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Girl heroes, gore, and goat cheese
Aug. 28th, 2011 10:18 amI read The Hunger Games, and with any luck will be able to read the second book this afternoon if we are not all dead of Hurricane Irene. I would be reading it right now except my roommate has it and she's still asleep.
The Hunger Games has apparently made a really big splash in YA lit right now, en-crankifying the various media cranks who like to lament about everything wrong with Kids Today, whether it is the Wall Street Journal sanctimoniously pearl-clutching that modern YA contains stuff happening and is therefore Too Grim And Not Wholesome, or that asshole in the New York Times who's all upset that his books aren't being read in high school English classes and thinks that one facet of one medium of the entire entertainment industry having over 30% female representation is bad for boys, who need "edgy" books about "boy" things like boys and sports and being a giant douchebag otherwise they won't read and everything will be horrible and it will all be YOUR FAULT, publishing industry, for making reading GIRLY. (The Mary Sue has a great takedown of this whine.) Basically, they are all defensive because The Hunger Games is a) awesome, b) kind of grim, and c) has a female lead but d) apparently teenage boys are eating this shit up because it's an awesome story.
The Hunger Games takes place in a the post-apocalyptic dystopia of Panem, which is basically "everything that's left of North America after some wars and global warming happened." Panem is divided into the Capitol, where all the power is centered and where everyone dresses in ways that Lady Gaga would probably find off-putting and outlandish. The rest of the country is split into twelve Districts, where each District has one main industry. Our heroine, sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, lives in District Twelve, the coal-mining district. It is a very grim and gritty and impoverished and generally depressing place. Katniss earns her living by poaching game in the woods with her friend Gale, which she can get away with because she trades the meat with the authorities who are supposed to catch and/or report her. Her mother and sister are healers and her sister also has a goat and makes goat cheese, which provides them with additional income and a plausible cover story.
Every year, there is a big media event called the Hunger Games, which it is mandatory to watch. The Hunger Games are an expression of the Capitol's power over the rest of the districts. Each district sends two "tributes," one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen, to compete in the Games, which are a televised battle royale to the death. By law, every citizen of Panem must watch these twenty-four teenagers kill each other and pretend it is massively entertaining.
Obviously, Katniss ends up being this year's girl tribute from District Twelve (I will not tell you how this happens); the boy tribute is Peeta Mellark, the baker's son. Peeta and Katniss do a lot of awkward personal and publicity stunting, going back and forth between being in this together and knowing they'll probably have to kill each other eventually. In one of the best plot twists satirizing reality TV I have ever read, they orchestrate a real or fake romance (Katniss is confused on this point!) to make the audience like them and get sponsors and stuff. Katniss spends a lot of time trying to figure out what the hell Peeta's motives are for all the awkward but possibly brilliantly clever shit he pulls. I kind of love Peeta even though he pulls the "I spent twelve years crushing on a girl and never talking to her, be sad for me" thing because he is SO GOOD at manipulating the media (and has amazing cake-decorating talents). Katniss is also badass, having mad hunting skillz without being a Mary Sue about it, since the book does a great job of telling her family's story and how she basically had the options of "become a great hunter or starve" and still almost starved several times before she became awesome enough. There is a lot of discussion of made-up dystopian futuristic class issues, which I love. Also I think this dystopian future has degenerated into a barter economy, at least for most everyday transactions, or maybe just the illegal ones.
Due to Katniss' job as a hunter, the everpresent threat of starvation in her home district, and the Hunger Games being called the Hunger Games for a reason, this book talks a goddamn lot about food. Like, "makes Redwall look like it isn't even trying" talks a lot about food. Much of the cast seems particularly obsessed with goat cheese, which probably makes sense in a poverty-ridden dystopian future because goats are smaller, hardier, and easier to feed than cows. As a result, I couldn't go ten pages in this book without getting up to get a snack and stuffing my face with Ritz crackers and lemon and lavender goat cheese I picked up from the farmer's market. It was delicious; I am sure Katniss would have cheerfully shot me for it.
I am off to read the second book now! Yay!
The Hunger Games has apparently made a really big splash in YA lit right now, en-crankifying the various media cranks who like to lament about everything wrong with Kids Today, whether it is the Wall Street Journal sanctimoniously pearl-clutching that modern YA contains stuff happening and is therefore Too Grim And Not Wholesome, or that asshole in the New York Times who's all upset that his books aren't being read in high school English classes and thinks that one facet of one medium of the entire entertainment industry having over 30% female representation is bad for boys, who need "edgy" books about "boy" things like boys and sports and being a giant douchebag otherwise they won't read and everything will be horrible and it will all be YOUR FAULT, publishing industry, for making reading GIRLY. (The Mary Sue has a great takedown of this whine.) Basically, they are all defensive because The Hunger Games is a) awesome, b) kind of grim, and c) has a female lead but d) apparently teenage boys are eating this shit up because it's an awesome story.
The Hunger Games takes place in a the post-apocalyptic dystopia of Panem, which is basically "everything that's left of North America after some wars and global warming happened." Panem is divided into the Capitol, where all the power is centered and where everyone dresses in ways that Lady Gaga would probably find off-putting and outlandish. The rest of the country is split into twelve Districts, where each District has one main industry. Our heroine, sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, lives in District Twelve, the coal-mining district. It is a very grim and gritty and impoverished and generally depressing place. Katniss earns her living by poaching game in the woods with her friend Gale, which she can get away with because she trades the meat with the authorities who are supposed to catch and/or report her. Her mother and sister are healers and her sister also has a goat and makes goat cheese, which provides them with additional income and a plausible cover story.
Every year, there is a big media event called the Hunger Games, which it is mandatory to watch. The Hunger Games are an expression of the Capitol's power over the rest of the districts. Each district sends two "tributes," one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen, to compete in the Games, which are a televised battle royale to the death. By law, every citizen of Panem must watch these twenty-four teenagers kill each other and pretend it is massively entertaining.
Obviously, Katniss ends up being this year's girl tribute from District Twelve (I will not tell you how this happens); the boy tribute is Peeta Mellark, the baker's son. Peeta and Katniss do a lot of awkward personal and publicity stunting, going back and forth between being in this together and knowing they'll probably have to kill each other eventually. In one of the best plot twists satirizing reality TV I have ever read, they orchestrate a real or fake romance (Katniss is confused on this point!) to make the audience like them and get sponsors and stuff. Katniss spends a lot of time trying to figure out what the hell Peeta's motives are for all the awkward but possibly brilliantly clever shit he pulls. I kind of love Peeta even though he pulls the "I spent twelve years crushing on a girl and never talking to her, be sad for me" thing because he is SO GOOD at manipulating the media (and has amazing cake-decorating talents). Katniss is also badass, having mad hunting skillz without being a Mary Sue about it, since the book does a great job of telling her family's story and how she basically had the options of "become a great hunter or starve" and still almost starved several times before she became awesome enough. There is a lot of discussion of made-up dystopian futuristic class issues, which I love. Also I think this dystopian future has degenerated into a barter economy, at least for most everyday transactions, or maybe just the illegal ones.
Due to Katniss' job as a hunter, the everpresent threat of starvation in her home district, and the Hunger Games being called the Hunger Games for a reason, this book talks a goddamn lot about food. Like, "makes Redwall look like it isn't even trying" talks a lot about food. Much of the cast seems particularly obsessed with goat cheese, which probably makes sense in a poverty-ridden dystopian future because goats are smaller, hardier, and easier to feed than cows. As a result, I couldn't go ten pages in this book without getting up to get a snack and stuffing my face with Ritz crackers and lemon and lavender goat cheese I picked up from the farmer's market. It was delicious; I am sure Katniss would have cheerfully shot me for it.
I am off to read the second book now! Yay!
