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We Don't Have to Reap the Fear They Sow Wednesday
Crossposted from Livejournal
What I've Finished Reading
The Hidden Land is much more fast-paced and intense than The Secret Country, and the intensity gets a giant boost three pages from the end, with YET ANOTHER inconclusive and uncomfortable ending. Characters are a little sharper and a couple of plot elements that were total mysteries in the first book are - not so much explained here as investigated a little more efficiently. Biographical note confirms that this and The Secret Country started life as a single novel, which seems much more like their natural state (though I liked the bit that was added to fill The Hidden Land out to novel length).
The Art of Fiction in the Heart of Dixie: An Anthology of Alabama Writers suffers a little from its educational goal. It wants to present a representative picture of Alabama fiction, including a selection of popular writing out of Alabama in the nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century Alabama fiction might very well not have been a vast wasteland of didactic melodrama and cloying overlong setups for mediocre jokes, but you'd never know it from the selections here.
One story would have been a perfectly inoffensive sentimental sensation piece if the author hadn't felt obligated to point out the moral three or four times. The moral: "Yankee propaganda says we Southrons treat our Negroes poorly, but this story I made up proves otherwise! Look how kind these fictional white people were to their fictional wet nurse, even though their baby was already weaned and even though the woman was free and no direct economic benefit to anyone! TAKE THAT, IGNORANT NORTHERNERS." It's interesting as historical data but pretty bad as fiction. Things get better closer to the present, but the overall impression this anthology creates of Alabama fiction, accurate or not, is that pickings are considerably slimmer than you thought. This book was published in 1981; a more recent anthology might take a different approach.
What I'm Reading Now
Is The Hunger Games as good as the soundtrack inspired by the movie inspired by the book? Would I like it as much as I do if I hadn't listened to the soundtrack a bunch of times first? It's hard to say, but I like it. Gladiatorial combat + reality TV = gladiators ON TV is so obvious a satirical equation that I wasn't sure what to expect, but it's pretty well handled and I think the narration (which I still have problems with off and on, though I'm not completely sure what they are) helps. There isn't any invitation to the reader to feel superior, even to people who are actively participating in the perpetration of the Games. The unseen Gamemakers may or may not be straightforward evil sadists, but everyone we've met so far is just living in the world they were born to.
There's a TERRIFIC plot involving Katniss' fellow tribute: is he a treacherous mastermind, or just a genuinely good guy? OR BOTH? There is also what feels like the beginnings of a weak and half-hearted love triangle. Katniss has formed an alliance with the little girl who reminds her of her sister, but it's just prolonging the day when one of them has to kill the other. OR IS IT? I really, really hope not.
(I REALLY don't want the little sister to be a ruthless mastermind, either. Maybe in another book. In this one, I want love to prevail. I don't care how psychologically unrealistic it is. I want the kids to lay down their weapons and refuse to do any more harm, right NOW).
Also: I shouldn't have started my continents with Antarctica, because now I'm halfway through another book about Antarctica and becoming increasingly tiresome about my guys on the ice. This one has the irresistible title The Worst Journey in the World. It's an almost-contemporary account by one of the participants of a different expedition, the Scott polar expedition, including a side expedition to collect emperor penguin eggs from a winter breeding colony (in the sunless polar winter). The egg expedition is successful, if harrowing, but the polar expedition comes to a bad end.
It's a more complicated story than the long return of the crew of the Endurance - because there are several goals involved, because despite a tremendous number of difficulties the trip comes much closer to meeting its objectives, and because not everyone made it back safely. It's also warmer and more leisurely - odd adjectives for a book in which everyone involved gets frostbite at best and at one point a blizzard steals the tent off the backs of the penguin egg party, but accurate, I think? The author, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, is writing about an adventure he remembers having with his good friends who later died, and he's very concerned that you understand what it was like to have good friends under bad conditions. There's a lot of personality and detail. It's hard not to like the guys, even taking into account some very 1911 tendencies like naming their animals after racial slurs.
What I Plan to Read Next
More Hunger Games! I'm still keeping the reading to lunch breaks, so as to avoid burning straight through in a day - so it will be a little while before I finish this book. The next book is calledMockingjay CATCHING FIRE and there's no shortage of copies at my library. My library may or may not have The Whim of the Dragon, the final book in the Secret Country trilogy.
What I've Finished Reading
The Hidden Land is much more fast-paced and intense than The Secret Country, and the intensity gets a giant boost three pages from the end, with YET ANOTHER inconclusive and uncomfortable ending. Characters are a little sharper and a couple of plot elements that were total mysteries in the first book are - not so much explained here as investigated a little more efficiently. Biographical note confirms that this and The Secret Country started life as a single novel, which seems much more like their natural state (though I liked the bit that was added to fill The Hidden Land out to novel length).
The Art of Fiction in the Heart of Dixie: An Anthology of Alabama Writers suffers a little from its educational goal. It wants to present a representative picture of Alabama fiction, including a selection of popular writing out of Alabama in the nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century Alabama fiction might very well not have been a vast wasteland of didactic melodrama and cloying overlong setups for mediocre jokes, but you'd never know it from the selections here.
One story would have been a perfectly inoffensive sentimental sensation piece if the author hadn't felt obligated to point out the moral three or four times. The moral: "Yankee propaganda says we Southrons treat our Negroes poorly, but this story I made up proves otherwise! Look how kind these fictional white people were to their fictional wet nurse, even though their baby was already weaned and even though the woman was free and no direct economic benefit to anyone! TAKE THAT, IGNORANT NORTHERNERS." It's interesting as historical data but pretty bad as fiction. Things get better closer to the present, but the overall impression this anthology creates of Alabama fiction, accurate or not, is that pickings are considerably slimmer than you thought. This book was published in 1981; a more recent anthology might take a different approach.
What I'm Reading Now
Is The Hunger Games as good as the soundtrack inspired by the movie inspired by the book? Would I like it as much as I do if I hadn't listened to the soundtrack a bunch of times first? It's hard to say, but I like it. Gladiatorial combat + reality TV = gladiators ON TV is so obvious a satirical equation that I wasn't sure what to expect, but it's pretty well handled and I think the narration (which I still have problems with off and on, though I'm not completely sure what they are) helps. There isn't any invitation to the reader to feel superior, even to people who are actively participating in the perpetration of the Games. The unseen Gamemakers may or may not be straightforward evil sadists, but everyone we've met so far is just living in the world they were born to.
There's a TERRIFIC plot involving Katniss' fellow tribute: is he a treacherous mastermind, or just a genuinely good guy? OR BOTH? There is also what feels like the beginnings of a weak and half-hearted love triangle. Katniss has formed an alliance with the little girl who reminds her of her sister, but it's just prolonging the day when one of them has to kill the other. OR IS IT? I really, really hope not.
(I REALLY don't want the little sister to be a ruthless mastermind, either. Maybe in another book. In this one, I want love to prevail. I don't care how psychologically unrealistic it is. I want the kids to lay down their weapons and refuse to do any more harm, right NOW).
Also: I shouldn't have started my continents with Antarctica, because now I'm halfway through another book about Antarctica and becoming increasingly tiresome about my guys on the ice. This one has the irresistible title The Worst Journey in the World. It's an almost-contemporary account by one of the participants of a different expedition, the Scott polar expedition, including a side expedition to collect emperor penguin eggs from a winter breeding colony (in the sunless polar winter). The egg expedition is successful, if harrowing, but the polar expedition comes to a bad end.
It's a more complicated story than the long return of the crew of the Endurance - because there are several goals involved, because despite a tremendous number of difficulties the trip comes much closer to meeting its objectives, and because not everyone made it back safely. It's also warmer and more leisurely - odd adjectives for a book in which everyone involved gets frostbite at best and at one point a blizzard steals the tent off the backs of the penguin egg party, but accurate, I think? The author, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, is writing about an adventure he remembers having with his good friends who later died, and he's very concerned that you understand what it was like to have good friends under bad conditions. There's a lot of personality and detail. It's hard not to like the guys, even taking into account some very 1911 tendencies like naming their animals after racial slurs.
What I Plan to Read Next
More Hunger Games! I'm still keeping the reading to lunch breaks, so as to avoid burning straight through in a day - so it will be a little while before I finish this book. The next book is called