The Hunger Games - going off-road

Our copy is out on loan, so I
had to steal a pic from Amazon.
Sorry, Amazon

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic: 2009) In a post-apocalyptic America, children are forced to fight to the death by an all powerful ruling elite. Their battles are the reality TV event of the year for a blood-thirsty public. But when Katniss Everdeen, a 16 year old from one of the poorest districts, enters the arena, her battle to stay alive puts her on a collision course with authority.

I tried to write this last Sunday, but gave up. I got half way through, then slumped. I read what I’d written, and decided it was best for everyone if I just shut the lap-top and walked away. I saved you from one there. It stunk.

I found it tough because I wanted to make a point with it. But it got a bit preachy. A bit shouty. So let’s try again.

I’ve had a couple of comfortable GBR weeks. Glen Duncan followed by PG Wodehouse. Safe and safe. Time to off-road a little. Step up, young-adult fiction (or YA to those in the know).

You’ve heard of this book. It’s no point denying it, I know you have. It’s one of those cultural phenomenon things. You don’t know where you heard about it first, but it’s come into your life. And for most of you, it’s forced you into a choice. Open the mind, give something new a go, try to understand why millions of fans like it. Or go the other way, judge the book by its cover, assume YA fiction isn’t for you, and look down on the millions of fans that have gone a bit potty about it.

See what I’ve done there. I’ve painted one of those as the good choice, and the other as the bad choice. Not subtle, I know. But you should have seen my first try last week. You’ve got off lightly this time around.

Let me be clear – I’m not a YA cheerleader. But I am a fan of trying new stuff. Haven’t always been, but I am now.

The Hunger Games goes to the movies

Here’s a book, a franchise, that’s exploded. It’s spawned at least one box office smash, and has the kind of devoted fan base that is difficult to ignore. There must be something to it, right? At the very least, it’s worth reading to find out for myself. Ignoring it as a kid’s book, as a genre that’s not meant for me, as something unworthy – that’s too easy. It’s won too many people over and has too many intelligent defenders (Mrs GBR amongst them) to dismiss it like that. It’s earned a look.

And, having looked, I confess - I enjoyed it. That’s got to be the first (and probably most important) thing. I resisted a little, but I was gripped. I knew the basic plot and setting going in, but that didn’t make it boring. Collins keeps you uncomfortable from the beginning to the end, never lets you get to grips with the world she’s created.

Which is a good thing – it means you slurp up page after page in your quest to get your head around it all. It means the whole environment of the book is fascinating. Despite myself and my cynicism, I did start to care about the characters and their fates. I did start to react to the bad guys. I did feel the unfairness. I became tense in all the right places.

There’s the YA flavoured downsides too though. There’s a lot said about the “darkness” of this series, about the macabre concept of kids fighting to the death. And yeah, it is a dark idea, but not one that Collins ever really succeeds in making pitch-black dark. She could have gone gothic with it, but the teenage girl voice that drives the narrative holds it up. The idea and the events made me uncomfortable (which, like I say, was a good thing), but the constraints of the genre stopped it ever making the leap to disturbing believability.

Collins also tries to create knots of moral ambiguity, of complex questions, but it’s all set against a simplistic back drop of good vs evil. There are the instantly recognisable good guys (with their love for each other and strong sense of right and wrong) and the cartoon bad guys (with their complete lack of empathy and their blood lust). It’s a lazy formula, and one that skips any attempt to understand where the good and the evil comes from.

There’s the clumsy love element to the story too. And it really is clumsy. Maybe it’s because I was never a teenage girl, can’t identify with it, but there were bits that had my eyes rolling until they could roll no more. And it’s not because I’m unfeeling. I’ve read books about love and been moved by them. But not here. Here, it’s cutesy and rose-tinted.

But that’s what this genre brings. Young adult books are written for young adults, so there are always going to be bits that jar for the rest of us. But if you can get over that, there’s plenty for adults too, especially when they’re as well written as this. The Hunger Games world really is incredibly constructed. The plot has a rhythm and direction that you can’t help but get on board with.

I raced through the book, and kind of want to pick up the next one. I enjoyed it. It brought out reactions from me. I can forgive it its young-adult flaws, because it had the best of the genre too. It had excitement. It had imagination. The pages practically turned themselves.

7 GBR

Classic fence sitting score.  I haven’t quite drunk the YA cool-aid, but I’m getting thirstier. I can say hand on heart there were parts of The Hunger Games I hugely enjoyed.

You should definitely read this. Some of you will love it. Some of you will just quite like it. And some of you will still end up hating it, but at least you can say you gave it a try.

Next week, something that will hopefully make me less preachy.

Over Seventy - the sixth biscuit

Over Seventy by PG Wodehouse (Herbert Watkins: 1957) A self proclaimed "autobiography with digressions". Wodehouse pontificates on pretty much everything, using his status as a septuagenarian to wisely survey the world before him and the life he's led

Having decided to treat myself last week, I couldn’t resist more of the same. I never could leave it at just one biscuit. Just one scoop of ice cream. I always had to have two. Or more often, three. Occasionally four. Five once or twice, but never six.

So the treat this week was Wodehouse shaped. I love that guy. Like most people, it started with Jeeves and Wooster (courtesy of Fry and Laurie). But once I decided to read some of the books, I was hooked in whole other way. Read about it right here (for those GBR novices amongst you).

This, though, isn’t another typical Wodehouse book or short story. This is a memoir of sorts. Not for ole P.G. the introspective story of a life well lived. Not for him the listing out of events and friendships that spanned his years. Instead, Over Seventy is his 200-odd page response to a request from a journalist asking for some of observations of the world now that he was officially an old gent.

I was chuffed that the opening of the book does at least go over some biographical details. I wanted to know how it all started for Wodehouse, and I was given the facts of the matter in fairly short form. I even found out one or two things about his “process” that surprised me (you’ll have to read it to find out for yourself).

But then the book deviates. As Wodehouse argues, any book of his life would largely be taken up with “and then I wrote another story, and people liked it. And then I wrote another story, and people liked it. And then I wrote…” and so on.

So instead, we’re treated to his musings on any number of topics and trends, generously interspersed with an anecdote here and a by-the-way there.

It’s warming reading. It really is. It has the same escapism and old world humour that his fiction does. It wraps its arms around you, deposits you in an old leather armchair, lights the fire, puts a glass of port in your hand, locks the world outside, and does a thoroughly good job of entertaining you. It’s easy, and that’s its power. It comes off the page in the honeyed tones of your granddad.

All the more impressive given the work that’s gone into this. Wodehouse admits himself that he goes through small forests worth of paper in planning his books. Each sentence is formed, reformed, redrafted, edited, reshaped. He went to a lot of trouble to make his writing what it is.

There is a Wodehousian downside though, and one I’ve not come across before. With his other stories, there’s always a strong sense of “what next.” The scenarios he concocts are often complex and tension ridden. With this though, there was no real point. No end game. It’s more a collection of what he thinks about stuff.

Endearing, funny, clever, insightful in parts. But nothing to make you grab it and thirstily drink up a few pages, nothing to make you absolutely positively have to find out what happens. I wouldn’t dare go as far as to say it dragged (this is Wodehouse, after all) but the lack of urgency was an occasional but definite drawback.

Still huge amounts of fun though. Still something I loved. Still a writer that makes me feel wonderful to read.

8 GBR

Go read some Wodehouse. Now.

Next week, I may have to go back to reading something I don’t already love. I guess.

The Last Werewolf

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan (Canongate Books: 2011) - A novel following the world's last werewolf as he finds new reasons to live a life he'd given up on.

Writing a book review blog is not all champagne flutes and red carpets. There are some real hardships involved as well.

Take for example the open ridicule to which I’m exposed every Sunday morning when a new post goes up. Or the delicate social situations that arise when you’re forced to review a book that’s been recommended by a friend.

But worst of all, the absolute pit of the sufferings to which your faithful book blogger avails himself on your behalf, is the damned enforced variety. The need to read something from a different stable week in week out. Sure, it broadens horizons and makes for a broader blog, but it also keeps me away from the books I love for long periods.

I am of course speaking about Glen. You GBR regulars will know Glen. I’ve talked of him before, usually with a hopeless look in my eyes. If I could have, I would have read all his books by now. But I’ve resisted, because you lot don’t want review after review of Glen Duncan.

But after last week’s wash out, I thought I deserved a treat. And Glen Duncan was it.

And he didn’t disappoint (as if he would). This is his offering from last year, and it’s punctuated with the same powerful, thought provoking prose that is the hallmark of all his books.

This is, let’s be honest, a book about werewolves. It could easily descend into absolute farce. Laziness could kick in, and it could be all "frenzied roar" and "blind fury". But not in Glen’s hands (yeah, I’m calling him by his first name now. We’re serious).

Glen still makes room amongst the fast paced plot for his intelligence, using his painfully human approach to dig down and get to the essence of what it is to be a werewolf. It becomes real. You start forgetting this is the world of fantasy authors, and just get lost in the humanity of it. It doesn’t stick out, it’s not the obnoxious guy at the dinner party - Glen manages to discuss love, life, and existence in a thrillingly clever (and often beautiful) way without gate-crashing the story. It hooks you. Or at least it does me.

Which is why I wilted a little in the second half (or maybe even just the last third) of this book. It feels like Glen blew himself out a little in the first chunk. The plot eventually conquers all. The wit and charm of his earlier philosophizing disappears under the juggernaut of getting-the-story-told. Where he does try to revisit some of the earlier themes, it’s done fleetingly and (dare I say it) a little repetitively.

This is the most Hollywood of his books (or the ones I’ve read, anyway). It’s more of an obvious page turner. He uses cliff hangers with less restraint. He’s getting more commercial, I can feel it. But his voice is still there. And it still blew me away in sections.

I can’t help but continue to love Glen. Really, I can’t help it. I’ve tried. And I can’t.

9 GBR

You, without a book review blog to write every week, go use your freedom to read all of Glen’s books now. Take it from a man who has to ration himself.

After that reconnection with an old flame, I might just return to Wodehouse next week. After all, I’ve only written about him once. I’m due another ration.

Fiasco - a fairly apt title

Fiasco by Imre Kertész (Translation, Melville House: 2011). A man who has survived the Nazi concentration camps returns home to a Soviet controlled home, and struggles to navigate his way through a changed world.

Part of the point of this is to make sure I read a bunch of different stuff. Knowing that, at the end of a book, I need to come on here and tell you guys about it – it means I don’t want to read the same sort of thing week in week out. You’d get bored with that. You’re renowned for your short attention span. People talk about it behind your back sometimes.

So I heard about this book by a Hungarian author. One that won the Nobel Prize for Literature. And I thought why not. I’ve never read a Hungarian author before. Or a Nobel Prize winning book. So this will be something new to write about.

And it is. Something new to write about, that is. I’ll tell you what this book is not. It is not readable. It is not smooth. It is not flowing. It is not fun or enlightening or riveting.

All sounds a bit negative Nancy, doesn’t it. Sorry to bring the tone down, I’m sure you were having a super day until now. A really sunshine one. But I didn’t enjoy this book. And I won’t lie to you. I can’t, I shan’t.

There are, however, some redeeming factors. I can see what the purpose of the book was. It is clever in a lot of ways, and the style of the first part (the hundred or so pages before chapter 1 starts) is quirky and new and intelligent. I liked the idea of it, the rhythm of the repetition and the slight comedy it brought to an otherwise purposefully stale scene. And the second part of the book, the actual story, had its plus points too. It had some pretty interesting characters, and...

No, that’s me done trying to be positive. The bottom line is this just was not fun to read. And I know not all books need to be fun. They can be heartbreaking, or enriching, or interesting, or exciting, or scary, or pretty much any other strong emotion. But this was none. It elicited nothing extreme from me. Not even anything  endearingly small. Just a bit of boredom.

I get what was being attempted. I appreciated the cleverness. I recognised the sadness, and the political backdrop. But I got over that pretty quick, and then just got sleepy as the book rambled on and stumbled through a string of unremarkable events.

This book never connected with me. It was a literary exercise more than it was a good read. And the GBR scale is nothing if not a measure of good-read-ness.

2 GBR

Can’t bring myself to give something Nobel Prize winning a 1 GBR, or God forbid even a 0 GBR. But honestly, don’t bother with this. Go do something else instead. Pick some flowers, watch some birds, even do some exercise. Anything.

Next week, something a great deal more. Just more. Something to make me want to read again.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - risky business

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman (Canongate: 2010) Philip Pullman separates Jesus Christ into two men, and retells one of the most influential stories in the world from a different perspective. The questions he raises aren’t new, but some of the answers he suggests are.

I'd meant to do a vaguely Easter review last week, but priorities shifted.

So, seven days late, Merry Easter Holiday everybody! In celebration, the most Easter related book on my shelf gets a turn on GBR.

This is part of a series where famous authors take classic myths and retell them in their own way. I know, Pullman’s being a bit inflammatory in taking the story of Christ and labelling it a myth, right? Bet he’s tons of fun at a dinner party.

That’s not an argument I want to get involved with. Not out loud anyway. No one tends to win there. Just hurt feelings and bad judgements. So I’m going to leave it alone.

Religion v atheism aside, you’ve got to love the ambition of this. One of the world’s most enduring stories, Pullman picks it up and takes complete ownership of it. Believer or not, it shows a huge amount of confidence to take the story of Christ and very publicly inject your own imagination. Similar enough in all the big ways to be recognisable, keeping all the big events, but changing contexts and characters and smaller events to turn it into something new. The result is a book that deals with massive themes in new ways, and explores the nature of storytelling.

It’s high concept. The fundamental changes reinvigorate the plot and give it new angles. The end result is something that confuses as much as it enlightens. Whether you believe the Bible or not, most of us at least treat it with a degree of respect as a symbol of the strong beliefs of others. As you’re reading this book, you can’t help but retain some of that quiet respect, but you’re also kept constantly off balance by the knowledge that this was made up by some guy in his writing shed.

It’s an odd effect. And probably the one Pullman was going for. A mixture of an ancient, timeless tone with something new and unfamiliar.

Unfortunately, to achieve it, Pullman had to be quite restricted in the language he uses. This is a man that spins a mighty yarn. He’s created entire worlds on his own, and described them vividly enough to earn mega multi-movie contracts. In this book though, in order to ape the Bible, the language is kept incredibly simple. You can hear the voice of a Church of England vicar reading the words out in monotone over a golden lectern. Which helps in creating the Bible feel. But does nothing to make this readable or compelling.

It’s a fairly short book, but it’s slow. And it’s not exciting. It only entertains in flashes, and relies a huge amount on the idea rather than the execution.

Pullman gets points for the concept here. And he gets points for achieving a consistent tone, and for successfully recreating a very specific feel. But novels should be entertaining too, in one way or another. There’s a place for literary exercises, but I’m not sure GBR is it. Not unless they can be readable as well.

4 GBR

I was pretty disappointed in this. I had high hopes. I loved the idea. But I only very mildly enjoyed the book that it begat. (You like that? That’s my own piece of Biblical language. Bullseye).

Next week, I’ll probably have finished the Hungarian thing I’m trudging through at the moment. One to look forward to, I know.

Carts

Have spent most of today trying to come to terms with the pretty unreal news that Carts has gone. Haven't figured out how to do that yet, so thought I'd try writing.

Carts was one of a number of faces I saw most Saturdays at rugby. Someone I eagerly shared a few beers with when the chance arose. I doubt I figured high on his frequent numbers list, but whenever we were in the same place at the same time, he'd give me a smile and a handshake and make like I was his oldest friend. Every now and then, if I'd been good, I'd even get a hug.

That was the kind of guy he was. In his eyes and in his company, everyone was a friend. He stepped into a changing room or onto a pitch or into a pub, and brought so much happiness and brightness that it was hard to avoid. He was one of those guys that made you feel ten feet tall to be around.

That's why I thought so much of him. Here was a guy with a wide circle of close friends. A man with talents and wit and warmth. A man who could easily make the minimum of effort with new or fringe people, in the knowledge that his life was fun enough already. But he didn't. Every time I saw him, he treated me like he'd missed me, like it was a pleasure to see me again. He didn't have to. Lord knows I'm awkward enough at times, I take a while to get out of my shell. But Carts didn't care. Carts smiled and chatted with me all the same.

In my eyes, that's huge. It's why I thought he was amazing. I hope he knew.

The news today hit me far harder than I ever could have imagined it would. I'm not sure if writing about it now is the right thing to do. It doesn't feel enough. But it's helping stop the tears from pushing out for a little while. And I don't think the world can ever be full enough of good words for Nathan Carter.

He was one of the best. That he's not here anymore is unfair. But I'll think of him often, and I'm sure once the tears leave me alone, I'll smile about him often too.

I'll miss you Carts. An awful lot of people will. Try and behave up there.

Prague, shuffling truffles, and awesome tees

Prague, apprently

No review this week boys and girls. By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be rocking back and forth in some corner of a Prague hotel room, three quarters of the way through a stag do. By the magic of “scheduled publishing” though, I’m able to get this up at the usual Sunday morning time. I love the internet sometimes.

So instead of a review, I wanted to let you guys know about this. And this. And this. Book themed t-shirts! Brilliant.

I love Truffle Shuffle. But they’ve outdone themselves here. They really have. These are brilliant.

By the way, my birthday is on October 6th, and I’m a size medium. Just sayin’.