The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

I knew nothing about the story or whatsoever so I had zero expectation when I read it. And it turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

Two tributes (one girl, one guy) are forced to be provided from twelve respective districts to participate in a yearly game named the Hunger Games. The twenty-four tributes will then be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena where the game will be televised and they must fight among themselves. The last one standing will be the winner. Sounds very much like the US reality show - Survivor, right? But the most significant difference - the losers will be dead instead of returning home to family. And the Hunger Games is served to remind those districts of the Capitol's zero tolerance toward any uprisings - how totally they are at their mercy and how little chance they will stand of surviving another rebellion, should there be any. And the story is told by 16 years old Katniss Everdeen, from District Twelve who has volunteered to replace her 12 years old sister for the deadly game.

Okay, what's so fascinating about it? It's about survival - how to be the sole survivor when there are 23 other tributes who will be going after u. And u have to overcome the crazy weather or whatever challenges the Gamemakers have created to keep the game entertaining to woo the audiences. Hence it's entertaining to learn about the distinctive skills those tributes posses to either attack or defend. For example, Peete disguises himself as to be invisible under layer of mud and plant, thanks to his cake decorating skills. Strategies are also employed. For example, to weaken the Careers, Katsis has allied with Rue to blow out their supplies of food. Meanwhile, the Careers who are well-trained, physically capable to involve in brutal killings will work in group at the initial stage to take down weaker opponents who are all on their own. Since I enjoy schadenfreunde, I also love reading the different ways the tributes are killed after they are being outsmarted (food poisoning/ tracker jacker stings etc). Lol.

The bow! Somewhere in my befuddled mind one thought connects to another and I’m on my feet, teetering through the trees back to Glimmer. The bow. The arrows. I must get them. I haven’t heard the cannons fire yet, so perhaps Glimmer is in some sort of coma, her heart still struggling against the wasp venom. But once it stops and the cannon signals her death, a hovercraft will move in and retrieve her body, taking the only bow and sheath of arrows I’ve seen out of the Games for good.

And I refuse to let them slip through my fingers again! I reach Glimmer just as the cannon fires. The tracker jackers have vanished. This girl, so breathtakingly beautiful in her golden dress the night of the interviews, is unrecognizable. Her features eradicated, her limbs three times their normal size. The stinger lumps have begun to explode, spewing putrid green liquid around her. I have to break several of what used to be her fingers with a stone to free the bow. The sheath of arrows is pinned under her back. I try to roll over her body by pulling on one arm, but the flesh disintegrates in my hands and I fall back on the ground.

However, there is one thing I don't appreciate, that is the romance between Peeta and Katsis, who are schemed to be portrayed as the crossed-star lovers from District Twelve to deceive the audiences, and later the Gamemakers and Capitol rulers. And the romance between them later becomes the key to their survival in the arena. But the thing is both the characters shine in their very own way, so when the romance element is thrown into, it just takes out their respective awesomeness and makes them such a cliche. Peete is blindly in love with Katsis that everything he does seems to protect or keep her alive. While Katsis, although she is not smitten, she is confused with her feelings. In short, the lovey-dovey craps just bore me out. Bring on more strategies or manipulation or killings please! Lol.

Having said that, I will read the second book of the trilogy - Catching Fire after this. I will also look forward to its upcoming film.

For the coming one year..

I am not going to start with how much the local libraries suck with their pathetically inadequate book collections which they never seemed to update since ages ago. Instead, I am going to talk about one which never fails to surprise me, which is my uni library.

For the past three years in university, I had spent majority of my campus life in the library. And I foresee myself spending more time there in my coming final year. However, I must admit I was there mostly for the free internet access and cool air-conditioning (to avoid the killer heat) other than the fact that it does provide the kind of superb environment that enables me to concentrate on doing my works.

Regarding the books, I was initially there for reference books related to my field of study. Then I started to explore more and discover that there was a section for fictions. And I was even more amazed that they have some really good collections such as Kafka on The Shore, To Kill a Mockingbird, Never Let Me Go, The Virgin Suicides, Memoirs of a Geisha etc (but mostly are Asian Literature which I wasn't all that keen). One day, I even found an erotic short stories which I of course wouldn't miss haha! Without limiting myself, I moved on to other sections like economics, religion, science etc and I was pleasantly surprised with what I had stumbled across.

For the coming one year (August '11-August '12), I am aiming to read more non-fictions instead. With that, I am targeting to at least read a minimum of non-fictions on biography/ psychology/ philosophy/ politics/ business/ culture while at the same time, I hope I will still be reading fictions. I try not to be ambitious or unrealistic because it will be my final year and I am positive I will be very much occupied with my final year project + lectures + assignments + exams + goofing around with friends before we go separate way + job hunting.

Lets see how it goes then. :)

The Reader (Bernhard Schlink)

I took up German language class last semester and I am planning to proceed to next level XD What others might not know - my dream is not to speak German fluently (impossible unless I live in that country and interact with the natives) but to be able to read books written in German!

Back to the book, it is divided into 3 parts

- Part One tells the story of how 15 years old Michael Berg met with 36 years old Hanna Schmitz, a streetcar conductor whom he was seduced and had developed a secret affair with. They followed a routine of Michael reading aloud to Hanna, showering, making love and then lying together. The relationship ended abruptly when Hanna walked out on Michael’s life one day.

- Part Two tells the story of Michael and Hanna’s unexpected encounter in the courtroom a few years later when Michael had become a law student whereby Hanna was one of the defendants for a series of trials dealing with the camp guards and enforcers who committed their crimes in the Nazi Past. When the verdict was handed down, Hanna was sentence to life. Michael finally learnt about Hanna’s secret - she was illiterate, she couldn’t read and write.

- Part Three tells the story of Michael’s adult life - he failed marriage and his research job in legal history. Then he started to send off tapes which had recorded the reading he did to Hanna. Hanna had learnt to write and read because of it. The exchanging of tapes (and later notes from Hanna) went on for years. And Michael’s first visit to Hanna’s prison happened one week before Hanna was released (after making an appeal for clemency). Nevertheless, the story ended with Hanna committing suicide and Michael carrying out her instructions.

Contrast to my usual habit, I actually watched the movie before reading the book. And I was happy that neither of them has let me down. The movie was superb (I had nothing to complain) and the book I don't mind to pick it up to read again and again. It is really thought-provoking and terrifying given the description of thousands of innocent women who were burned alive in fire or died in march under the harsh weather condition and inadequate clothings when the genocide took place. It makes me thankful to live in the safe and sheltered world I am living now.

One of the many things which prompts me thinking:

- If someone is racing intentionally towards his own destruction and you can save him-do you go ahead and save him? Should we set other people's views of what is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves?

This was raised when Michael was in a dilemma whether to go to the judge and tell him that Hanna was illiterate to serve justice so that Hanna would be punished less severely. But he also wondered should he act on behalf of her while this possibly could not be what she was fighting for.

"Yes, that was what she had been fighting for, but she was not willing to earn victory at the price of exposure as an illiterate. Nor would she want me to barter her self-image for a few years in prison. She could have made that kind of trade herself, and did not, which meant she didn’t want it. Her sense of self was worth more than the years in prison to her.

But was it really worth all that? What did she gain from this false self-image which ensnared her and crippled her and paralyzed her? With the energy she put into maintaining the lie, she could have learned to read and write long ago."

Moving on to the characters. I had so much sympathy for the adolescent Michael who was suffering for being in love with a woman who not only did not reciprocate his feelings but also manipulated him emotionally. And when she left him unannouncedly, he was tortured with not only physical desire but the feeling of guilt which led him to blame himself for driving her away thus believe Hanna’s punishment of leaving was well-deserved.

"But its results had meaning. I had not only lost this fight. I had caved in after a short struggle when she threatened to send me away and withhold herself. In the weeks that followed I didn’t fight at all. If she threatened, I instantly and unconditionally surrendered. I took all the blame. I admitted mistakes I hadn’t made, intentions I’d never had. Whenever she turned cold and hard, I begged her to be good to me again, to forgive me and love me. Sometimes I had the feeling that she hurt herself when she turned cold and rigid. As if what she was yearning for was the warmth of my apologies, protestations, and entreaties. Sometimes I thought she just bullied me. But either way, I had no choice."

Moving on to Part Two, I started to see Hanna more than an emotionally detached woman who “exploited” Michael. True that she was guilty with the crimes she committed but not as guilty as it seemed, neither was she the main protagonist the way others made her out to be. She was confused and helpless. Her incapacity to familiarize herself with the indictment and the manuscript and also probably of her consequent lack of any sense of strategy or tactics all happened because of her illiteracy.

"And no, at the trial Hanna did not weigh exposure as an illiterate against exposure as a criminal. She did not calculate and she did not maneuver. She accepted that she would be called to account, and simply did not wish to endure further exposure. She was not pursuing her own interests, but fighting for her own truth, her own justice. Because she always had to dissimulate somewhat, and could never be completely candid, it was a pitiful truth and a pitiful justice, but it was hers, and the struggle for it was her struggle.

She must have been completely exhausted. Her struggle was not limited to the trial. She was struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn’t do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats."

Everything was so sad. It broke my heart reading that Michael was on the verge of crying while finding out more and more truths after Hanna’s death. But I could totally understand why he didn’t write to Hanna or visit her in prison until one week before she was about to get out.

"Precisely because she was both close and removed in such an easy way, I didn’t want to visit her. I had the feeling she could only be what she was to me at an actual distance. I was afraid that the small, light, safe world of notes and cassettes was too artificial and too vulnerable to withstand actual closeness. How could we meet face to face without everything that had happened between us coming to the surface?"

Man, this book is officially my favourite! Go read it if u haven't.

Note to self: Read more on The Holocaust.