Eat, Pray, Love or: Not Mockingjay

It would make excellent sense in the wake of last week's hoopla over Mockingjay's release, bated-breath-waiting, reading and sigh-of-relief that I would say something about it, but the truth is that the idea of writing a book review for Mockingjay makes me want to groan and writhe, though whether in pain or aggravation, I'm not sure.

Here's my review: I was not disappointed. I'm sure that Suzanne Collins' entire motivation was just that, to make sure that Punk wasn't disappointed, so she can now rest easy that she has succeeded. Honestly, I'm still mulling, letting my brain organize everything I read -- way too quickly -- and then maybe I'll analyze. Probably not, though. I liked it. A lot. The end.

However, in the meantime, I've picked up Eat, Pray, Love. I'm not one to jump on a band-wagon for books or movies, not really (Twilight, per example: the more deafenening the hype, the less I wanted to be associated with it. It's a small rebelliousness, and it may be the only kind I possess), but I recently went through a book-buying phase that will probably go down in some kind of family history. "Remember after we moved from PointA to PointB, and Jess got cut off from the good library and thought she was going to have to live her life without a library and thus, probably die? Remember when she started buying up books out of sheer desperation? Good times!" That's where this book came from: paperbacks for a dollar on the cart at the new library. I snatched it up, paid my dollar, and set it on the shelf with other books I would not have bought otherwise (Life of Pi, Atonement, House of Sand and Fog, McKinley's Sunshine). I mentioned the hoopla of Mockingjay and that I am now in its wake, which is why I went thumbing through my shelves for something to read. Picked this one up. Figured I might as well at least read a few pages.

I've not heard much about the book, but the drive-by-reviews I have heard aren't necessarily positive, and that's fine. I may get to the end of this book and decide that I'm not a fan. Afterall, I'm only 102 pages in (*gasp* says everyone who knows me); a lot can happen in the pages that remain.

I've been reading it in small bites, as though I'm recovering from the binge that was Mockingjay. It's better this way, those small bites, because every few vignettes, I'm struck with a sense of poignancy that requires I taste it, digest it.

Maybe it's because the author is writing from an age that I can relate to, her early thirties. Maybe it's because I've been so miserable this week that I can relate to her panicked quest for happiness.

-- Word of advice, kids: Don't ever underestimate the power of regular sleep. I speak from a lifetime of experience as an insomniac. Trust me. The world is much uglier when you don't sleep.

Perhaps, she, Elizabeth Gilbert, deserves the credit, as she is the writer. She is the one evoking this poignancy. A part of me wants to track her down and carry on annoying dialogue, mostly using paragraphs of her book as her side of the dialogue:

"Liz, about the third vignette: I am one of those "strictly speaking" Christians, and I too believe in a magnificent God. I don't know how one can bother with a God that isn't magnificent. But isn't it marvelous, that magnificence, His magnificence?"

"Liz, your last line for vignette twelve... I don't get it. The poem -- wow -- yeah, that I get, like the sharp finger of a tree root through my chest, but your response. Shaking with relief? Why?"

"Liz, why does your still, small voice have to be your own? Mostly, I'm referring to vignette eighteen, the parts you wrote about there. It's been my experience that when a voice much calmer and wiser than I am is answering when I'm crying out, that is truly God, as in bigger and better than me. Separate from me. Not me. Why isn't that everyone's understanding? How could that still, small voice possibly be me? I don't understand."

"I relate -- too well -- with that sense of guilt in being quiet, being still and happy. That 'pleasure' you talk about, Liz. In my mind, it's 'lazy,' and I'm very good at it, and it is not a virtue. I can breathe deeply and feel the goodness of this life, but only for a minute, because then the guilt takes over, for doing nothing but sitting here, breathing and thinking how good I've got it. The difference being that I don't necessarily think I'm wrong. It's about balance, isn't it? Life is so much about learning balance."

"Thank you, Liz, for the Italian lessons. I've often wondered if there were people in the world who love language as much as I do, who relish the sound and feel of words -- all of them -- like I do. Dante's Italian; Shakespeare's English. Just reading the Italian makes me feel as though I should lick my fingers and make yummy-noises. So, thank you."

I have a lot more of the book to go, and Lord knows it could get down-right weird from the yummy-Italian portion of the story, but I'm not looking to Elizabeth Gilbert to tell me how to live my life or perceive my God -- or myself -- or even how to find my own balance. I'm reading her story, how she's learning to live her life, perceive God and find balance. And I'm remembering that I'm a woman in her early thirties in a world which doesn't understand God as she does and doesn't understand balance as she does, remembering that while my story doesn't span continents and is still very much in its first drafting, it's a good story. It's mine.

An Open Letter to the World At Large Regarding Mockingjay

Dear Everyone in the Universe,

Mockingjay's release is today, and a handful of my Twitter-people are reading it now, in the spare days before my copy arrives, and so it becomes of utmost importance that I hear not a breath of a spoiler.

Oh, you say, my telling you *psstpsstpsst* won't make a difference. Not really.

YES, IT WILL.

Here's why: I am an insanely good guesser. Pretty much the only person who really knows and understands the extent of my good-guessing is Bryan (he should, after eleven years of marriage), so people are always dropping hints I DON'T WANT TO KNOW about books and movies. Guess what? Those hints ruin it for me.

Remember The Sixth Sense? Remember the puffickly huh-yooge plot twist? (That's a Stephen King reference, by the way. Love that book.) My sister -- yes, I'm calling her out a dozen years later -- made the ginourmous mistake of telling me there was a "crazy twist" before I went into the theater to see it. I spent the entire movie waiting for it, watching for it, to such an extent that I figured it out before the reveal, thus lessening the shock. But the shock is the fun of the whole twist! Where's the fun if you figure it out before the shock? There's isn't any!

Lost. The entire world has been talking about Lost. Guess what? I don't have to watch it now BECAUSE I ALREADY KNOW WHAT HAPPENS. The world ruined the shock for me.

Inception. I wanted to see it so badly, and now I don't, because everyone and their bff has been talking about it, and now I'm pretty sure all the shock has been blown out of it for me. I hate that.

It's more than the hints, so I can't blame the rest of the world for it. I really am a good guesser. Chalk it up to having read a million and a half books in my lifetime; there are only so many turns a plot can make. Remember that movie The DaVinci Code? I happened to be sitting in the living room while Bryan was watching it (I think I was reading a book), and I predicted every plot turn. It was actually pretty funny.  Or remember some months back when I talked about The City of Bones books? I saw all the twists coming not just ahead of time, but entire books ahead of time. You know what that makes a story? Predictable. Boring. Why do I keep reading if I know what's going to happen?

So, here's the entire point of this long-winded rant: SSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH...

Love,
Punk

In which I review, compare and contrast The Hunger Games and City of Bones, and probably give away major plot points

I am a reader. I devour books, and by "devour" I mean I can get through a 500 page book in a matter of hours. If it's good, I mean. If it's not, why would I do that to myself?

My (literary) drug of choice is mostly Young Adult Lit, and usually I explain this by saying that it's cleaner than adult fiction while also being more creative. This holds true when you look even more closely at my library history and see how much fantasy/ science fiction I read.

Recently I read two new series based on the gushing by various Twitterers I follow. The first was The Hunger Games and its sequel Catching Fire.

I borrowed The Hunger Games from the library, then, out of sheer desperation (and the fact that to borrow Catching Fire, I would have to wait for the forty-four library patrons ahead of me to read and finish it), I bought Catching Fire.

I don't buy books. It's a waste of money and shelf space. I only buy books that I plan on rereading or want to have in my collection or that I'd like to have available to my family in the years to come. Actually, the handful of times that I've bought a book without reading it first can probably be counted on one hand, and at least half of those fingers turned out to be horrible books that I quickly donated to the library or Goodwill, probably with an exclamation similar to "Yuck! Get it out of my house!"

However, with Catching Fire, I was desperate. I needed to know what was going to happen next, and I reeeeeeally didn't want to wait three months to do so. I justified the purchase by telling myself that if the book was not worth keeping (and buying The Hunger Games to keep it company), I would donate it. No biggie.

Oh, it was worth it; I've since purchased The Hunger Games, and I'm dying to preorder Mockingjay (out in August). *Fingers crossed that it won't suck*

The second series -- The Mortal Instruments -- has three books released: City of Bones (book 1), City of Ashes (book 2), and City of Glass (book 3), and I hear rumors that there will be a fourth. I will not be buying these books.

It's been driving me crazy: why I liked The Hunger Games and Catching Fire enough to buy them but not The Mortal Instruments books. They were both entertaining, both action-packed, both sort of romantic and sort of strong girl protagonists. So what's the difference?

For one, though The Hunger Games is set in a dystopian society amid governmental interference and wildly unrealistic genetic experimentation, it's believable. You can believe that Katniss lives in this world. You believe that she's hardened by her life despite the fact she's sixteen, and you believe she will kill whomever she must to survive... if she has to. You believe Peeta is good, mostly because we also see that he too will do what he must to survive; his goodness is tempered with humanity.

It's taken me at least a week of mulling to realize that Clary and Jace of The Mortal Instruments bugged me because they're caricatures. I have no trouble diving into a premise of super demon killers, et cetera; that's not the problem. It's the fact that they're melodramatic. Dramatic I can swallow. Fantastical I can swallow. Melodramatic makes me cringe and gag.

Okay, so the character's bugged me. I read many books and even enjoy some with annoying characters. However, it's more difficult to get past the annoying characters when I see the first plot twist halfway through the first book and the second twist at least a chapter before I was meant to, and a third twist (meant for the 3rd book) somewhere in the 2nd book. That's annoying.

Also, you can't have a story about tragic lovers without something to keep them apart. Usually, that something is some kind of immature communication breakdown. For Clary and Jace, it's incest.

Give me a minute to get around the skeeviness the very idea of this still gives me.

Okay, I'm good.

How in the world am I supposed to feel sympathetic toward the star-crossed lovers? How in the name of all that's holy am I supposed to root for them? Because that's what you're supposed to do. Even if it ends tragically (hello, Romeo & Juliet), I'm supposed to want them to triumph! And I didn't. I was torn. She loves him; he loves her. But, ew. Ugh. No.

Now, having complained and ranted, I will say that the books are absolutely readable. You have a weekend and need a good demon-fighting trilogy to occupy yourself? Definitely borrow them from the library. I will even attest that you will not ultimately be skeeved out. But remember that I warned you about the melodrama and (at this moment) about the point of view jumping randomly from primary characters to secondary characters for no foreseeable reason, or the fact that there are scenes that will seem out of character and make you not trust what you're reading. It's okay. Go with it. It's only fiction.

On the other hand, I definitely recommend The Hunger Games books. They're not literary masterpieces, but the books are solid YA reading. I, for one, cannot wait to see where Mockingjay is going to take us.