The Hunger Games

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Image via Amazon.com

The books in the Hunger Games trilogy are great books to read if you are, in fact, hungry, and on a diet, because they are so hard to put down that you will find it a challenge to get up and get yourself something to eat. True story.

I finished reading the trilogy this month, and unlike the girl in my book group who loved them, I came away from the books with mixed feelings, but no loss of weight, which was a little disappointing.

Caution: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

The Hunger Games and Catching Fire were both riveting books that moved along at an arresting pace. (I read Catching Fire in approximately 24 hours.) Katniss, with her general distrust and her inability to play to audiences, was likable, and certainly sympathetic; and Peeta was like the dream boy that seemingly everyone but me thought Edward or Jacob (from the Twilight series) was – something like my dream boy, anyway.

My principal complaints about the trilogy came with the third book, Mockingjay.

First I have to confess to being a bit a dismayed by the amount of time that Katniss spent sedated in book three. Throughout the first two books, she found a way through, even in the face of apparently insurmountable sorrow or difficulty. Of course, in the first two books, she had had the freedom to overcome; in book three, that freedom was demonstrably absent – whether because she was sedated or because the people in District 13 weren’t really free. Perhaps that was an irony Suzanne Collins intended us to observe.

Then there was the rather grotesque role that Katniss was required to play – a mascot for the revolution, a living symbol – still a pawn to be used to advance someone else’s agenda, to inspire the people to fight.

I finished the books the same weekend that, a year previously, my sister got married and moved halfway across the country; right at the end of Mockingjay, Prim, the sister whose place Katniss took in The Hunger Games, is killed by a bomb. Katniss’s certain numbness to all the things she’d imagined she would experience in some way together with her sister was particularly poignant. My sister didn’t die – but I could relate in a very small way to that feeling of loss, and the vacancy left behind that will never be quite filled.

But my chief complaint is the way the books ended. You expect characters to emerge from stories changed in some way, and certainly the horrors that Katniss and Peeta witnessed and were at times part of would change them. But Katniss and Peeta were more than changed – they were completely broken, changed beyond recovery. I wasn’t expecting them to regain any sort of childish innocence, but I did hope that their story would end with a more complete happiness. And that, to me, was the most disappointing thing about the books, the idea that there would be no healing, no recovery of their former selves.

Scares of a Summer Evening

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Today was the final day of my internship, which means I’m back to a normal work schedule next week. (I expect my Middlemarch progress to increase significantly now [cough].) I even took time to go to the grocery store last night, so I had something to cook in my fridge when I got home tonight.  With such sanguine expectations, what else could be hovering in the wings at stage left but drama?

We interrupt this post to bring you the post’s sole piece of visual interest, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of this story, but which is one of my favorite things.

I am terribly afraid of spiders. I can’t help it. All of the things people who aren’t afraid of spiders say to people like me who are afraid of spiders make no difference whatsoever. They might ask, “What do you think the spider will do to you?” Well, honestly, I don’t have any idea. And I don’t think it’s fair to expect logic from me in these circumstances. All I know is that when I see one, buzzing begins in my brain and my heart starts to race and the only coherent thought to be mustered is it must die, which, after a tense staring contest (me versus the menace), is followed by a pep talk to myself (if there is no one else to do battle for me) to be a grown up and deal with it.

In June, I drove home from work one day, and pulling into the garage with my sunglasses on, and just above where I was storing my winter tires I saw a giant spider. I’m not exaggerating when I assure you that the body of that spider was larger than a quarter, not counting the legs. Dealing with that spider was an ordeal that involved first desperately calling my mother for moral support, backing my car out of the garage again (I had to have room to run in case of attack failure, and also as much light as possible from the open garage door), and a standoff that felt like 30 seconds which was probably more like five, until the giant spider started move (quickly) and I screwed my courage to the sticking place and launched my attack, face distorted for extra bravado. Suffice it to say attack number one was unsuccessful – tires had to be toppled – and eventually, it died.

So, in July, my father, who is one of my favorite people in the whole entire world despite his audacious suggestion that I try immersion therapy for my spider fear (he’s been known to rubber-band plastic bags around the ends of vacuum hoses, “just in case”, so it was a pot-kettle situation to begin with), came and swept out my garage for me. And sprayed Raid all the way around the inside edges of the garage, and the garage door. (Thanks, Dad! I love you!)

And it’s mostly been great since then. I suspect that the garage-sweeping exercise resulted in dislodging some from their habitats, as I had the misfortune to reach into my purse the next weekend and suddenly discover that a spider was ON MY HAND (but it was small and its death was swift).

Tonight after retrieving the mail, I was headed into my apartment and chanced to glance down toward the corner of the garage to find a mid-size spider. Too large for me to deal with while things were in my hands, so I dashed upstairs, divested myself of the things, grabbed a stiff shoe, and went back downstairs.

I think I really need to work on my aim. Smacking at the wall with my stiff shoe, I missed, or it darted out of the way too quickly – who can say for certain? – and it sandwiched itself in the crevice between the wall and the garage floor and I thought to myself, RAID!

But as soon as I picked it up, I had doubts. The Raid was too light. I gave it a shake and could hear a little left in the bottle, so I returned to the scene of battle to discover that, when the button was depressed, the “steady line of spray” for which this specific bottle of Raid was purchased was nothing more than spits of drops falling only inches away. So I held it as close as I dared to the crevice, and as I did my best to apply the random drops evenly, I saw another spider – a smaller one – scurrying. (In hindsight it occurred to me that perhaps mid-size spider was hunting the smaller spider – or the other way around – but I remain remorseless.)

I have no idea whether this final line of defense (as I refuse to sit and wait for them to come out of the crevice) was successful. But the moral to today’s story is, if you’re using someone’s Raid and you almost use up the entire bottle, you should really let them know, so that they can restock before it is too late.

And thanks again Dad! You’re the best-est of the best!

Author’s note: If you did in fact tell me that I needed to buy more Raid, and I just forgot, I blame it entirely on my crazy schedule heretofore this summer and thereby absolve myself of any untoward moralizing.

Books We Read in School

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The subject of books we read in school came up at dinner with friends the other night. As is always expected when individuals of varying life experiences and approaches to life are assembled in one place for the purpose of eating, there were many differing opinions about many things, including reading.

There are actually just a few books that I read in school that I remember. Sadly, I remember considerably more about the “pleasure” reading to which I devoted so much more time. Yes, I went through a “sick books” phase. “Sick books” – in the event you never experienced one – are books in which one of the main characters takes ill (probably leukemia, a brain tumor, or a preexisting heart condition the character has had from birth which only serves to make the story that much more heartbreaking) and probably dies, most likely leaving behind his or her one and only true love. Happily, I did outgrow them.

Here are the assigned books that I actually remember reading (minus one which I omit because I have nothing either entertaining or remotely positive to say about it), and what I remember thinking about them at the time.

With a cover like this, can you blame me? Image via amazon.com

Hatchet, by Gary Paulson. It was about a boy who was stranded in the woods in the middle of nowhere after a plane crash. I remember long accounts of shelter-building and being very bored indeed.

White Fang, by Jack London. Seriously, the only thing I remember about this is descriptions of blood and violence. And it’s hazy enough that these may be just my lasting impressions rather than actual memories of scenes in the book.

Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls. I remember sitting in the classroom during silent reading time and trying very hard not to cry, and not succeeding. If you can read this book without crying, you may be entirely heartless.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. This is one of the few books assigned that I actually enjoyed, and it is perhaps one of the first books I read that, once I came to the end, I sat in awe for a few minutes to think about it. It’s still on my list of favorites.

Cosette, or the Little Matchgirl? You decide. Image via amazon.com

Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. My principal memory is of sitting in my parents’ living room on a Sunday afternoon and finishing the novel, and my parents finding me weeping, which they seemed to find hilarious. These same parents had a copy of this novel on audio cassette, and I can remember how it almost always went with us on road trips. For whatever reason, I had it confused for the longest time with the “little matchgirl” story, because the picture on the front was how I imagined the little matchgirl to look. So you might say I remember hearing this story long before I understood it.

The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. In his dedication to Good Poems, Garrison Keillor said, “To all the English teachers, especially the great ones”, and it is only because of one of those great English teachers that I will never forget this book, for more reasons than I probably have time to tell tonight. Thanks, Mr. Robertson.

Me and Harry Potter

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Me at the premier

Harry Potter and I share a birthday. Perhaps because of this I feel that he and I, fictional character though he may be, have a special bond.

After the last book came out, I regretted never attending a midnight release party for one of the books; I suppose I thought I’d be surrounded with noisy children, or (worse) be surrounded with noisy children while I, an adult not accompanying a child, attended a midnight book release party alone. (There is definitely something to be said for having people around who enjoy the same things you do – it’s not something to be taken for granted.)

So, with the release of the final movie installment of the Harry Potter saga, I decided I had to attend the midnight premier. I’m not going to talk about the movie, other than to say that somewhere between five and ten Kleenex were used by me alone, and that – finally – they got it right.

This last weekend, with a little too much time alone on my hands, I spent a lot of time thinking about this ten-year journey. I started reading Harry Potter in college; J. K. Rowling had already written four books before I read the first one. But I was immediately hooked. I reread the first book this last weekend, and I was reminded of all the things that made me love the books in the first place.

First there was this lonely, orphaned little boy, who escaped his unhappy life with his guardians; he was kind and brave and easy to love. There was Hagrid and Ron and the Weasley twins. And then I met Hermione, who was rather like a braver version of my eagerly overachieving, rule-abiding, tightly wound self, and as I think we all delight in characters to which we personally relate, so I did in Hermione. It’s nearly impossible to single out characters from this series, though, without instantly thinking of others you should have included, like the strict but fiercely loyal Professor McGonagall, the patient and kind Dumbledore, and Dobby and Kreacher!

But as much as I love Harry and Ron and Hermione, my favorite character of all just might be Severus Snape. Maybe I’m just a sucker for tales of tortured souls and stories of unrequited love, but to me, he’s the unsung, tragic hero, who loved deeply and lost much; whose sacrifices, because not obvious, would never be celebrated as other characters’ were.

Beyond the characters, it was the minutiae of the wizarding world – the many little details and the care taken in their creation; things like butterbeer, the entire village of Hogsmeade, Mrs. Weasley’s charmed dish-scrubber, the tents (and handbags, for that matter) that were bigger on the inside, Hermione’s Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. All of the thought and feeling behind the action of the story – these are the precise things that you don’t get from the movies and which together conspire to make the true magic of the Harry Potter stories.

So, happy almost-birthday, Harry Potter, and thanks for the many magical late nights when I stayed up reading far later than I should have done.