So hi. This is me after finishing Persuasion, deciding to make a start on Catching Fire, then reading all the way through both remaining books, falling asleep briefly at 7, waking up a few hours later and finishing. Oops.

So, man, am I glad I decided not to read them when I did. Not only was it just bleak in general, but specific bits of the dystopia read like the tsunami evacuation and recovery, and I certainly could not have read them then. I'm not altogether sure I should have read it now.

Liese,

I read it before tsunami hit Japan and the books depressed me for days. Just saying that even in an okay head space those books are DARK.

To be fair, you get adequate warnings in the first book. They are definitely there in the second book, but damn the ending of the 3rd book...

I don't think I like the 3rd book still. I like the themes generally, but I feel the writing and plot could have been tighter.

I think in general, I can understand why things ended up where they did, but I don't think I have to like it. I don't regard the ending as a happy or hopeful ending, particularly because Katniss didn't want children and only had them at Peeta's urging. I would still certainly not have tried to bring children into that world; I don't think we saw any real assurance that it was a better world forever and ever, just that the specific brutality had ended. But I'm worldview colored in that, because I chose not to bring children into this world.

Along with the other parallels and statements on conditions existing in our world, I felt that the question of "Who is my enemy?" was an unresolved one. Is Katniss' enemy a specific person, Snow? In the end, she decides, no. But was her enemy then, Coin, all along? No. Is it Gale? No. And therein lies the problem. Further to this world, I think it's part of the issue I have with the Occupy efforts. (We'll leave aside the Native American viewpoint that occupation is not a great framework or phrasing for a land already occupied in many ongoing ways.) I agree with much of what I've read about their statements. However, I don't feel there is a "they" that can make any amends for their grievances.

If Snow had said, "Okay, here you are and you are in uprising. What are your issues and how can we resolve them?" would the district inhabitants have been able to bring their boiling point back down to a simmer? The problem with totalitarianism (okay, there are lots of problems with totalitarianism) is that it has to have a dictatorial power structure. There has to be someone pulling the strings. Collins posits that it doesn't matter who's holding the marionette, they will always make it dance to their advantage.

But in our culture and our political and corporate environment, dictatorship is not so easy. There are lots of people pulling at lots of strings, and it's probably easier to just throw out the whole ball than to try to untangle it. (Yes, yes, that metaphor is stretched to the point of pain. And yes, I did spend yesterday rewinding yarn, why do you ask?) If there were a single entity to be angry at, someone whom we could just talk round to our way of thinking, or whose children we could blow up, it would be a lot easier to render a solution. But there's not. It's just everyone, being greedy, overreaching our bounds. It's us as millionaires being angry at billionaire sports team owners.

I know, we're struggling as individuals within our given constraints, but my sister got angry the other day at a report indicating what large percentage of people living in poverty in American had satellite television. The people group I work with are included in this category. But the people group she works with are third world actual poverty, and to her, the difference is appalling. For us to fail to recognize actual poverty, actual acute daily suffering, was offensive to her.

In the Hunger Games, Katniss is a part of an economic strata that knows it is worse off than another strata, but fails to recognize it is better off than another. In our world, we lack a target with the capacity to address our ills. In hers, did her revolution fairly redistribute resources and jobs? Did she compensate families for their wartime losses over generations? Did she address the growing chasm between classes, enabling a dialogue and providing a structure for improving relations?

I don't think she did, and so I don't think it was a happy ending. I may be asking for too much from my dystopian futures, though.

Hi Liese. I don't think poor American's are not poor just because others are worse off. And in that sense there is a there to recover from the the top 1 to 10 percent in each nation overwhelmingly has all the wealth, and a disproportionate share of the income. Change that and you change a heck of a lot. And world politics is heavily manipulated by that top 1% and to a lesser extent by the top 10%. And yes, because of the way things are organized, nation by nation is the best way to measure this. A lot of the disparities between nations are matters of infrastructure, which is not all that easy to redistribute. So it is not just a matter of demands being right. Focusing the rich who have done well for decades at the expense of the rest of us is right too. Discussing the use of the word "occupy" would result in a tldr, which I'm trying to cut back on. But I would say that the subject has some complexity.

OMG I just inhaled the first Skulduggery Pleasant book. MADE ENTIRELY OF AWESOME.

MADE ENTIRELY OF AWESOME.

I know!

I should go to the library tomorrow and check for the rest.

I'm in the midst of the fourth book, AIFG!

Okay, am I alone in my love for Billy-Ray Sanguine? He cracks my shit up, every time. And he is pretty effective in being a bad guy.

Also? I love Scapegrace. I don't know if he was a throwaway character who managed to make recurring status, or what, but he amuses the hell out of me.

Finally: TANITH LOW FOREVER.

Which is all I will say until people get to books 5 and 6.

Tanya Huff short story collection up on Kindle.

I was discussing The Hunger Games with my sister yesterday. She doesn't get YA. Like, didn't realise Harry Potter was considered YA. I was trying to convey the difficulty of rating the movie so that a YA audience could get in to see it, and she was all "But it has a happy ending, right?"

No, I told her. "But she wins, though?" No, I realised, really belatedly. She survives, but I don't think she wins.

The reason it came up was because a big burly guy at the next table was reading it. Now, the machismo in Jamaica is out of control, but it was the guy at a table with three other women that was reading the YA book with a female protagonist.