Tag Archives: highly recommended

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

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There’s been a lot of excitement in the house over Suzanne Collins’ book, The Hunger Games.  Both of my kids have read it and have been harassing me to read it, which I finally did. I have to say – I loved it as much as they did. So we thought we’d talk about the book a little.

Mallory: This book takes place in post-apocalyptic North America. The people of North America had attempted a rebellion against the government, but weren’t successful. So, the government split them into 13 Districts, and each year as a punishment,  every child ages 12-18 in every District has their name put into the Hunger Games. They draw two names from each District and those people must compete against kids from other Districts in an arena. It’s a fight to the death; last one standing wins. Basically, the main character, Katniss Everdeen from poor District 12 takes her sister’s place to go into the Games.

Christie: That’s a great summary, Mallory. It’s a terrific premise for a book, not altogether dissimilar from the 1987 film The Running Man.  Of course the stakes are a little higher in the book especially since the players are just kids.

Mallory: Katniss is 16 when she went to into the Hunger Games, so she was one of the older kids competing. Imagine how hard it would be if you were just 12, trying to kill 17 and 18 year olds. Katniss is such a great character, and Collins did an incredible job building her up. Every moment of the book I was so scared because I loved Katniss and didn’t want her to get hurt.

Christie: I agree, Mallory. I loved Katniss from the very start of the novel. She’s resourceful, mature, and brave. When we first meet her, she demonstrates her willingness to break the rules to provide for her family. She’s a good hunter, she wastes nothing, and you get the sense that she could handle herself in just about any situation. But she’s not the only admirable character in the novel. Who else did you like, Mallory?

Mallory: Well, I must say that I love Gale, Katniss’ best friend, and Prim, her sister (who were introduced at the very beginning of the novel). But as the novel progresses, we meet many more amazing characters, some that we love, and others that we hate. Like, Rue, a contestant in the Games who I adored. What about you?

Christie: I’m with you, Mal. All the characters were really well drawn – even characters you don’t get to know very much about, like Cinna and Thresh. As you get to know some of the other Tributes (contestants), it’s impossible not to get attached and what’s remarkable is that Katniss feels admiration for some of these people too, even though she knows she might have to kill them to stay alive. The Games themselves were very exciting, didn’t you think?

Mallory: Well yeah! They were amazing! What an incredible concept for a book. I wish I had thought of it first, because it’s just so clever. Everything about the Games seems so real, so legitimate. She doesn’t make them seem like a board game, or something you play. Collins really gets it across to you that the Hunger Games are about fear, and death, and despair. The Games are so scary, that you just feel really sad for the Tributes, even if they are merely characters that came out of Collins’ mind.

Christie: Beyond the suspenseful plot and characters, Collins has created an interesting and scary future-world and, for me, the writing was crisp and readable – a nice change from a lot of the Young Adult fiction out there. How does this book compare to other books you’re reading, Mallory?

Mallory: Honestly, The Hunger Games isn’t really comparable to the books I’ve been reading because it’s just so different, and that’s what I love about it. Most YA Fiction out there at the moment is either about vampires or rich girls with dirty secrets. Sure, I like Twilight, and books like Pretty Little Liars, but The Hunger Games sets itself apart from all the generic and boring books.

Christie: A lot of kids I teach are reading it (or have read it) and I’d say 99% of them have loved it. And for my money – this book is heads and tails better than the Twilight series.

Mallory: My school is having the same Hunger Games craze too! Most of my friends (I’d say 85%) hate to read, and will only force themselves to open a book if it’s absolutely necessary. But surprisingly, a ton of them have read The Hunger Games (girls and boys) and they loved it! The book has been passed around the entire grade 8 French immersion population, and instead of gossiping at lunch time, we all discuss our favourite parts. It’s a nice change.

Christie: Well, I guess that makes it unanimous, then. The Hunger Games: loved by boys, girls and moms!

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

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Edith Wharton’s novel, The House of Mirth, seems every bit as relevant now, some 105 years after it was first published. The novel follows the fortunes (and misfortunes) of Miss Lily Bart, a stunningly beautiful woman about town. The town in question: New York City.  Despite her attractiveness, Lily is without a husband and without a fortune. In order to maintain her lifestyle – which up until now has depended on the kindness of her rich friends – Lily must marry…soon and to her financial advantage.

Wharton’s novel trails after Lily and her consorts, following them to the Hamptons and Monte Carlo, in and out of fabulous homes where words are carefully chosen and one small misstep can cost someone their standing in society. This is a novel about class and entitlement. Lily has nothing but her beauty and although it is clear from the beginning that she is in love with someone else, and he her, marrying is out of the question.

Lily is a wonderful creation and Wharton’s novel is filled with the minutia of the time. My copy even had footnotes to help me navigate some of the more unfamiliar terms of the day. For that reason, the novel certainly isn’t a quick read. The prose is dense and often seems artificial; surely people didn’t speak this way?

As a heroine, Lily might be hard to sympathize with. Modern women might find her quest to marry for money reprehensible. She uses her looks to her advantage, spends money she doesn’t have and seems impossible naive for someone who is pushing 30. But then, really, I know lots of women who play the very same games nowadays, always looking for an advantage and willing to climb the ladder (social or otherwise) by any means necessary.

I thoroughly enjoyed Wharton’s novel and am glad it was chosen as one of our ‘classic’ reads for this year’s book club.

My copy of the novel is one of Penguin’s Product Reds, an imprint where 50% of the profits from sales go towards  the Global Fund to help eliminate Aids in Africa. About bloody time, don’t you think?

After Life by Rhian Ellis

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After Life was a delight to read from beginning to end. The novel opens with the compelling line: “First I had to get his body into the boat.”   The narrator is Naomi Ash, a woman in her early 30s who lives in Train Line, a whole town owned by The Church of Spiritualist Studies in Upstate New York.

My first impression of the town was of clutter. Cars were parked nearly on the front steps, cats jumped from porch roofs and windowsills, hanging plants and wind chimes and mobiles dangled by every door. Winnie Sandox – said one painted wooden sign – Reader. And another: Mrs. Lawrence, Medium, is out. I couldn’t believe it: a town made just for us.

It really is a town for Naomi and her mother, Madame Galina, who is a medium.

After Ellis is Naomi’s story. It’s the story of her relationship with her mother, the story of her relationship with the quirky little town and its odd assortment of characters and her relationship with Peter.

It is also about Naomi’s relationship with the dead. Although she grew up helping her mother augment her readings with sounds and voices, Naomi doesn’t really believe in any of it or as she says: “I sort of believed. I pretended to. I enjoyed the attention I got when I worked message services and sat for seances , and sometimes I felt the thrill of connection, but part of me held back.”

When Naomi hears her first voice, everything changes.

After Life is a wonderful novel. Naomi is a terrific character: flawed and odd and vulnerable. The novel’s mystery – who is this ‘body’ she has to get in the boat and why – propels the story along at a thriller-like clip, but ultimately After Life is really about a woman trying to make her way in the world, which just happens to include a few ghosts.

Loved it.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

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I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember. At first I typed my stories on a little portable Brothers typewriter. I remember that it was blue and that you had to really hit the keys hard. When I graduated from high school, my parents gave me an electric typewriter that weighed at least 50 pounds. At the time it was state-of-the-art, honest.

I have always wanted to be a writer, a published writer and I guess I am. I’ve written and had things published and even been paid for what I’ve written.

Of course the writer’s carrot is the novel and I’ve been slogging away at one – never with the dedication and determination to actually finish it, of course, just enough to say that I’m writing one – for over a decade.

Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird speaks to writers who care more about the craft and less about the imagined glory. This is not a how-to book. It’s not a book filled with prompts and practical advice about how to write pithy dialogue or set the scene. Still, it’s a wonderful book.

The very first thing I tell me new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth.

Bird by Bird offers  “some instructions on writing and life.” It’s Lamott’s love letter to the written word – and she clearly does love them – the words, I mean.  It  is laugh – out – loud funny and tender, too.  Lamott navigates the writer’s world with a great deal of affection and a healthy dose of tough love. She’s honest about her jealousy when faced with the success of writers she believes to be less talented than she is;  she discusses the pitfalls of the blank page;  she talks about how to negotiate with your characters. But mostly she talks about why we write (and why we read). She says:

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul.

Writing, says Lamott, is important work. Writers should write, not for the notoriety which they assume comes with publication (and Lamott tells some funny stories about the so-called status of the published author) but because they have to. They want to. They must.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

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I still remember the feeling I had the first time I read The Diary of Anne Frank. I was probably about 11 or 12. No teacher could have explained the horrors of Nazi Germany to me as well as Anne did. She was speaking to me. Many years later, I visited her attic annex and it was a profound experience.

Reading The Book Thief was also a profound experience for me.

I don’t even know how to begin to talk about The Book Thief. The New York Times said it was “the kind of book that can be life changing.” I mean, you start a book like that with a little trepidation: can it really live up to all the hype? For the first 30 pages or so I thought, “no.” Last night, as I closed the book and wiped the tears away I thought, “every person alive should read this book. I want to teach this book.”

The Book Thief has so many things going for it, I’m not sure where to start singing its praises.

The Book Thief is the story of Liesel Meminger.  Liesel is almost ten when she ends up in Molching with Hans and Rosa Hubermann, her new foster parents. It is 1939. In Nazi Germany.

Readers are either going to be totally enchanted or annoyed by the story’s central conceit: the novel is narrated by Death. “Here is a small fact, ” Death tells us. “You are going to die.” For the next 500-plus pages, Death is our constant companion. Sometimes the action unfolds without commentary, other times he weighs in.  Although I found the first 30 pages or so a bit of a slog, I soon settled into the book’s rhythms.

Then I fell in love with Liesel. And Hans. And Rudy. And Rosa.

Liesel is extraordinary. She and Hans bond late at night, when Liesel’s nightmares wake her, and Hans teaches her to read. Books and words are central to Liesel’s story. So is her friendship with Rudy, the boy next door. Through their eyes we see Hitler and Nazi Germany; we experience the atrocities and the small kindnesses. Zusak’s story is mostly about everyday things: hunger, pettiness, laughter, hope, cruelty and kindness.

Liesel is sustained by the books she steals and anyone who loves words will appreciate and understand their ability to comfort Liesel. But she is also intelligent enough to understand how words can be used to hurt and coerce.

Where is Death in all this? He carts the souls of the dead off and is, in this story at least, a loving and benign figure.

Death gets the last word. He always does.

Instruments of Night by Thomas H. Cook

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There’s a really great interview with mystery writer, Thomas H. Cook, in the September ’09 issue of January Magazine. In the article Ali Karim asks the very question that puzzles me every time I finish one of Cook’s novels. Why is this man not enormously famous? I mean, perhaps he is famous in mystery circles – but even if you’re not a fan of the genre, I think you should still give Cook a go.

I picked up Instruments of Night on Friday night and read about 30 pages. It was late when I started and so eventually my eyes gave out. On Saturday I picked it up again and didn’t put it down until I finished – with a gasp, I must add – the book.  I stumbled on Cook totally by accident three or four years back. I picked up, at a second hand bookstore, his novel Breakheart Hill and read these lines: “This is the darkest story I ever heard and all my life I have labored not to tell it.” Hooked. 

Instruments of Night is the fifth novel I’ve read by Cook. It’s the story of writer Paul Graves, a man who has spent his career writing about the horrible dance between serial killer and sadist Kessler (and his accomplice, Sykes) and the man who has spent his career chasing him, Detective Slovak. Instruments of Night operates on more than one level, though. Graves has almost completed the 14th installment of his series when he is invited to upstate New York to meet with Allison Davies, mistress of an estate known as Riverwood. Fifty years ago, Allison’s best friend, Faye, was murdered on the grounds and now Allison wants Paul to “imagine what happened to Faye. And why.”

But that’s not all. Paul Graves is a tortured man. His own past is filled with ghosts, horrible ghosts. He is a beautifully nuanced character and I particularly admired the glimpse we got into his head as a writer. Perhaps Cook was revealing a little bit about himself there, I don’t know, but Paul’s imagination allowed him to write scenes, and adjust them as needed, on the fly. Using this technique, he attempts to solve the question of who killed Faye.

The way Cook juggled the three threads of this story: the mystery of Faye’s death, the stand-off between Kessler and Slovak and the past that is creeping up on Paul is nothing short of amazing. But Cook is an accomplished writer. And this is literature. Truly. Page-turning, white-knuckling, horrifying literature. In every book I’ve read by him, I’ve been amazed at how complex his characters are and Paul is no exception.

If you haven’t read Cook yet, I beg you to give him a go. He’s fabulous!

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

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How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff  has been on my tbr shelf for a few months. Coincidentally, a friend gave a copy of the book to my 12-year-old daughter, Mallory, for Christmas. We decided it would be cool to read the book at the same time and then share our thoughts about the novel here. This is actually something I’d like to do on a semi-regular basis because there are a lot of YA novels I’d like to read and Mallory is a voracious reader. In any case, we’ll start with this book and see how we make out.

I’ll start by letting Mallory tell you a little bit about herself:

Hi, everyone! I’m a grade seven student in French immersion. Besides reading, I enjoy drawing, dancing, (I study ballet and modern dance ten hours a week), and hanging out with my friends. I do love to read. Some of my favourite books are: Airborn, Skybreaker, A Little Princess, The Twilight Saga, Little Women, and The Little House on the Prairie books.

Christie: Thanks, Mal. So, I’m going to let Mallory tell everyone what How I Live Now is about.

Mallory:  Basically,  How I Live Now is about a teenage girl named Daisy who goes to England to live with her cousins after her father remarries. Once she’s there, two life-changing things happen: she falls in love with her cousin, Edmond, and war breaks out.

Christie: That’s it in a nutshell, Mallory. But this is a pretty remarkable book; it’s certainly not like anything that I’ve ever read before. What did you like about it?

Mallory: You know how when you read you can hear the author’s voice? Well, this book had the strongest voice of any I’ve ever read. Meg Rosoff created an incredible character, and when Daisy spoke she could make you believe anything.

Christie: I think Mal’s touched on the main reason this book is so wonderful. Daisy is a breathless, intelligent, self-deprecating, emotional fifteen-year-old girl whose personal world has been turned upside down….and then she has a catastrophic war to contend with.

When she arrives at the airport and meets her cousin, Edmond, she tells the reader “Now let me tell you what he looks like before I forget because it’s not exactly what you’d expect from your average fourteen-year-old what with the CIGARETTE and hair that looked like he cut it himself with a hatchet in the dead of night, but aside from that he’s exactly like some kind of mutt, you know the ones you see at the dog shelter who are kind of hopeful and sweet and put their nose straight into your hand when they meet you with a certain kind of dignity and you know from that second that you’re going to take him home? Well that’s him.” (3)

The whole story spins out of Daisy’s amazing brain and everything that happens to her is skewed by her needy intelligence.

Mallory: Her relationship with Edmond was really interesting to me. At first, I thought it was sort of freaky because I couldn’t imagine falling in love with my cousin. But after the war starts, and things get more complicated, I began to believe, like Daisy did, that they were meant to be together– related or not.

Christie: The war certainly made the story interesting. What did you think of the way we didn’t really know too much about who was fighting whom?

Mallory: When I was reading any bits where the war is described, my mind was never thinking of who was fighting or what they were fighting for. Mostly the whole time I was on edge with fear for Edmond and Daisy and whether they would make it through.

Christie: I was worried for them too, but I thought it was really interesting to see this war through Daisy’s eyes. Even though she didn’t really understand the hows and whys, she was able to articulate how people were affected by the fighting and the deaths she witnessed were horrific.

Mallory: I agree. Daisy seemed to be in the know and completely out of it at the exact same time — but it didn’t seem to matter. I was just wondering, what were your thoughts on Isaac and Osbert, who didn’t seem to play a big role in this story. And about Piper, who did.

Christie: We should tell people that Isaac is Edmond’s twin, Osbert is his sixteen-year-old brother and Piper, his nine-year-old sister. Their mother, Daisy’s Aunt Penn, goes off to Oslo very early in the book, leaving the children on their own. I think that’s one of the interesting aspects of this book — how these kids have to fend for themselves when the war is relatively distant and how all that changes when it suddenly shows up in their back yard. You’re right, though; Isaac and Osbert don’t really have a large part to play although Isaac does have an impact at the novel’s conclusion. Piper, on the other hand, is extremely important and I think gives Daisy a reason to go on. She’s a great character.

Who should read this book, Mal?

Mallory: Well, this book is suggested for 12 and up- but it’s a pretty intense read. It might not appeal to everybody, but if you’re a strong reader, and aren’t easily upset or offended, I recommend this book. Before I read How I Live Now, The Twilight Saga were my favourite books. I stayed faithful to them for a long time, and was almost positive that I’d never find a book (or series) that was better. How I Live Now was a pleasant surprise. It ended up overtaking Twilight by a longshot– and it’s now the reigning champ.

Christie: That warms my heart Mal because, as you know, not a fan of the sparkly vampires! Now we have to decide what we’re going to read next. Stay tuned!

The Bright Forever by Lee Martin

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Lee Martin’s novel The Bright Forever has restored my faith in fiction. After a long drought, The Bright Forever accomplished what all good novels should: it held me spellbound. It is beautifully written, has a cast of damaged and damned characters and is almost impossible to put down.

Nine-year-old Katie Mackey goes missing one hot July night in small-town Indiana. She’s the youngest child of Patsy and Junior Mackey. Junior is a man about town; he owns the glass factory. Katie and her older brother, Gilley, are not spoiled rich kids, though – they are smart and kind.

The Bright Forever is told from the viewpoints of Gilley, Mr. Dees (the bachelor math teacher who is helping Katie improve her math skills that hot summer) and Raymond and Clare, a couple of misfits who live on the other side of town, close to Mr. Dees. Occasionally, the story drops into 3rd person omniscient, allowing us to see how the town is reacting to Katie’s disappearance. These transitions are handled effortlessly and the various voices are distinct and original. Each perspective adds to the story’s central mystery – what happened to Katie – but also allows us to see how fragile and broken these people are.

It’s clearly early on that Mr. Dees and Ray are the prime suspects in this case, but what the reader isn’t suspecting is their complicated complicity and the way their story unfolds. Suffice to say – there is more than one victim in this story.

The Bright Forever is remarkable – it moves at a suspenseful clip and yet, ultimately, it’s a tragedy.  A worthy read, indeed.

Testimony by Anita Shreve

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Testimony

Explosive… Shreve flawlessly weaves a tale that is mesmerizing, hypnotic and compulsive. No one walks away unscathed, and that includes the reader. Highly recommended. – Betty-Lee Fox, Library Journal

Pretty much everyone has raved about Shreve’s latest novel, Testimony. I’ve been a Shreve fan since Eden Close, so I was looking forward to reading this book. The novel opens when Mike Bordwin, headmaster of Avery Academy, a private New England boarding school, views a tape depicting three of the school’s top basketball players having sex with  a female student who is clearly underage. While the story opens with Mike’s point of view, the novel flips back and forth allowing us to see how this event and its aftermath affects everyone concerned: the so-called victim, the three boys, their families and even members of the press called upon to report the event once the story is leaked from the school’s hallowed halls.

Shreve is  a talented writer and she manages to make individual characters come alive in this novel by employing third, first and even second person points of view. When the young girl speaks, she seems every bit like a fourteen year old, both naive and culpable. One  boy’s mother speaks in the 2nd person – perhaps to distance herself from the news that her son has done something reprehensible, inexplicable.

It may seem odd that the story’s inciting action is revealed in the novel’s opening pages, but as it turns out, the story unravels to reveal another event which contributes to at least one of the boy’s bad decisions. Silas’s story is heartbreaking and, for me at least, he  carried much of the story’s emotional weight on his shoulders.

We had an excellent discussion about this novel at Indigo’s book club. The ripple effect this event sends through the school and community- upsetting lives and relationships- was immensely powerful. In less confident hands, the novel might have slipped into tabloid sensationalism. Not for Shreve; she’s far too good a writer and Testimony is far too good a book.

The Kindness of Strangers by Katrina Kittle

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Man, this was a hard book to read and, strangely enough, a hard book to put down. Katrina Kittle’s novel tells the story of widowed, Sarah, and her two sons, Danny, 10, and Nate, 16. Like many other novels these days, Kittle employs alternating viewpoints, allowing the story to be told (mainly) from Sarah and Nate’s points of view. And Jordan’s.

In fact, this is Jordan’s story. He’s a classmate of Danny’s. One day Sarah sees him walking along the road in the pouring rain and she stops to pick him up. He seems ill, more than ill and when he asks to stop at a service station port-a-potty to be sick, she does. Her mother senses are jangling like crazy and when she goes to check on him, she discovers that he’s collapsed with a hypodermic needle jabbed in his neck.

Jordan’s mother, Courtney, is Sarah’s best friend, but Jordan’s desperate act opens a dark door into his life and this story asks Sarah and the reader to step through it. The Kindness of Strangers is about the worst kind of abuse and it doesn’t shy away from the topic.  Sarah and her sons are barely recovered from the death of their husband and father when they are called upon to help Jordan. In some ways the social network depicted in this novel seems like a best-case scenario; Jordan has some caring adults in his corner, but to live in today’s world is to know that that is often just fiction.

Kittle does a terrific job of getting us into Sarah’s headspace: her horror over what her best friend has been accused of, her horror over what Jordan has suffered, her struggle to balance her own issues with the day to day business of running a house and business and looking after two sons.  She was equally adept at letting us see what motivates Nate, a character who is both flippant and incredibly mature. Finally, Jordan’s voice is heartbreaking; the mother in me nearly wept every time he spoke.

The main story of The Kindness of Strangers is bracketed with chapters from Danny.  I think I understand why his is the first and last voices we hear, but I don’t think losing those two chapters would have harmed the book in anyway.

Not everyone will be able to stomach this novel’s subject matter, but if you think you can, it’s a fantastic book about a very serious topic.