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.

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.

A Walk to Remember (Nicholas Sparks)

I think it was about 6-7 years ago when I first read this book. I picked it up from the school's library bookshelves and finished reading it within a few days time. It was quite an accomplishment back then as I had only started reading English books for not too long. I also remember claiming to have fallen in love with it. And soon, I watched the movie which was made based on it (but I thought it wasn't as nice as the book itself).

But if u ask me - what's so nice about this book? Truth to be told, I wouldn't have been able to answer u. And I can't recall if I have read any other novels by Nicholas Sparks. I think I DID, but I have no memory of the storyline, characters or whatsoever etc That says something, right? (Don't tell me that I am getting older!) Hence, that explains my intention to reread this book to find out what was so special about it and why I loved it so much back then.

Then I spent longer time than I probably did in the past to finish reading this book. And I think I understand why I loved it so much back then. U see.. 6-7 years ago I was still in my teens and I happened to be quite a sucker for sappy romance books. That alone could be the primary reason. Now u might want to ask me - do u enjoy it for the second time? The answer nahhh, is not so much.

I do love the setting though. Beaufort, North Caroline in the 50s.

It was the kind of place where the humidity rose so high in the summer that walking out to get the mail made a person feel as if he needed a shower, and kids walked around barefoot from April through October beneath oak trees draped in Spanish moss. People waved from their cars whenever they saw someone on the street whether they knew him or not, and the air smelled of pine, salt, and sea, a scent unique to the Carolinas.

And I find myself relate more to Landon carter instead of the selfless and religious girl, Jamie Sullivan. Truth to be told, if only I knew one of the main themes is Christian faith, I would have thought twice before reading it. Nevertheless, there are still some scenes of the story I found myself laugh, i.e Landon's dilemma to ask Jamie to the dance.

It was then that I realized something terrible, something absolutely frightening. Carey Dennison, I suddenly realized, was probably doing the exact same thing I was doing right now. He was probably looking through the yearbook, too! He was weird, but he wasn't the kind of guy who liked cleaning up puke, either, and if you'd seen his mother, you'd know that his choice was even worse than mine. What if he asked Jamie first? Jamie wouldn't say no to him, and realistically she was the only option he had. No one besides her would be caught dead with him. Jamie helped everyone-she was one of those equal opportunity saints. She'd probably listen to Carey's squeaky voice, see the goodness radiating from his heart, and accept right off the bat.

Overall, it could make a simple, good (and hopefully not too unmemorable) read but if u are looking for something more unpredictable, then u might be disappointed.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower ( Stephen Chbosky)

"It is a story narrated by a teenager who goes by the alias of "Charlie"; he describes various scenes in his life by writing a series of letters to an anonymous person, whom he does not know personally. The story explores topics such as introversion, teenage sexuality, homosexuality, abuse, and the awkward times of adolescence. The book also touches strongly on drug use and Charlie's experiences with this. " (From Wikipedia)

It does sound like something I normally dig. Afterall what "Charlie" is put through, those happy and sad moments, is something I believe every teenager or young adult has been through (or is still going through); something that we should be familiar with in one way or another; something that we can relate ourselves to.

Surely when "Charlie" touches on the tragedies that happen in his life - the suicide of his friend, his sister's teenage pregnancy, domestic violence etc, it touched my heart. However, to my surprise, I was actually bored that I decided to stop half way through instead of finishing it. I found the way the story is narrated monotonous that I simply couldn't be bothered to pick up the pace to find out more. And I want to read no more tragedies.

Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)

I knew the library CAIS have it on the shelves, but I never really bothered to check it out until I read about the film Never Let Me Go (starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield) based on the novel of the same name in one of the TIME issues. Then I did some Googling before I borrowed it. So yeah, I already knew about the twist before reading it.

I first started reading it right after my finals. But I only finished reading the story shortly before I went to Royals, which was about 1 week before the Christmas. I suppose I could have taken longer period of time to finish it but seeing that I was left with nothing much to do at home by that time, I could have finished it way earlier either. Like I said, I knew about the twist beforehand, hence I wasn't left that puzzled about many things (that went explained or unexplained) in the book.

The story started off with Tommy getting bullied by other students because of some silly harmless joke he pulled during the art class, and also because of his poor reputation for "creativity". There was once Kathy tried to be friendly to him and that was how their friendship was established. Later, Tommoy got into a relationship with Kathy's buddy, Ruth.

Growing up in Hailsham hadn't been easy. There were so many unwritten rules the students imposed on themselves. There were topics they avoided because bringing up would make their guardians awkward whenever they came near this territory. Kathy, Ruth, Tommy and other students at Hailsham had been constantly reminded of how special or important they were, that they must always keep themselves well and healthy. They were different from their guardians, and also from the normal people outside. Nevertheless, they didn't really know what that meant until they were older.

Mind u, even though these kids were "different" and they were isolated from the outside world, they were nonetheless like u and I when there were cliques, dramas occurring in daily life and they were curious about sex when they had entered the teenage years. But none of them would live the way they planned, either being the film stars or working in supermarkets. And this is because "Your lives are set out for you. You'll become adults, then before you're old, before you're even middle-aged, you'll start to donate your vital organs. That's what each of you was created to do. You're brought into this world for a purpose, and your futures, all of them have been decided." Yeah, the twist is they were cloned for organ donating purpose.

After they moved and lived at the Cottages, one day Kathy decided to leave to start her training to become a carer after something happened between her, Tommy and Ruth. Of course, the three of them met again and spent some time together many years later before Tommy and Ruth had had their last donation and died. Also, Tommy and Kathy at last did go to see one of their guardians, Miss Emily and Madame. A lot of mysteries which puzzled them in those early days were answered. Like why Madame turning up several times each year to select their best work etc.

It is not like I didn't enjoy this book. I did. But I started to skim through it upon entering those chapters where the characters met each other many years later. It seemed like I lost my interest or maybe all I needed was more time. And last but not least, although Ruth was the bad guy in the story, I couldn't help but like her. Yes, she was indeed manipulative and selfish.. but I believe under most circumstances, that's how it should be, especially when u are on your own.

P/S: Looking forward to get a soft copy of the film itself!!! Wanna watch Keira Knightley.

(Once again, think it's a bit too long. Also, I seriously need to work on my writing. And it obviously took me ages to finish a review too :S )

A Painted House (John Grisham)

I have tried reading several John Grisham's books before, but I always ended up quitting half way through. So this is the first ever John Grisham's book that I have finished reading. And it is also the last book I read in 2010.

As contrast to his usual work, A Painted House is nothing about law or courtroom dramas or criminal justice. In fact, it is about the Chandler family who lived in rural Arkansas. The story is told through the eyes of Luke Chandler, a seven year-old boy.

The story started off with Luke and his grandfather, to whom he referred to as Pappy looking to hire hill people to work in their cotton field. With the cotton waiting to be picked, they were desperate for help in the fields. They eventually got the Spruill family and ten Mexicans who would be living with them until the harvest was over.

I must admit, I really enjoyed reading this book, mainly because it portrays the thoughts of a seven year-old on what was happening around him, some of his fears and dreams as well. Luke dreamed of a life away from the fields and a baseball career. He wondered why anyone would want to be a farmer as they barely made money with the debts and all. Like everyone else, Luke had to pick cotton before sunrise till evening not because he wanted to but he was forced to, although he was getting paid for his hard work and the money was needed to purchase the Cardinal jacket he dreamed of. While working through the stalks of cotton, he had to worry about the snakes which he feared so much of.

Upon the arrival of the migrant workers, dramas and secrets started to come into play. Luke getting picked on by Hank. Luke developing a crush on Tally. Luke discovering the romance between Tally and Cowboy. Luke seeing the fight between Hank and the Sisco brothers where he had no choice but to become the witness when Jerry Sisco was dead. Luke sneaking out with Tally to watch Libby Latcher in labor, later only to discover that his uncle, Ricky who was fighting in the Korean War was believed to have impregnated that girl. Luke getting beaten up by the Latcher brothers. Luke once again witnessing the death of another man - Hank who was murdered by Cowboy. Luke subsequently getting threatened by Cowboy to kill his mother if he didn't keep the secret. And many more.

Most of the time, Luke was struggled emotionally, whether to tell the adults the secrets he knew or suffer alone. When he was interrogated about the death of Jerry Sisco by Chief Stick, he was in dilemma whether to tell the truth or lie. Since the Chandler family was dependent on migrant workers on field hands, Luke was very much aware that they couldn't afford to lose them. Therefore he always weighed the situation before he did something. After all, being left short-handed also meant Luke had to pick more cottons, something a seven year-old was dread of. With no siblings to talk and play with (although it is later revealed that his mother was pregnant), Luke was desperately hoping for the return of his uncle. As a seven year-old, he could never understand why the adults had to always keep him away from any controversy. Also, he was confused with religion, especially with the worship and all the preaching Brother Akers gave. He thought it was ridiculous that his grandmother had invented the sin of taking food from the less fortunate when he was found of taking the Mexicans' tortilla. " As Baptists, we were never short on sins to haunt us."

With the men worrying and fretting about the weather and cotton prices, another character that I liked a lot is Luke's mother. Being born as a city girl, she was determined to flee the farm life, have a house in a town/ city with indoor plumbing. She also made sure that she brainwashed Luke into not staying on the farm. She got her dream when heavy downpours started to hit Black Oak and the Chandler's fields were flooded. The Spruills left after their daughter, Tally was running off with a Mexican, Cowboy. The Mexicans were dismissed to other farms where they were still needed. Because of the bad weather and the crop failure, Luke and his parents had to move North to find job to help erasing the debts. Before their departure, Luke with the help of the Mexicans had finished painting their house. The work was initially started by Trot after Luke was made fun of by Hank for living in an unpainted house on rented land. Despite feeling sad about the departure and leaving behind his grandparents living with the Latchers knowing that they would never return, Luke was looking forward to his new life - attend better school, go to new church, make new friends etc

(Damn, think it's a bit too long :S)