Oh, Pacey! You blind idiot. Can't you see she doesn't love you?

Spike ,'Help'


Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.

There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."


Liese S. - Dec 10, 2010 8:00:58 am PST #13206 of 28277
"Faded like the lilac, he thought."

Did not finish, I'm guessing?


Barb - Dec 10, 2010 8:01:38 am PST #13207 of 28277
“Not dead yet!”

What is a DNF review?

Did Not Finish.

Reader said the book bored her to death.


Amy - Dec 10, 2010 8:02:20 am PST #13208 of 28277
Because books.

Ah. I'd never heard that.


Polter-Cow - Dec 10, 2010 8:05:35 am PST #13209 of 28277
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!

Easy to read

I think this is a big thing. It reads very easily, which makes it easy to get into, and then once you're into it, fuck, you can't get out because OMGWTF.

her world-building kind of crappy

I don't have problems with her general dystopian world-building, but I still don't understand how they design/build/control these arenas.


Amy - Dec 10, 2010 8:07:43 am PST #13210 of 28277
Because books.

I don't really need to know that, though, P-C. Personally, I mean, because the Capitol is portrayed as so powerful and so unknowable, I can be with Kat in not understanding how it's done, but having to roll with it.

And she shows a lot of their tech in little ways with the body mods that people in the Capitol get, so.

I am also very much not a hard sci-fi reader, though.


Consuela - Dec 10, 2010 8:07:46 am PST #13211 of 28277
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix

Yeah, P-C. That, and there's a whole set-piece in Mockingjay that just threw me right out of the story because it made NO SENSE AT ALL. For those who read Mockingjay: the bit where the "pods" are in the streets of the Capitol, which means the authorities set boobytraps all over the area inhabited by their own civilian population. Totally nonsensical.


megan walker - Dec 10, 2010 8:10:00 am PST #13212 of 28277
"What kind of magical sunshine and lollipop world do you live in? Because you need to be medicated."-SFist

I really didn't have a problem with the world-building until Mockingjay, which just didn't seem to fit with the other two books at all.


Polter-Cow - Dec 10, 2010 8:14:46 am PST #13213 of 28277
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!

I don't really need to know that, though, P-C. Personally, I mean, because the Capitol is portrayed as so powerful and so unknowable, I can be with Kat in not understanding how it's done, but having to roll with it.

Yep.

But if the world-building issues aren't really till Mockingjay, then at least I'm not crazy about wondering what people were complaining about.


Steph L. - Dec 10, 2010 8:16:14 am PST #13214 of 28277
I look more rad than Lutheranism

I had problems with the world-building, too. The biggest was that Collins wrote it as though the Capitol, which I'm assuming is Denver-ish, is able to defend itself against all attackers because...of the mountains. Pretty sure the books aren't set in the 1800s.

t edit

But if the world-building issues aren't really till Mockingjay, then at least I'm not crazy about wondering what people were complaining about.

My world-building issue was in book 1.


Consuela - Dec 10, 2010 8:26:32 am PST #13215 of 28277
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix

My world-building issue was in book 1.

Mine, too. It just feels very, um, simple. Broad strokes, not a lot of complex relationships, and so forth. You can blame that on Katniss' relative youth and ignorance, but seriously: District 12 only produces coal, and Rue's District only produces grain, and so on and so forth. All the people in the Capitol are perfectly happy with the entertainment provided by the Hunger Games and there is no internal political strife there. Nobody in any of the Districts has figured out how to subvert the advanced communications and surveillance technology despite having a hundred years or more to do it.

It's an interesting setup, but it's shallow to me. Too imbalanced to work for more than a generation or two, like North Korea--and North Korea is utterly dependent on outside aid to feed their people.