Bread and Circuses

The first category I decided to check off was the trilogy.  Jessica has been bugging me for over a year to read the Hunger Games.  Each book really deserves its own review but since it's one selection on the book list...

The first book is very strong and it sort of declines from there.  The Hunger Games is fast paced and exciting.  Catching Fire is still exciting but the first half is pretty slow.  Mockingjay is just slow and choppy.  The ending of the whole series was frustrating and Mockingjay is full of book-throwing moments. I was very disappointed. I wasn't expecting a happily-ever-after but I was disappointed that only Katniss recognized the similarities between President Snow and President Coin.  How did all of these people accept their realities until a kid threatened to commit suicide? Why did kids fight each other for 74 years instead of just sitting down and agreeing not to? I mean if they knew they had a 1/24 chance to live, then why not claim their humanity and work together against whatever complications the Capital threw at them?

I have to address the Peeta v. Gale debate.  I've seen the first three movies and I was team Gale all the way but after reading just the first book, I am fully behind Peeta.  Liam Hemsworth has a smoldering chemistry with Jennifer Lawrence on screen but Gale on the page is less smoldering and more stupid teenage boy. (Book) Peeta is upfront with his feelings and is always authentic with Katniss while Gale never talks to Katniss, just kisses her in hopes of catching her attention. Josh Hutcherson has less chemistry with Jennifer Lawrence and I think Hutcherson just has a more innocent/pure look to him that may work because as Haymitch says, he is better than everyone else but it really isn't believable as a potential love interest for Lawrence.  So for the books, I was rooting for Peeta but in the movies, it will be less believable to see Gale just leave Katniss after the revolution is over.

As a history nerd, dystopia futures are fascinating.  I have had the occasional debate over alternative history and how the future would be different. Hunger Games is almost frightening because it isn't far off from our own reality.  The same parts of civilization that make our modern, comfortable lives make a chaotic, children-fighting-to-the-death future possible.  As long as we are fed and entertained, right?

2015 Reading Challenge

Joe, Jess, and I are following this list to read 52 books in 2015. We decided to give ourselves a head start because we are all busy people and if my math is right, 52 books means a book a week. If you want to follow along or see what we have to read, here is the list. So what will you be reading in 2015?

Growth Through Pain

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is the second of three books I chose for myself on our list. I've been meaning to read this book since I met Joe and I believe I purchased it when we were killing some time in a book store before a movie on our first date. I've picked it up and started it a half a dozen times but never finished it. This time around, I couldn't put it down. After really thinking about, I really connected with the title and the main character of Esther. Plath does a beautiful job with the metaphor of a bell jar and doesn't over-do it. To save you the time of google-ing a bell jar, its a piece of lab equipment used to create a vacuum. And I found it to be an amazing metaphor for Esther's depression and anxiety as well as my own experiences with the disorder.

I never made it past the scene where Esther witnesses a live birth. I would attribute my ability to get past that scene entirely to seeing my sister give birth last October. Before that it seemed unreal. If you're going to read this book, you should keep in mind the story takes place in the 1950's so a lot of seemingly strange events take place that were probably fairly common in that time. I'll ignore the fact that this book would be a great study of women during that time because there is so much I could say about the sexism in this book but I don't think I could ever finish this review. Instead, I just want to point out a few things that still baffle me that I'm pretty sure have nothing to do with Esther herself. The first example that comes to mind is at one point Esther describes mixing a raw egg with some raw hamburger in a teacup and eats it. I'm not sure if it's because her neurosis or just a typical thing to do back then...

I think my favorite part of this book is the subtle way everyone in Esther's life brings her down. I didn't notice it until Esther's doctor very late in the book stops allowing people to come visit Esther. When I spent more time thinking about the main people in her life (her mother, Buddy, Joan, and Doreen), in some way they all pull Esther in unhealthy directions. They feed their own problems without much care for Esther and it isn't noticed by her mother until about midway through the book that there is any sort of change in Esther. By this point though, the reader can clearly see Esther is past the point of her mother's help and clearly needs a lot of professional help. Esther spends a great deal of time shielding them from her emotional distress.

Her descent into depression and then her healing process are really beautifully written. It's a really nice smooth transition with obvious milestones and setbacks. If you have no experience with depression, this book gives a great picture into what the mind is capable of.

"How did I know that someday- at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere- the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?"

The Writer and The Writer's Brother

The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh was interesting to say the least. I really enjoyed it but to be honest, it's not for everyone. If you're offended by swearing and torture, don't bother... That being said, I couldn't put this one down. It's probably one of the greatest plays I've ever read. In the end, nothing feels useless. Every part of the plot seems to tie in really nicely with no real moments of "Why is this happening?"

I think what I really liked about this play was the implications that there has to be some sort of tragedy in your life to really give you purpose. I like that Katurian's trauma is knowing his parents beat his brother to give his own writing depth. It's really twisted but at the same time it's a great realization that there has to be something in your life to give it meaning. If it was all happy, there would be no meaning. And it's not just Katurian's life that is improved by trauma. The cops also find meaning in their own tragedies. It ties the whole the play together.


The little side stories of the play are really genius. I could really see how effective they would be on stage. I think they really add to the whole twisted plot. The few pictures I've seen from the production of the show these little side stories and they all have a certain element of creepiness I can't describe.


This play was really hard to review. I didn't have any major criticisms and it's difficult to discuss without giving the whole story away.

Four Legs Good! Two Legs Bad!

Animal Farm
By George Orwell


This is one of the novels Jenn picked for me to read this summer, and I've been meaning to read it for about ten years, since my friend Jef gave me his copy and told me I had to read it.  I read it on my kindle app though.

I really liked this novel basically right from the start.  Major's speech inspiring the various animals to rebel against their human oppressors is a great scene, and it makes it all the more sad that Major dies in the first chapter before being able to see his dream fulfilled.  I quickly fell in love with several of the characters.  Particularly the hard-working horse, Boxer, but I was also very intrigued by the cat in the opening chapter, when the farm takes a vote about whether or not rats should be treated equally along with the other animals, and the cat votes both yes and no.  That struck me as very funny for some reason.  I wish there were more of the cat later in the book, but she just kinda fades away.

Now, Jenn informs me that every character in Animal Farm is meant to represent an actual person involved in the rise of communism.  She suggested that I read the novel along with the sparknotes to get these little insights, but I opted to just read it and enjoy this story being told without trying to understand all the parallels and allusions to historical figures who I probably know little about anyway.  Actually, while I read Animal Farm I was reminded of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus, which chronicles his father's life in Germany during the holocaust.  In Maus, each race is represented by a different species of animals (Jews are mice, Germans are pigs, Americans are dogs, etc), and I couldn't get those correlations out of my head while reading Animal Farm.

For such a short novel, the story does get a little boring at parts, but I ultimately love where it ends up.  Napoleon's rise to power, and Boxer's death are deeply powerful.  I love how Napoleon changes the commandments of the farm without any shred of democracy, and ultimately cuts a deal with the humans so that most of the farm is hurled back to the slavery they began with.  It's a very sad and pessimistic ending, but I can't imagine how else it would have ended.  My one criticism of the story is the continual building and destroying of the windmill.  I think they ended up building it three times, and the first time it was destroyed in the night, it was genuinely heart breaking.  The second time, I was over it.

Bejees!

The Iceman Cometh
by Eugene O'Neill


Next on the list of plays I've never read but should is The Iceman Cometh.  I've owned this copy of the play for years and honestly believe I bought it because it has Kevin Spacey on the cover.  I am a fan.  I've even tried to read the play before; a few times.  However, I could never get past the four pages of stage directions and descriptions that open the play.  Forcing myself to get through the play this time, these stage directions are still my biggest criticism of the piece.

It amazes me when I read a classic piece of drama, or even a new piece that's winning all kinds of awards and acclaim, and they just suck.  The stories aren't necessarily bad, but there are so many flaws in the dramaturgy that I can't imagine it ever even being read by anyone important.  That's how I feel about Iceman Cometh.  Like I said, the huge flaw is the sheer volume of stage directions here.  Each act begins with a length description of the set, which is bad enough, but then littered throughout every scene is tons and tons of little stage directions prescriptively outlining every movement the actors make.  There are also several stage directions instructing the actors how to read given lines.  This drives me crazy.  You can't be a control freak and a playwright.  It's possibly the most collaborative art form out there, and you have to be okay with your script being interpreted by a large group of directors and actors.  If you can't handle that, then don't be a playwright because I guarantee that whenever a director or actor picks up Iceman Cometh for a production, they immediately ignore all the stage directions.

Second, there are too many characters here.  There are maybe 3 characters in the play that I'm at all interested in, and the rest feel mostly like filler.  Hickey is great.  He's very well-written, and has his shit together, and I found myself just trying to get through the rest of the play to get to the next Hickey scene.  His story line is compelling, and I like the bartender character a lot, but the rest of these people are worthless.

There are other little things about the play that annoy me as well, like O'Neill's tendency to write in really thick dialects.  Bejees it's irritating.  Overall, I just think it's a poorly constructed play, and that detracts from what I think is a pretty good story.  I'd definitely be interested in seeing the piece performed one day, but I'll never attempt to read it again.

I Am Sherlocked

The Hound of the Baskervilles

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This is my second Sherlock Holmes novel after reading A Study in Scarlet last summer, and I definitely want to read a lot more Sherlock stuff soon.  Jenn was nice enough to get me a collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories with a picture of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman on the cover.  Of course, the two brilliant actors play Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson respectively in the new (ingenious) Sherlock TV series on the BBC.

There's a lot I want to talk about with Hound.  First of all, if you read Jenn's post, she talks about how this novel is not a great mystery.  I have to agree.  I didn't actually state out loud at any point who I thought the killer was, but had someone asked me to make a guess, I would have been right.  I don't think that's a problem though.  Yes, Study in Scarlet does a better job of keeping the reader guessing, but Hound kinda feels more like an episode of Columbo, where you practically see the murder taking place and know who did it, but the fun is watching the great detective figure it out.  

I love reading about Sherlock Holmes.  He is one of the all time great literary characters and Doyle keeps him endlessly entertaining.  So, it's even more impressive that in Hound Holmes isn't in about half the novel.  In the story, Holmes sends Watson ahead to Baskerville Hall to guard Henry Baskerville, while he remains in London to work on another case.  He disappears for many chapters before finally turning up again towards the end.  It's a really bold choice, and I respect that while I don't necessarily agree with it.  Still, he manages to keep the story interesting while it's centered on Watson and his reports to Holmes back in London.  Study in Scarlet had a similar (sort of) digression by providing a five chapter biography of the killer.  It was very disorienting, and I like how Hound of the Baskervilles does stay focused on our principle characters.  

The relationship between Holmes and Watson is fantastic.  I was completely invested in this book from the first chapter because Holmes asks Watson to give his theories about the case they're working on, and Watson outlines a very logical, concise, sensible theory about the victim, which Holmes them completely demolishes.  He thanks Watson basically for being so stupid that it helps his vastly superior mind jump from the mundane to the ingenious.  Holmes' brilliance and the inevitable arrogance it brings is a lot of fun to read about, but there's also a definite compassion for Watson deep inside him.  It's much clearer here than in Scarlet, which makes sense since the characters had just met in Scarlet.

Bottom line:  I can't wait to get to more Sherlock Holmes stories soon.  I think I have to read the novel with Professor Moriarty next, because I've seen several film/television adaptations of the infamous villain and I'm very curious to see Doyle's original vision of the crime lord.