter rules. nice end to part i

huh, i thought i'd revived this this morning but apparently i didn't

remy otm, though, basically

ambiguity is dripping off the page up in here. so is wonder. but whatever

i don't know if i've repped for this before, but paolo bacigalupi's 'shipbreaker' plays with the same themes as hunger games very effectively, and the writing quality is much, much better. the first half of shipbreaker is exceptional, and the second half is very good, but it's also a lot more of an interesting read, imho

thanks for the tip. i'll check that out

hunger games feels v schematic -- the world-building feels very back-of-an-envelope, and then katniss spends the entire time explaining it to the reader. all the character interactions suffer from the same -- this fear that a slow reader might miss something, somewhere along the way. everything bar the action feels like this; i'm confused what book qualmsley is reading

following recommendations itt will probably wait until i move house so as to not take a boxful of YA fiction w/me

xp Please also notice how nicely the jacket is printed -- over foil, no less! So much foil....

Shipbreaker excerpt:

Richard Lopez was a rib-thin conglomeration of ropy muscle and burning energy. Tattooed dragons ran the length of his arms and sent their tails curling up his neck to twine with the faded patterns of his own long-ago light crew tattoos. Fresher, and far more ominous, a whole series of victory scars gleamed on his chest, showing all the men he'd broken when he'd been a ring fighter. Thirteen red and angry slashes there. His very own baker's dozen, he would say, grinning. And then he'd ask Nailer if he was ever going to be as tough as his old man.

Richard lit the storm lamp that hung overhead, setting it swaying. Nailer held still, trying to guess his father's mood as the man pulled a scavenged chair around and straddled it. The lamp's swinging glare cast shadows across them both, looming and swooping shapes. Richard Lopez was sliding high, burning with amphetamines and liquor, His bloodshot eyes studied Nailer carefully, a snake waiting to strike.

"What the hell happened to you?"

Nailer tried not to show fear. THe man didn't have anything in his hands: no knife, no belt, no willow whip. His blue eyes might be crystal bright, but he was still a calm ocean.

"I had an accident on the job," Nailer said.

"An accident? Were you being stupid?"