Catching Fire

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Hunger Games Series #2
Hardcover, 391 pages
Scholastic, September 2009
ISBN-13: 9780439023498
YA dystopian fiction
very highly recommended

Synopsis from publisher:

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

My Thoughts:

After The Hunger Games, this was a very satisfying second book. Yes, it's true that like most second books in a trilogy, events do seem to move a bit slowly as the story is in transition, but I thought Catching Fire was very good and kept up the high standards Collins previously set. Book three should be amazing. Although it has been said that the YA label only reflects the presence of a teenage protagonist, I still feel that the reading level is also simpler. (I imagine I could do something like a Flesch Reading Ease test to prove my point, but it doesn't matter that much to me.) Most YA books do have simplified language and plot lines. They are quick, easy reads. As I mentioned in the review for The Hunger Games, " this plot has been done before, and that Collins didn't provide many in-depth details on the society, setting, or the cameras, which is all true, but I still felt this was a very successful YA book."

Catching Fire is very highly recommended.

Quotes:
If it were up to me, I would try to forget the Hunger Games entirely. Never speak of them. Pretend they were nothing but a bad dream. But the Victory Tour makes that impossible. Strategically placed almost midway between the annual Games, it is the Capitol's way of keeping the horror fresh and immediate. Not only are we in the districts forced to remember the iron grip of the Capitol's power each year, we are forced to celebrate it. And this year, I am one of the stars of the show. I will have to travel from district to district, to stand before the cheering crowds who secretly loathe me, to look down into the faces of the families whose children I have killed... pg 3-4

The only time I really get to see Gale now is on Sundays, when we meet up in the woods to hunt together. It's still the best day of the week, but it's not like it used to be before, when we could tell each other anything. pg. 5

Peeta keeps all of us in fresh baked goods. I hunt. He bakes. Haymitch drinks. We have our own ways to stay busy, to keep thoughts of our time as contestants in the Hunger Games at bay. pg. 15

Then he turns and my heart skips a beat.I'm staring into the snakelike eyes of President Snow. pg. 17

"And if a girl from District Twelve of all places can defy the Capitol and walk away unharmed, what is to stop them from doing the same?" he says. "What is to prevent, say, an uprising?" pg. 21

"Katniss Everdeen, the girl who was on fire, you have provided the spark that, left unattended, may grow into an inferno that destroys Panem," he says.
"Why don't you just kill me now?" I blurt out.
"Publicly?" he asks. "That would only add fuel to the flames." pg. 23

The Year of the Flood

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Hardcover, 448 pages

Nan A. Talese, September 2009

ISBN-13: 9780385528771

dystopian science fiction

very highly recommended

Synopsis from Cover:

The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners—a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life—has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible.

Have others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers . . .

Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away . . .

My Thoughts:

Margaret Atwood is a skilled gifted writer with the ability to use her incredible gift in the creation of stories that leave a lasting impression. The Year of the Flood occupies the same world as Atwood's 2003 novel Oryx and Crake. Both are speculative fiction about a dystopian future. Although you can't say this is a world you want to see, you can see the roots of it around us today. While both are stand alone novels and you need not read Oryx and Crake before The Year of the Flood, I think it might be a good idea to do so. They are definitely companion novels and show two sides of the same time period. The Year of the Flood does end on a more hopeful note, however.

I think Margaret Atwood is brilliant and would very likely be predisposed to love anything she's written. The Year of the Flood is no exception. (It is possible that The Historian suffered because of Atwood. While trying to finish it I had The Year of the Flood sitting there, waiting for me.) There is an environmental message in the novel, so if that is going to bother you, be forewarned.
The Year of the Flood is very highly recommended - one of the best.

See the websites for The Year of the Flood and Margaret Atwood.

(The hymns in the book have had music composed for them by Orville Stoeber.)

Quotes:

In the early morning Toby climbs up to the rooftop to watch the sunrise. She uses a mop handle for balance: the elevator stopped working some time ago and the back stairs are slick with damp, so if she slips and topples there won’t be anyone to pick her up. pg. 3

The wide lawns have grown up, tall weeds. There are low irregular mounds beneath the milkweed and fleabane and sorrel, with here and there a swatch of fabric, a glint of bone. That’s where the people fell, the ones who’d been running or staggering across the lawn. Toby had watched from the roof, crouched behind one of the planters, but she hadn’t watched for long. Some of those people had called for help, as if they’d known she was there. But how could she have helped? pg. 4

And Zeb. If any one of them is still alive, it must be Zeb: any day now he’ll come walking along the roadway or appear from among the trees.
But he must be dead by now. It’s better to think so. Not to waste hope.
There must be someone else left, though; she can’t be the only one on the planet. There must be others. But friends or foes? If she sees one, how to tell? pg. 5

Beware of words. Be careful what you write. Leave no trails.
This is what the Gardeners taught us, when I was a child among them. They told us to depend on memory, because nothing written down could be relied on. The Spirit travels from mouth to mouth, not from thing to thing: books could be burnt, paper crumble away, computers could be destroyed. Only the Spirit lives forever, and the Spirit isn’t a thing. pg. 6

That night when the Waterless Flood began, I was waiting for my test results: they kept you locked in the Sticky Zone for weeks, in case you had something contagious. The food came in through the safety-sealed hatchway, plus there was the minifridge with snacks, and the water was filtered, coming in and out both. pg. 7-8

She's counting on this garden: her supplies in the storeroom are getting low. Over the years she stashed what she thought would be enough for an emergency like this, but she'd underestimated, and now she's running out of soybits and soydines. pg. 15-16

Then all of them had left, once the trouble hit. They'd gone home to be with their families, believing love could save them. "You go ahead, I'll lock up," Toby had told them. And she had locked up, but with herself inside. pg. 17

This was not an ordinary pandemic: it wouldn't be contained after a few hundred thousand deaths, the obliterated with biotools and bleach. This was the Waterless Flood the Gardeners so often had warned about. It had all the signs: it travelled through the air as if on wings, it burned through the cities like fire, spreading germ-ridden mobs, terror, and butchery. pg. 20

Then the CorpSeCorps had outlawed firearms in the interests of public security, reserving the newly invented sprayguns for themselves, and suddenly people were officially weaponless. pg. 24

"They view us as twisted fanatics who combine food extremism with bad fashion sense and a puritanical attitude towards shopping. But we own nothing they want, so we don't qualify as terrorists..." pg. 48

Time Enough

I've been contemplating this whole blogging world this week and decided to share a few of my thoughts and concerns.

After reading the comments to a certain post this week I really felt let down by some of the criteria used in judging during BBAW (For example you lost points if you did not use Twitter, facebook, and vlogs.) And although I left a comment and it was responded to by Amy (and I really like Amy), I decided that I'm perhaps not BBAW material (especially since I also had some other concerns). I am not planning to ever use Twitter, facebook, or vlogs in connection with my blog, She Treads Softly. Not going to happen. Wendy's Sunday Salon post today at Caribousmom really expresses my feelings much more eloquently than I ever could. Sorry, but I don't think rapid social connections are going to enhance my life. I have a hard enough time just keeping up with the blogs I want to read all on my own. I don't subscribe or follow at this point but may have to reconsider that as more demands are placed on my time. What I do is read through a long list of favorite blogs when I have time.

Well, starting this week my available free time is going to become a more rare and precious commodity.

I also was feeling some guilt about not regularly commenting on blogs I read especially after reading Ti's Confessions of a Reader: Comment Etiquette post. I guess I figured that I read your blogs when I had time and that the time to comment was a luxury. Now my time to read blogs is going to be limited, let alone commenting on them. Please forgive me. If some of you stop reading here because I don't comment often, then I'm sorry. Just be aware that when someone from the Kansas City/Lawrence, KS area is reading your blog, it's likely me. I'm faithful at reading but not so much at commenting.

There is simply not time enough in my day to do it all.

The Historian

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
hardcover, 656 pages
Little, Brown & Company, 2005
ISBN-13: 9780316011778

fiction, historical thriller

not recommended

From the Publisher

In this riveting debut of breathtaking scope, a young girl discovers her father's darkest secret and embarks on a harrowing journey across Europe to complete the quest he never could -- to find history's most legendary fiend -- Dracula.
When a motherless American girl living in Europe finds a medieval book and a package of letters, all addressed ominously to "My dear and unfortunate successor..." she begins to unravel a thread that leads back to her father's past, his mentor's career, and an evil hidden in the depths of history.
In those few quiet moments, she unwittingly assumes a quest she will discover is her birthright - a hunt that nearly brought her father to ruin and may have claimed the life of his adviser and dear friend, history professor Bartholomew Rossi. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler, the historical Dracula, have to do with the 20th century? Is it possible that Dracula has lived on in the modern world? And why have a select few historians risked reputation, sanity, and even their lives to learn the answer?
So begins an epic journey to unlock the secrets of the strange medieval book, an adventure that will carry our heroine across Europe and into the past -- not only to the times of Vlad's heinous reign, but to the days when her mother was alive and her father was still a vibrant young scholar. In the end, she uncovers the startling fate of Rossi, and comes face to face with the definition of evil -- to find, ultimately, that good may not always triumph.

My Thoughts:

The Amazon.com review calls Kostova's The Historian a "long but beautifully structured thriller." I'll agree with the long part. While a few parts of The Historian were exciting enough to live up to the thriller label, other parts moved way too s-l-o-w and the story seemed to drag out. And I do agree it was a beautifully structured novel but it would have been much better minus about 300 pages. Some of the sections felt more like a historical treatise on Dracula, a boring treatise. This dulled the actual thrill of searching for a living Dracula. I'd keep at it, reading a brief exciting section and then reach long, boring sections that seemed to crawl along. By the time I finally reached the climax I'm afraid, between yawns, all I could say was, "Finally." If you are a huge fan of historical fiction you might enjoy this more. Me, I'm wondering why this book was ever so highly recommended.

not recommended.

Read for the RIP IV Challenge.

Quotes:

In 1972 I was sixteen-young, my father said, to be traveling with him on his diplomatic missions. He preferred to know that I was sitting attentively in class at the International School of Amsterdam; in those days his foundation was based in Amsterdam, and it had been my home for so long that I had nearly forgotten our early life in the United States. It seems peculiar to me now that I should have been so obedient well into my teens, while the rest of my generation was experimenting with drugs and protesting the imperialist war in Vietnam, but I had been raised in a world so sheltered that it makes my adult life in academia look positively adventurous. pg. 3

I can't say even now what made me pull them down. But the image I saw at the center of the book, the smell of age that rose from it, and my discovery that the papers were personal letters all caught my attention forcibly. I knew I shouldn't examine my father's private papers, or anyone's, ....But I couldn't help reading the first paragraph of the topmost letter, holding it for a couple of minutes as I stood near the shelves.
December 12, 1930
Trinity College, Oxford
My dear and unfortunate successor:
It is with regret that I imagine you, whoever you are, reading the account I must put down here. The regret is partly for myself-because I will surely be at least in trouble, maybe dead, or perhaps worse, if this is in your hands. But my regret is also for you, my yet-unknown friend, because only by someone who needs such vile information will this letter someday be read. If you are not my successor in some other sense, you will soon be my heir-and I feel sorrow at bequeathing to another human being my own, perhaps unbelievable, experience of evil. Why I myself inherited it I don't know, but I hope to discover that fact, eventually-perhaps in the course of writing to you or perhaps in the course of further events. pg. 4-5

The binding was very soft, faded leather, and the pages inside appeared to be quite old. It opened easily to the very center. Across those two pages I saw a great woodcut of a dragon with spread wings and a long, looped tail, a beast unfurled and raging, claws outstretched. In the dragon's claws hung a banner on which ran a single word in Gothic lettering: DRAKULYA. pg. 10

Of course, the basic story of Dracula has been hashed over many times and doesn't yield much to exploration. There's the Wallachian prince, a fifteenth-century ruler, hated by the Ottoman Empire and his own people - both. Really among the nastiest of all medieval European tyrants. pg. 18

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"Dracula - " He paused, "Dracula - Vlad Tepes - is still alive." pg. 19

Blast from the Past

My mother recently came across a note I left at my parent's home when I was in college and had stopped in there during the day - apparently to do laundry. She asked that I share this with Hipee (my sister the high powered executive) but I thought I would share it with all of you at the same time:

(Last Name)'s:

I have just a small list of things that could use some improvement around here:

1. Please teach the small white attack dog to not intimidate members of your immediate family. (Have you ever tried to carry a basket of dirty clothes and outrun a dog?)

2. I think it would be appropriate to clean the breakfast things off the table. (When you're chasing a small white attack dog through the house it is a gruesome sight to run into.)

3. Towels in a bathroom would be a wise touch. (Have you ever taken a shower and had to run through the house naked - excluding Mom Last Name - trying to find a towel?)

4. Toilet paper would also cut down on some of the unexpected and unwanted surprises around here. (This goes without explanation - especially when trying to wash clothes.)

5. For a final note, I don't think the bathroom sink is the place to leave 30 pairs of underwear soaking. (It is a good thing to have clean underwear but I think it would be more appropriate to soak that many pairs in a washer or at least a large tub. It is quite the eye sore for a guest to spy.)

Well I hope now that you can remedy these situations before I visit again.

Lori

- The small white attack dog was a sweet, friendly little dog that maybe weighed 10 lbs soaking wet.

- The disclaimer that exempted our Mom from the running naked through the house question was because Mom had a habit of taking a bath and then yelling "Nobody Look!" as she ran the 4 steps from the bathroom to the bedroom. True. We all sort of got used to it. And yes, she always had a towel wrapped around her.

- Mom had apparently wanted to make it clear that there were only 3 pairs of underwear soaking in the sink. She has actually written above my "30 pairs" that there were "really only 3".

Ken Burns: The National Parks: America's Best Idea

Ken Burns: The National Parks: America's Best Idea

Are you watching the new Ken Burns series on PBS this week? I'm enjoying it very much!

changes

I just learned that many people have a problem reading blogs with dark backgrounds and light text so, even though I really liked my dark blue/green background, I'm trying out black on white for awhile. Let me know what you think - feel free to email me privately about it.