7 thoughts on “Sick Days and Books”

  1. I don’t recall you blogging about The Hunger Games, but maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. Have you read them? What’s your take on them?
    I’ve read a lot of of dystopian fiction because I TAed and taught on my own dystopian fiction classes in grad school, so I’m curious, though it’s not my favorite genre. I ask because I have friends who hated reading the trilogy, because of the killing of children, etc. Anjali (she comments here too) said she felt like she wanted to go back in time and not have read. Any thoughts?

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  2. Lillian, Laura blogged about them quite a bit. Google up the title plus site:apt11d.com to see the list.
    I’m only a few chapters into the first, and I’m pretty meh about it, because (1) I’m clearly not the target audience, and it hasn’t overcome that limitation so far; (2) I can really see the gears of the novel’s machinery turning, which is hurting my suspension of disbelief; (3) the world-building makes no internal sense (for an early example: the train ride that takes Katniss from District 12 to Capitol is said to travel at 250mph which gets you from Appalachia to the Rockies in 8-10 hours, yet much more time elapses; also, too, the infrastructure and maintenance needed for 250mph trains are not compatible with starvation-level existence or the very low population levels stipulated in the background available so far); and (4) impending killing of teens. It feels like Collins said, ok, I want to write about the horror of a tournament to the death of teenagers, and then retconned everything else to get there.

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  3. Honestly, I absolutely loved the Hunger Games. I hate to admit it, but I just reread the triology for the fourth time. (I’m a fast reader.)
    I’m picked it up again, because I writing something about why YA dystopian fiction is so big right now. In the past week, I also read Divergent, Insurgence, and the Maze Runner.

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  4. the train ride that takes Katniss from District 12 to Capitol is said to travel at 250mph which gets you from Appalachia to the Rockies in 8-10 hours, yet much more time elapses;
    Even in a future so harsh that children fight to the death for food, nobody going that way misses the chance to stop and see Moline, IL.

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  5. I loved the Hunger Games, too, plus I taught the first book in a college course a few years ago. Hey, it was a 7 am class, and I felt like experimenting–and keeping the students awake. I taught it alongside The Lottery, Battle Royal (by Ellison, from Invisible Man), and Persepolis. But I also taught it alongside some stuff about romantic stories (I showed Strictly Ballroom and we read some love poetry and a story by Atwood called Happy Endings). What’s fascinating to me about HG is not that it’s dystopian but that Katniss realizes she needs to play out a love story in the midst of all of this. Kids are being killed… but sheesh, we have to see if Peeta and Katniss kiss in the middle of the tournament while he’s dying of a serious leg wound.

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  6. Thank you so much, Doug! I think now I know why I simply “tuned out” the Hunger Games posts — I didn’t want to read any spoilers. In any case, I think my brain is slowly disintegrating (and it’s normal, unfortunately)… I need to sleep more.
    I think I should just go ahead and read them, since I actually enjoy children’s literature (not SO much young adult stuff, at least not the more contemporary stuff anyway). Thanks for letting me know you liked them & just re-read them, Laura. Thanks for sharing those other books you read, I should check them out. I hope the piece you are/were writing is featured so we can read it.

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