Monday, April 9, 2012

Hunger Games, Hitchhikers, and Bromeliad Trees

I had to read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins because it’s such a big deal at the moment. I still haven’t seen the movie, but I’ll watch it eventually.


The Hunger Games is a post-apocalyptic young adult novel where a futurist North America is ruled by a totalitarian government. Twelve districts outside the Capitol are kept in check by the Hunger Games, a competition in which two children from each district must fight to the death on national television.
After her kid sister is chosen to fight in the games, sixteen year-old Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her place. She trains alongside a boy from her district, and both of them know they will have to kill each other if they come face to face in the ring.
The stakes couldn't be higher, but Katniss is determined to swing all the odds to her favor and win the games.

The book was an exciting and entertaining read, but the Kindle version that I read had a LOT of typos and formatting errors. That was annoying.

The first-person/present tense writing bothered me like crazy throughout the book. I almost threw it across the room a few times at the beginning—but since the book was on my Kindle, that would have been a bad idea. So I never threw it, and I forced myself to keep reading. It got interesting, I wanted to know what happened next, and I was entertained.


I read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as I mentioned in a previous blog post. The book was great. Hilarious and depressing. I would watch the movie again . . . but nothing matters anyway, so I don’t know if I will.

Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?

Finally, I reread The Bromeliad Trilogy, which is simply marvelous.


Nomes, car chases, religious satire, social commentary, science fiction, humor, and profound thoughts on life (as always) from Terry Pratchett. And also there will be salmon.

Hundreds of nomes live in The Store, and they believe The Store to be the totality of all creation, made for them by Arnold Bros (est. 1905). Existential crises ensue when a nome named Masklin and his band of Outsiders enter the store carrying a mysterious black cube (helpfully named "The Thing").
The Thing tells the nomes that they are from another place, and the nomes should go home.
The instruction is timely, because the signs around The Store - given by Arnold Bros (est. 1905) say that The Store is about to be demolish ("Everything Must Go.")
So the nomes go forth to find their home.

I first read The Bromelid Trilogy back in 2008. Four years later, it was still great.

Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett are atheists, and it comes out in their writing. I am a Christian, so I disagree with the worldviews of both authors, but they still have things to say which I often find humorous and insightful.

Their commentary on religion (including Christianity) can be harsh, so do keep that in mind if you’re a Christian.

And those are my book thoughts for the day. Off to continue writing my second novel, which I started yesterday on 4.8.12.

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