Face of a Revolution

Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press, 2010)

After waiting 3 months between The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, I waited about 10 hours before diving into Mockingjay. I mean, what is the point in being finished with the semester if you can't do things like that?

So.

A lot of this trilogy is about the indignity of being having no control over your life, of being a pawn manipulated for the entertainment of others. Of finding ways to live with integrity in this system, of being authentically yourself. (This does seem a little like being a teenager, doesn't it?) Katniss is particularly compelling because of what I have to call - although the term is so inexact - her naivete; she is capable of genuine independent and surprising action, but within a system of other actors that continue and continue to try to use her to meet their own ends. This does not change in the third installment. In fact, if anything it gets more brutal.

This book was the saddest of the three for me. I found it difficult even as I couldn't stop reading - and it was both good and bad that while I was reading the suspenseful trip through the Capitol, J was arranging (arranging?) a three-part harmony to "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah" - the juxtaposition was creepily appropriate. But it finally ends. And while I saw a few different ways in which Collins could satisfactorily conclude, I felt like this perhaps made the most sense. It was always what I wanted, more or less.

This was some of the most fun I had reading this year. I'll be recommending it for sure.

Natasha's Dance, 19th & 20th Centuries

Finishing Figes' book took longer than I expected. (Largely b/c I spent a lot of time in the past two weeks falling asleep. Why is it that I always think I'll get more reading done when I'm sick and I never ever do?)

But I made it through. The last couple chapters dealt with topics I knew pretty well: the Tatar legacy, the Russian avant-garde, and Soviet culture. The final chapter however, "Russia Abroad" was about the exiles and what Russia meant and became to them after the creation of the USSR. That I never bothered to study too much, so it made for a lovely ending.

Most of the general comments in my earlier post remain relevant. I'm not sure that I have that much to add. What I did LOVE though was Figes' Guide to Further Reading, 29 pages of suggestions, all in English, so the reader won't get bogged down in a list of sources that may have been fantastic for Figes but probably aren't much good for him or her. That section alone could probably keep me happy for ages, and of course there was the joy of seeing him give high marks to books that I have read/owned/etc.

Getting through Figes in the first 3 weeks of the year means that I have time to catch up on library books (and the book for my new book club!) before turning to book 2 of the challenge.

Dreams and Destruction, or Heyday

When I finish a book that has created a world for me, I get a little dazed and dreamy. Like I'm in love. It's this intense satisfaction, and a tiny effort to hold onto it instead of letting it go and returning to reality. For a long time I wondered if I was the only one who felt this way - but I saw a friend do so last week as he finished Everything is Illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer) and happily realized I am not alone.

Usually I wait at least a few hours after finishing a book before starting my review, but I am still clutching at the feel, and thinking that writing about Heyday will help. I couldn't tell you how Kurt Andersen's novel made it on my list of books to read. (I sometimes think that books just magically appear on there, but no mind.) Normally I wouldn't expect a novel about mid-nineteenth-century America to appeal to me, but this one involved a "band of brothers" and their quest for a beautiful woman, and hell, I like that. And then Andersen drew me into the complicated and fantastical world of 1848 and 1849 - years of European revolution and counter-revolution, and an American rush for gold in my favorite of states.

Our central hero is Ben Knowles, Londoner transplanted to the land of his adventuresome dreams. But there is also Duff and Polly Lucking - he a soldier with a secret, she his actress (and more) sister - and Renaissance man Timothy Skaggs. Ben's immediately infatuation with Polly forms the heart of the plot. But the central theme is that of discovery and creation - and its converse. America is being born and torn down all at once - even then a land without history. And each character (oh, and there are more that the central four) has his or her own obsessions that relate to creation and destruction. But it's a theme that fits so well with that period in time that it doesn't seem overbearing - even at its most explicit.

My quibble with Heyday is the name-dropping. Of course Knowles is related to Toqueville and Skaggs used to write about Lincoln when he was a small-town lawyer and the group would run into attendees of the Seneca Falls Convention and ... well, you get the point. It's a little out of control. I understand that Andersen is trying to make clear exactly how free-wheeling and eventful and wild this period was, but I could have done with a few fewer references.

What I loved - California. The Golden State, even before it was a state. Andersen refers to the "topsy-turvy summer of '48" in California, and it's an apt term. American exceptionalism runs rampant, and I get bored of it, but I never tire of Californian exceptionalism. I am a snob. :) Even 150 years ago, a magnet for dreamers.