A dystopian young adult novel and R.I.P.

The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins

Last week I finally got round to reading The Hunger Games, a disturbing dystopia tale set in a world of persecution and exploitation, where reality television is carried to its frightening and entirely logical conclusion.  In this world, what was once North America has been transformed into an exploitative dictatorship where the society is divided into districts based on what they produce, those districts are then forced each year to send two of their young residents to participate in what is the society's equivalent of gladiatorial games.  A ritual designed to maintain fear and control in a subjugated society. 

The main character, Katniss volunteers to take her younger sister's place when she is selected as one of district twelve's two tributes.  The idea of young tributes selected and sent to appease the capital's appetite for violence is very reminiscent of the classical Greek tale of the Minotaur, where Athens is forced to send tributes to Crete to appease the blood lust of the monster but even by classical standards this is a bloody and violent tale.  This is a world where each district must send two tributes each, a boy and a girl, chosen from amongst their youngest and most vulnerable members to be transported to a unique arena to literally fight to the death, forced to kill each other not only in order survive themselves but also in order to ensure the safety of their communities and families back home, and all of this dramatic violence is televised for the entertainment of the capital and the society at large, a  kind of Logan's Run for this generation, or a televised Lord of the Flies, Survivor with real consequences.

This is a dark and dramatic, if essentially simple tale, Collins throws in some romance in a love story, sub plot between the two adolescents from district twelve but even this romance is something the capital essentially seeks to exploit for entertainment.  Mutation and genetic engineering also feature within this dystopian mythology.  The big brother themantics of 1984 are also a feature of this dark thriller.  Certainly this is a very pacy narrative, one that grabs the reader and demands their continued attention until the very end, the end of this book is, however, not the end, as the story continues into two more titles making up a trilogy, I must admit I am intrigued to know how Collings will resolve this dark drama.  Will the districts rebel and ultimately overthrow the capital or will the story continue at the merely personal level?  This is an interesting young adult title, interesting for the dark nature of the story line as much for the gripping quality of the narrative.  Collings effectively draws the reader into Katniss'world making this a very diverting novel, compelling and hard to escape.

I have not yet read my second R.I.P.  novel and while I have a couple of books  on the shelves that might satisfy the criteria, I think I could safely count The Hunger Games as a R.I.P. title, certainly it is a thriller and a kind of dark fantasy set as it is a disturbing dystopian future where the state forces children to kill while it also engineers monsters to add to the bloody drama of their conflicts.

A quick catch up on the week's reading

A.C. Swinburne: A Poet's Life
by Ricky Rooksby

A relatively brief and disciplined biography.  The book makes liberal reference to Swinburne's own creative output and thus gives insight into not only the life of the poet but importantly into his work. A unique and eccentric figure his life makes for interesting reading.  Swinburne's involvement with other leading figures of the age such as the Pre-Raphaelite circle, Monckton Milnes and Richard Francis Burton means this book offers insight into the avant-garde culture of the time.  If this book has a  flaw it is in its heavy dependence on biographical criticism making it perhaps to academic for the merely curious reader.  This book has fuelled my curiosity about Swinburne and his work.

The Apothecary
by Maile Meloy

This was another school/work related read.  I do try to keep up with new young adult fiction and I must admit to being drawn to the cover of this title.  Essentially the premise of the novel revolves around Janie an American girl having to move to London with her parents who have left the McCarthy fuelled hysteria of cold war America.  Once in London Janie discovers magic and mystery in unexpected places as well as friendship in face of threat and challenge.  Much of the story involves an ancient and magical book the Pharmacopoeia, a book that contains the means to achieve some magical results including the ability to turn into birds.  This book certainly sounded and looked as if it would be a great read but  I must admit that while it was a diverting enough read it has not proved particularly memorable.  Certainly the setting of 1950s post war, cold war Britain was novel but not particularly convincing or compelling.   I suspect this novel would have had greater appeal to a younger reader, it was well executed and the historical setting may have been more convincing and more interesting for a younger reader.

My name is Mina and I love the night.

My name is Mina
by David Almond

The journal of a unique and wonderful girl, Mina.  This book is a wonderful contrast to the last YA novel I reviewed.  This is a remarkable novel, rich and complex in terms of its story and language.  A prequel to Almond's brilliant, masterful novel Skellig, this lovely book sees Almond return to the story of Mina just before she meets Michael and Skellig. The novel takes the form of a journal and Mina's story is told in rich and experimental language that celebrates beauty and creativity.

Lush and imaginative it is Mina'a story told in her own words and voice and what a voice, still quite child like but with Mina's remarkable intellect and perception, this is simply a lovely book.  The journal form is both creative and inspiring, how many kids would find Mina's journal inspiring in their own exploration of themselves and the world via a journal.  I must admit Mina was my favourite character in Skellig, her independence and original thinking was very appealing.  Her difference from the everyday made her unique.  It is interesting that Almond has used this work to offer a critique of contemporary education and the regimented assessment that now defines education.  He exposes the intrinsic failure of such education to meet the needs of those who deviate from the norm, he exposes the stifling lack of imagination and empathy in contemporary education and the way it pushes any child who is different despite their intelligence to the margins, exposing them to even further hurt and marginalisation.

This is a great little book but perhaps it is not quite as great as Skellig, which is a truly remarkable novel, my favourite children's novel of all time and one of my favourite novels full stop.  Mina's journal speaks to everyone but especially to anyone who feels different and anyone who sees the world in a unique way.  What a great combination the two books make, I recommend them both in the highest terms possible to any reader of any age.

YA reading, a romance and the path to discernment.

Wings
by Aprilynne Pike

Again this is just a quick update my recent reading post.  Wings is a young adult paranormal romance novel a couple of the kids at school had me read, not a novel I would have chosen for myself, I can however, see why it appeals to them.  It has drama and romance, an easy accessible prose style and magic, lots and lots of magic, not always plausible but with big teenage girl appeal.  The main character has recently moved to a new school and seems to be developing an unusual problem, she is sprouting leaves.  Is she becoming a plant or something all together more magical?  Fairies and trolls feature, a relationship with a boy at school and an another encounter with an apparently fairy boy, complicate the plot, while primarily the main character has to thwart the evil plans of trolls.  Overall this is a pretty mediocre book to say the least, the prose is pedestrian at best, the plot is silly  and the characterisation is simplistic and predictable.   
I don't want to sound like too much of a snob about this book, but to put it briefly, it is just a Twilight clone that replaces vampires with fairies, literature it is not.  Is it a bad book?  Well it certainly is not a good book but then, it is what it is.  If it entertains a teenager and keeps them reading, stimulates their imagination and curiosity then it is a good thing, it becomes merely a step in their reading development, a building block to discernment and reading maturity, such books are necessary, how else will kids learn to appreciate truly great books if they do not have the privilege of reading many and varied books on their reading journey, at least this is a book that makes them want to read and keeps them turning pages.

A catch up post and great young adult reading with no vampires or werewolves!

Marrying Ameera
by Rosanne Hawke

This was a great read, a compelling plot from start to finish and a main character who was not only plausible but who the reader could identify with and care about.  Ameera takes the reader into a world that for many Australian teenagers would seem totally alien and yet the experience the novel recounts is for some a frightening reality.

Ameera is a 17 year old Australian high school senior, her mother is Anglo Australian and her dad is Pakistani Australian, raised as a Muslim, Ameera is at an age when western culture begins to conflict with her father's aspirations for her and circumstances see him send her to Pakistan on a flimsy pretext, while in reality he has organised a forced marriage, much of the novel deals with Ameera's entrapment in a land in which she is controlled by family and draconian gender politics.  She is cut off from her mother and also from the Australian Pakistani boy with whom she was beginning to form a friendship in Australia.  This is a compelling story and Hawke beautifully evokes Ameera's environment both in Australia and in Pakistan, dealing with a sensitive cultural issue in the subject of forced arranged marriage and family honour, crafting a novel that is adventure, thriller and to an extent romance.  This really is a great young adult read.
 

Climbing the Stairs
by Padma Venkatraman

After Marrying Ameera this title in the library caught my eye, another story about a young woman struggling to build an independent identity in an environment that presents extra challenges for women, where the cultural expectation is that marriage will come before education and independence.
Set in British occupied India during the second world war, the novel tells the story of Vidya a fifteen year old girl living in a liberal Hindu household. Tragedy strikes and the family are forced to return to living in a shared, extended, traditional household, where men and women live in separate areas of the house and the expectations are that women will follow traditional paths of marriage and family.  Vidya finds those expectations impossible to accept and life is complicated further when her brother seeks to enlist in the army despite the family's strict Hindu beliefs.  The position of women is one theme, but violence and non violence are also themes explored in the novel.

The stairs in the title refer to the stairs to the higher levels of the house where the men live and where Vidya's grandfather keeps his library.  The library becomes Vidya's precious sanctuary in what is a hostile environment, it is also here in the library that Vidya meets a boy, who has the potential to offer her an escape at least from the cruel family circumstances in which she is living.  I loved the library and the way Vidya explored it's contents and celebrated the power of books and words, this was another great YA read, again a compelling book that I read very quickly.

 White Crow
by Marcus Sedwick

An amazing book, I could not put this down once I started it, a masterfully crafted thriller, this book is unsettling and haunting.  Again a YA novel this time dealing with the friendship between two teenage girls but the novel is more than just a tale about intense friendship in the here and now, it also presents a terrifying story from the past and the lengths a person will go to find an answer to the unanswerable.  This was a frightening and compelling story, one that can't easily be put down or forgotten. Good and evil, friendship and loneliness, and fear are all explored. When you die who will come for you, will it be angels or devils?  Not a book for the feint hearted, this is a dark and disturbing book, not for every reader but the craftsmanship must be admired.

 Skulduggery Pleasant
by Derek Landy

Now this was a book on a much lighter note!  A tale of magic and drama, action and adventure and perhaps most importantly humour, for all its sinister appearance Skulduggery Pleasant is essentially a humorous book, where  a plot about good and evil is driven forward by high octane adventure. This was not the first time I have read Skulduggery but the first time I got to finish it, in the past no sooner would I start to read it than someone would want to borrow it, so I found my reading of this title was endlessly interrupted, which in itself says much for the books popularity.  This is a fun book, well crafted and entertaining, great characters and I loved the names like, Ghastly Bespoke.  I also enjoyed the portrayal of Stephanie's extended family and her ghastly relatives. 

 The book of Unicorns
by Jackie French

Short stories about unicorns, bringing magic into the everyday and mundane.  A great young read, that illustrates why Jackie French has proven such a successful author.   A student suggested I read this one and I enjoyed the journey into what are gentle and well crafted stories with a real sense of magic.  This one reminds me of the now classic novel by Peter Beagle, The Last Unicorn, a book I am also intending to re-read at some point soon. 
These have been very brief summations of some of my recent reading and I do feel a bit guilty for not giving more detail and doing more justice to what have proved to be highly diverting reads.

A bad blogger post

Oh dear, I have been so slack, failing to update, but all that will change.  I have been reading, just failing to update the blog, bad me.  Brief distraction which interrupted my reading flow, still have books to post on and to return to, but in the meantime this is just a brief catchup.
In the last couple of weeks I have read a few books from work, (work being a library that services young adult readers),  one title because it was new and simply grabbed my attention, a few others because I asked the kids to pull out a few books they thought I should read instead of me always telling them to read, so in brief my recent reading: