Wow, that was bleak.

I sometimes wonder if the Jr Hi kids who are reading them really get just how bleak and fucked up they are.

Probably. It's exactly the kind of bleak I would have loved in Jr. High. I would have read it from beneath a wall of my hair in my eyes, so you could not see into my black black heart. And then I would have gone roller skating.

(hearts Liese, as usual)

DDebet, did you see the interviews with kids about the Hunger Games books that I posted? Those kids got it.

Lisa, yeah. With those sorts of things, I always worry about cherry-picking. I spent yesterday morning with a couple of Jr Hi kids, and we briefly talked about Twilight (didn't have time to get into the depth of the problematic nature of the whole thing), so I was sort of primed in the direction of "they'll gloss over things in their own thinking"

I'm also puzzling over the logistics of how the districts are divided up

I've seen a lot of maps but this one makes the most sense to me.

I stopped reading him because I met him and he was severely creepy, and friends had stories of more creepiness. He seems to live in his own self-righteous world of creepy.

It does give me that sense of considering himself a special snowflake who's wrongly condemned by society for being sensitive enough to understand kids' needs—and totally blind to how molestation actually messes children up for life—that you often see in pedophiles.

Must locate old paperback copy of Blue Adept to burn in ritual cleansing...

I was just on Goodreads rating a bunch of books five stars that I loooved when I was a teenager. Then I remembered how icky I found The Apprentice Adept series when I re-read it last year. Now I don't know if I can trust my memories of what's a good book and what's not.

Interesting story about the marketing of the Hunger Games movie [link]

I think trying to map Panem is an exercise in futility. The districts and distances between them don't make much practical sense on the books. I'd argue that it can't possibly cover the continental U.S., because the amount of manpower and technology it would take to maintain a totalitarian government over that amount of territory is ridiculous.

I have to disagree with this line:

In a corporate twist on “The Hunger Games,” Mr. Palen is being forced to fight for his professional life following Lionsgate’s acquisition in January of Summit Entertainment, which controls the “Twilight” franchise. That means Lionsgate now has two marketing chiefs, and there is only room for one.

Unless Summit Entertainment has adopted a Market Forces style promotion scheme, in which case I'm surprised this is the first we're hearing about it.