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Book 6 in Cannonball Read 2

The Hunger Games has everything I want in a book: it’s entertaining; it has a complex, not always likeable but always interesting main character; and it raises some Serious Issues without being overly portentous or heavy-handed. It’s also a page-turner and a quick read, and while it manages to hit all the plot points you might have predicted, it gets there in unexpected ways.

The Hunger Games takes place in a country with a rich, opulent capital, surrounded by 13 districts. Every year, one girl and one boy from each district are selected as tributes to the capital. All the tributes compete in the Hunger Games, which take place in a giant arena. For days, sometimes weeks, they fight each other until only one remains alive. Back in the districts, people are required to watch the games and cheer on their district’s tributes.

Collins’ narrative focuses on Katniss Everdeen, a young girl from one of the poorer districts who ends up in the games. About half of the book covers the time leading up to the games - Katniss hunting and gathering for her mother and sister on the day of selection; the selection itself; the glamourous processionals and interviews that she must participate in before the games begin; and the training she undergoes. Even though Collins takes time getting to the games themselves, the story never lags in this early part of the book; in fact, it is just as riveting as the action described later on.

Collins brings in many issues - the disparity between the wealth in the capital and the poverty in some of the districts; the way that many poorer children are almost forced to put themselves at higher risk of being selected in order to provide food for their families; and the way the games are a constant reminder of the overwhelming power that the capital wields in the lives of the citizens.

Perhaps most interesting is the way Collins portrays the various people who help to plan and implement the games each year. As mentioned above, the capital wields great power, power that is difficult to resist in any meaningful way. Some of the people who work for the games buy into the system wholeheartedly - the idea that the games are an exciting event to be celebrated, and that the districts should be proud of ‘their’ competitors. Others, such as Katniss’ stylist, seem to be just finding a way to do something that they enjoy within the context of the games. There’s also Haymitch, a previous winner of the games who is supposed to be training Katniss, but is mostly just drunk a lot of the time, probably due to the emotional weight of preparing two people each year to go into the arena and die. Collins complicates the picture beyond simply those who resist the capital and those who support the system blindly; in this world, as in our own, there are varying levels of resistance and collaboration, and varying levels of rationalization.

The Hunger Games would be a great read even without the layers of characterization Collins adds; the story is simply engrossing. That, for me, is the true test of a book that includes some kind of commentary or connection to bigger issues: does the story stand on it’s own? If the characters are memorable, and the story is good, then I’ll read it, but I won’t read a book that allegedly has some grand social commentary but fails to tell a story I want to hear. That’s what non-fiction is for.

Book 5 in Cannonball Read 2

I picked up Julie and Julia, Julie Powell’s book about the year she cooked every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogged about it, after watching the movie. I did not find the Julie storyline very interesting, but I was intrigued by the actual food she was making and thought I could hear a bit more detail about the cooking, instead of it being the backdrop for a not that interesting story.

Sadly, the book, just like the movie, contains a lot more about Julie’s personal life than it does about the project she has undertaken. That personal life is not so interesting. Basically, she does all of the following things a lot: 1. drinks, 2. orders bacon pizza, and 3. struggles with her project. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with those things, but it does not make for fascinating reading unless the writer is truly great.  Julie Powell is not a great writer; she’s not bad, but if she had not undertaken a fairly complex and interesting project, no one would take much interest in her writing.

It also suffers from Powell’s own self-image. Did anyone else, when they were watching Adaptation, think there was no way Charlie Kaufman could be so unlikeable as he made himself in that screenplay? There’s a little of that going on here. The Julie Powell in her autobiographical work is fairly insufferable, becoming self-centered and acting as if the whole world revolves around her project. She is repeatedly rude and dismissive towards her husband - and this is only made worse by the fact that she recognizes she is being pretty awful to him but then continues to do it anyway. I have a feeling that this is Powell’s attempt to put on a certain personality, a flawed but lovable and self-deprecating cutie-pie - ‘oh look at me, I got carried away but I’m mocking myself for it later’ - but it just doesn’t work. She comes off as grating, cold, and self-absorbed.

My next move is to go straight to the source and read Julia Child’s cookbook. That’s all I wanted - writing about food, detailed writing about the process of cooking and the way different methods impact the result. Sorry Julie Powell, and Amy Adams, you’re not really worth my time.

Book 4 in Cannonball Read 2

I will just get one thing out of the way before I start: short stories are not my thing. I mean that a. they are not a favorite genre, so even the most well-crafted collection does not inspire the same personal reaction as a novel that has the same level of craft (though I can and do appreciate individual stories at a higher level), and b. I am not good at talking about/writing about short story collections. In fact, I have a suspicion that I am complete shit at it. So, here goes my very uninformed attempt at conveying my thoughts on Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies.

Interpreter of Maladies  is pretty amazing.  Each story creates its own world, and lets you know a great amount about the characters in a small amount of time. You can picture the characters, the settings, and the actions perfectly.  You understand the actions and feelings of the characters.

Lahiri’s stories are mostly about Indian immigrants in the U.S.  Some of the characters moved to the U.S. in their lifetime, some of them are the children of immigrants. Like Lahiri’s novel The Namesake, Interpreter of Maladies explores the meaning of identity, ethnicity and culture in the U.S.  Sometimes these issues are in the foreground, sometimes they are only background; in all of the stories, the subject is difficulty in relationship and communication.

The first and last stories - ‘A Temporary Matter’ and ‘The Third and Final Continent’ - were probably my favorites. ‘A Temporary Matter’ is about a young married couple who have grown apart since the wife miscarried. The bulk of the story takes place during a series of power outages, as each night they confide secrets to each other. The sadness and longing in the story is palpable, and Lahiri uses the concrete details of meals - both the food prepared and the physical setting - to give the story a sense of place, something that happens frequently in the stories that make up Interpreter of Maladies (and in The Namesake as well).  The story is told from the husband’s perspective, and he - at first -  interprets this confessions by candlelight as a sign that their relationship is on the mend; however, after the power outages are over, his wife tells him she is filing for a divorce. Lahiri gracefully shows how the secrets are not the kind that bonds them together, but the kind that reveal how far apart they now stand.

In ‘The Third and Final Continent’, a young Indian man moves into a boarding house in Boston to prepare for his wife’s arrival. The story details the strange house he lives in, with a well-meaning but elderly and increasingly infirm landlord, Ms. Croft. He develops a friendship with her, but moves out when his wife arrives after six weeks. At first, he does not like her very much (they only know each other from the wedding in India). When he takes her to meet Ms. Croft, the events that transpire are the beginning of the two warming to each other and falling in love.

The stories in Interpreter of Maladies are graceful and often melancholy. Lahiri gives a full picture, such that I can look back on each title and remember the main characters, and even specific images or interactions from the story. Maybe good short stories for me are like obscenity for Potter Stewart: I can’t define them, but I know them when I see them.