BR #15: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

(This post is part of an ongoing project. See more here.) 


Kiera Cass once compared food to books. She said some books are like a well-rounded meal, meant to sustain you and provide you with information and wisdom for life. Some books are like a dessert at a high class restaurant, the kind that comes with a leaf on the side of the plate and a drizzle of sauce. Kiera said her books were like comfort food.


To continue this metaphor, I'd have to say that the Hunger Games is like a Warhead. Or a Fireball. One of those candies that you put in your mouth and instantly regret because the pain is too much to bear, but you can't spit it out because you know it will get better. Except with the Hunger Games, it never gets better. It only ends.


It takes a masochist to read these books.

BR #14: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

(This post is part of an ongoing project. See more here.) 


There wasn't much about Catching Fire that was new to me this time around. Not saying that the book isn't spectacular and haunting and wonderfully written, just that I caught all that the first few times I read it.


The most terrible part in the whole series, for me, is in this book, when Peeta and Katniss attend a party in the Capitol and find out that the people there carry out an old Roman (or Greek? I'm dumb. Can't remember.) custom of throwing up during a feast to make room for more food. It's just a shock to their system because their families have always been hungry, and here these people have so much food, they don't even let it digest. Suzanne Collins wrote this moment so perfectly that I feel the disgust in my bones every time I read it.

The Future

It's a strange feeling for me, to be excited about the future. I've spent so much time dreading it, hating it, fearing it, because it used to be one big question mark to me. I have a plan now, though, and that changes everything. When I think about where I'll be in a couple years, I start bouncing in giddiness. I can't control myself. And nowhere in that plan does it say I have to have a great body or always have a boyfriend or gain my family's approval. My life doesn't hinge on those things anymore. I feel so free.

Longing

It never really goes away. You'll hear a song and suddenly the pain blooms in your chest just like the first time. The years that pass will help you heal, but they'll also illuminate your sorrow in new and different ways. You'll wonder what this event or that conversation would have been like, had things turned out differently. Would you have taken that job? Gone to that festival? Would you be having better experiences, or would you wish for the life you have now? You'll ask yourself these questions, knowing that there aren't answers. You'll mention how you feel to your friends, quietly in a whisper of doubt and self-loathing, and they'll stare back at you, not sure what to say. They can't understand, and you know that, so you try to keep those words bottled up. They tend to come out, though, in solitary moments, so you let your defenses down, open up your blog, hit compose, and start typing.

She wiped me off the face of her existence.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson is one of my favorite books. I'll write more about it when I do my BR post, but I just had to share this passage from it:

The last time she called me was six months ago, after I got out of the hospital for the second time. I'd been calling her four or five times a day, but she wouldn't pick up or call me back, until finally, she did.


She asked me to listen and told me this wouldn't take long.


I was the root of all evil, she said. A negative influence, a toxic shadow... She needed to move on with her life, redefine her boundaries, she said. I was the reason she cut classes and failed French, the cause of everything nasty and dangerous.


Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.


I was the reason she didn't run away freshman year. I was the reason she didn't eat a bottle of sleeping pills when her boyfriend cheated on her. I listened for hours when her parents yelled and tried to stuff her into a mannequin shell that didn't fit. I understood what triggered her earthquakes, most of them. I knew how much it hurt to be the daughter of people who can't see you, not even if you are standing in front of them stomping your feet.


But remembering all that was too complicated for Cassie. It was easier for her to dump me one last time. She turned my summer into a desert wasteland. When school started, she looked right through me in the halls, her new friends draped around her neck like Mardi Gras necklaces. She wiped me off the face of her existence.


My eyes start to water every time I read this. I feel like I am both Cassie and Lia, the betrayer and the betrayed.

10 Year Plan Revised

A revision of the original: http://reject-apathy.blogspot.com/2012/03/10-year-plan-kinda.html

I actually have a job now so this plan is feasible for the first time.

1. Get my Associates degree. Take classes slowly so I don't get overwhelmed. Make sure to take as many photography classes as possible. In my free time, practice photography and improve. Try to do something about my health.

2. Teach English in Taiwan. Live as frugally as possible so I can save as much of my income as I can.

3. Return to the US to earn my Bachelor's degree. I should have enough saved from Taiwan to be able to do this at a good college if I want to. Now would also be the time to go on that road trip I've had planned forever.

4. With a Bachelor's degree and two years of experience teaching English, I can choose any country I want to teach in. I can spend my life travelling around the world. If I save well, I can even do a 'two years teaching, two years relaxing and living off my savings' kind of thing. I'll be able to take beautiful pictures in many different countries using a skill I've earned through hard work and dedication.

BR #13: Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

(This post is part of an ongoing project. See more here.)

The way I feel about the Hunger Games series can't be compared to how I feel about Twilight, but it's pretty close. The movie has only strengthened my passion for these books, and every time I read them I'm struck by the genius of Suzanne Collins. The best part about the first book is that there is not a single event that is expected. Every page holds a new discovery, a new turn of events, a new twist on an old idea. Katniss's reactions are unfamiliar and mesmerizing. The planning that must have been put into this book would probably make me cringe (I hate planning).

The only thing that keeps me from a full-on obsession is the same thing that makes the series so incredible: it's just so darn depressing! I mean, I love tragedy. I love thought-provoking stories and books that teach you a lesson about the world you live in. But the death, the heartbreak, the never ending stream of gruesome, gut-wrenching scenarios... it's just way too much to take. (Probably should have saved this second paragraph for my post on the third book since that's really what I'm referring to here, but who cares?)

If I was a book judge (lol don't ask, I have no clue) here's how I would score Hunger Games:

Characterization: 10 out of 10
Pacing: 10 out of 10
Plot: 10 out of 10
Setting: 10 out of 10
Emotional Agony: 18,000,000,000,000 out of 10