Tag Archives: reading

Books Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay

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Okay, whoa.

I picked up The Hunger Games because I kept hearing how fantastic it was, both from adults and (second-hand) from my spouse’s grade six students. And while I don’t normally go for young adult fiction anymore (and mostly didn’t even as a young adult) I found by about page five that I couldn’t put this book down.

So then I figured, well, if you’re going to read a book so compulsively, you’d better figure out what it is that’s making you do it.

It came as no surprise to me to read that Suzanne Collins wrote for television before she became a novelist. The Hunger Games is perfectly plotted – it follows the three-act format so often touted in how-tos for screenwriting (and now for novel-writing, too). There’s nothing extraneous here. We meet Katniss Everdeen and her family on the day of the reaping, we’re introduced to Gale Hawthorne and see how he and Katniss defy the laws of the Capitol – by hunting – to save their families. And then boom, we’re faced with Katniss’ first big choice, when she steps up to take her sister’s place in the Games.

After that, all bets are off. You just have to let the plot take you where it will, and where it takes you is a pretty wild ride (from YA standards, certainly).

Of course, once I finished the first book I had to run out and buy books two and three. I found them both at the supermarket, beside an empty space for the first instalment. I snapped them up and have promised to donate them to Wildwood Elementary’s grade six class, for whom apparently two copies of everything is not enough.

I devoured the second book just as quickly as the first. Same reason – great plotting, plenty of tense moments. Bloodshed. Good doses of Peeta and Haymitch, some nice tension with Gale. I finished the last page of Catching Fire definitely wanting to dig into Mockingjay and find out what had happened to Twelve.

And then – well. Mockingjay lost me a bit. I took a longer time finishing it. I can’t explain why, exactly. I desperately wanted to find out how the revolution unfolded, but where I’d shed tears (yes, I did) over Rue in the first novel, some significant characters were done away with rather perfunctorily (I am not going to say who, in case you haven’t read it). They were nicely crafted and then discarded in an instant. I know not everyone can have a lovely death scene with flowers and singing – nor should they, because this is war – but I sometimes felt cheated. Plus, I’m on Team Peeta, and he wasn’t quite the same (I mean, obviously) in this instalment.

That said, if I look at the entire trilogy, the story arc makes complete sense. The Hunger Games had that nice build-up of excitement, then what felt like a reasonable resolution before Catching Fire got you all worked up again and left you panting for the third book. So after those two, Mockingjay is a resolution of sorts. And while there are loose ends left hanging, none of them were game-changers for me. I still came away from the trilogy with a strong appreciation for Collins’s sense of story.

And I still have no trouble understanding why the eleven-year-olds fight over the copies in their class library.

The Great Do-Over

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I’ve spent this summer working on draft two of my novel, which, I’ll be honest, I was completely dreading. After all, who likes rewrites?

I knew it had a few problems, mainly plot-related. I tried everything possible during the first draft to outline the plot the way the experts tell you – I used note cards, I tried to write the whole thing out in a Word document, I read book after book about writing blockbuster novels and mastering the three-act story structure. And you know what?

I still have to rewrite it.

You always have to rewrite it, to some degree.

Now that I’m back in the thick of it I’m discovering places where the story works, but I can go deeper with the actual prose. And I’m finding it enjoyable, this layering of the story. It’s what I imagine plastering a room must feel like – adding to the base in nice, thin layers so you have an even coat, a perfect mix of imagery, characterization and story. I know the characters so much more intimately now – they took me in directions during the first draft that I never expected, and they continue to refine their own stories as I revise.

Every now and then I’ll admit to a small freak-out when I realize I’m on page 250 of a 500-page Word document, but I’ve set a deadline for myself (October 10) and I’ll make it through. I suspect the revisions on the back half won’t be as intense as the front, but you never know.

And when I’m done, of course, it’s probably on to round three.

Finding Time

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Lately I’ve been thinking about time a lot. Not its passing so much (though that’s bothersome) but how to cram everything in. I catch myself saying, “if I just took an hour a day to do x,” and then I realize I have 26 “hour a day” things and only 24 hours in which to do them.

Obviously, there are choices (and sacrifices) to be made.

This article by Anne Lamott is a great prompt for writers who “never have the time” to follow their passion.

How to Find Time

Book Twelve: Saint Maybe

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Book 12 was really supposed to be Vanity Fair, but I stopped reading partway through to dive into Anne Tyler’s Saint Maybe, which I picked up at the Calgary Reads book sale last week. I often have more than one book on the go at the same time. I like to mix it up a little, especially when I’m reading classics.

I had only read one of Tyler’s novels before – Ladder of Years, which I picked up whenever it was a nearly-new novel. I couldn’t get into it for some reason, and after that tended to avoid her books. Which is why I was so surprised when a friend in my critique group said my writing reminded me of Tyler’s. After reading Saint Maybe I consider that a massive compliment. She is, as one reviewer put it, “drawn to small-scale domestic dramas.” This can be taken as either praise or criticism of her work, I suppose, but there’s something about her writing – the plain-spoken rhythm of it, the well-drawn characters – that transforms the everyday into something much more significant. I realize some people want big adventure and splashy escapism when they open a novel. I do, too, sometimes. But I’m often struck by how well some writers can tell stories rooted in the everyday. Anne Tyler is one of those writers.

The novel begins when Danny Bedloe brings his wife-to-be home to meet his family. He introduces her as “the woman who changed his life,” but Lucy quickly comes to change all their lives, especially that of Danny’s younger brother, Ian. Through a series of twists and tragedies Ian becomes the guardian of his nieces and nephew, the older two of whom were Lucy’s from a mysterious, previous  marriage. The story focuses on Ian’s quest for forgiveness, which leads him to drop out of college and attend The Church of the Second Chance, whose followers dedicate their lives to absolving their sins in practical, meaningful ways (like raising their brother’s three children, for example).

There is a scene later in the book where Ian visits the reverend of the church, and he brings along onion dip and potato chips. The reverend has always wanted to know how to make onion dip but has never learned, and so Ian teaches him (yes, soup plus sour cream) and they eat the potato chips and talk about the future of the church. I found this scene fascinating – Tyler weaves together the mundane and the significant so deftly the scene is wonderfully revealing. What does not knowing how to make his mother’s onion dip, which is really just onion soup mix and sour cream, say about a person? His relationship with his mother? His relationship with the person who shows him the recipe?

I read so often about how to craft scenes that do more than one thing, and it’s brilliant to see it laid out on a page. It has given me something to aspire to, that’s for certain.

Book Ten: The Hatbox Letters

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Again, not really book ten, but whatever. I’ve blogged 1/10 of my experiment!

Another Canadian pick – The Hatbox Letters, by Beth Powning. This was a bit of an odd one for me, for various reasons. It’s a slow starter, and because I’ve been sitting around all medicated with a broken ankle, it may have taken me a bit longer to get into the right frame of mind. Once I did, I couldn’t stop reading.

Powning is a wonderfully descriptive writer. The main character, Kate, is in the process of grieving the death of her husband, Tom. She rambles about their empty house, thinking about what life was like when he was alive. Then someone gives her a bunch of hatboxes from her grandmother’s attic, and she starts to go through them.

This is where I was really drawn into the story. Kate dives into her family history, starting with the death certificate of her grandfather’s sister, who passed away suddenly at the age of eight. She sifts through bills and other artefacts that were tucked away in the attic for a century, forgotten by their original recipient. At the point the story-within-a-story begins, and we start to learn more about the family from 100 years ago. I’m not altogether sure if these vignettes are meant to be Kate’s imagination, running wild as she reads the letters and uncovers long-held secrets about her grandparents, or if we really are travelling back in time with the narrator, but it doesn’t matter, because the story is compelling and beautifully told. Back in the present, we follow Kate through the first year without Tom (what Joan Didion calls the year of magical thinking), as she comes to grips with his death and reconnects with someone from her past who’s also in the throes of grief.

It all sounds very depressing, but really, it isn’t. Kate’s story is told with some beautiful imagery – of winter storms, a big rambling house, the garden she and Tom worked on together (also a symbol of her grief and recovery). In the end you know she’s going to come out the other side. The story of her grandparents is one of resiliency, and Kate’s story is, too.