Before I launch into the many things that gave me pause, I should clarify that I still read Mockingjay in about 4 hours. Collins' style and clear prose remain, and her sensibility as a landscape builder is as strong as ever. When the novel opens, Katniss is meandering around the smoldering remains of her decimated home in District 12. Peeta has been captured by the capitol, and Gale, Katniss's mother and sister and the remaining survivors of District 12 have taken refuge in the underground prison camp that is District 13. As the story progresses, Katniss steps into the role of revolutionary symbol (not leader, a distinction that troubles her), called the Mockingjay. As she struggles with her new restrictive new role, she also wavers between Peeta (who has been brainwashed by the capitol) and Gale (whose new outlook on war is disturbingly bloodthirsty). The scenes in which Katniss visits District 8 are emotionally explosive (and literally explosive, those poor people) and the character work around Finnick was sound. In fact, he ended up being my favorite character in the book. Which leads me neatly into the things I liked less.
One of the things I loved about Katniss in the previous books was that, despite her strange and horrible circumstance, she was incredibly relatable. She struggled to understand her own motives in a way that felt truly teenaged; she loved her family fiercely and she yearned, very realistically, for a different life. But the Katniss in this book was so emotionally shut down it was nearly impossible to empathize with her. This was particularly troublesome in the scenes that follow Prim's death. The whole reason Katniss became involved in the Hunger Games in the first place was to protect Prim. When she is ultimately killed, rendering Katniss's efforts in vain, I expected a much bigger emotional hit than there was. Similarly, given the amount of time she spends going back and forth between the two, when Katniss ultimately decides upon Peeta (which seemed as much out of convenience as anything else) we get a rather truncated epilogue with little passion left in it. And of course, they have babies. Why do they always have to have babies?
In both the previous installments, I ignored the fact the structure was incredibly back-loaded, assuming that was done on purpose in order to set up the next book. Huge, climactic scenes that opened up lots of loose ends tended to pop in the last 50 pages or so-- and I didn't read this as a flaw. But in the final installment, the same structure holds, to a much less satisfying effect. There was also the is
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By: maggie,
on 5/25/2010
Blog: Gob Wrote A Book (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: smarty pants kids, YA, consumerism, awesomeness, badassitude, Add a tag
I loved Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. I loved that it was entertaining, compelling and that it taught me about a wide variety of geeky tech things I didn't know a damn thing about. I loved its honesty about scary things like government, sex and violence. I loved its moral compass. I loved its idealism. I loved the way it textured my life after I read it, how I couldn't help but think of the things I'd learned when I made a withdrawal from the bank, used Fastrak, bought Mac products.
But I loved For the Win even more.
When I was in high school and was forced in my senior year to take economics, I HATED IT. It was a close second to my least favorite subject of math (at the time statistics) which makes sense. Both disciplines require attention to detail, number crunching, formulas. Things I do not like. And my continuing near complete ignorance in regard to all things money related 
has come back to bite me in the butt on numerous occasions, not least of all raising its head during the entire economic meltdown, which, when asked about it I would have to say things like: "It's just bad news all around," and/or "Um yes, I guess the president should fix this... how? Oh wow, look over there!" [runs away]
So, despite what several reviewers cited as didactic passages, I loved how much I was able to learn from this book. Yes, I understand that this book is meant for teens. Yes, I know I should have known a lot of this stuff going into this book. Yes, I get that for people who already know all this, the "here's what's happening when people sell you stock" passages may feel overly didactic. But for someone totally ignorant (me!) it was great-- Doctorow makes all this stuff that made me want to stick glass in my eyes during high school totally interesting, fascinating even, and most of all cool. His comparisons are fresh, humorous and intelligent. The passage about the Coase cost utilizes light touches of neuroscience to help people like me engage, and feel clever for being able to do so.
If there's anything I cared about less than econ, it's online gaming. I'm a total nerd for some things (...I keep a blog of kids' book reviews...in my adult life) but online RPGs are just past my threshold. And by just past, I mean way past. And just like econ, Doctorow was able to pull me in, despite overwhelming prejudice. I still don't want to play the games, but I have a new found interest in the people who do, and the meta-markets they support.
Set in 4 different countries, with an epic cast of characters, Doctorow puts a face to globalization in a way that is undeniably cool, without glorifying the characters--there's a great moment of self-awareness when one of the 2 main American characters, a white kid named Leonard who goes by Wei-Dong (in order to fit in with his remote Chinese gamer friends) is forced to remind himself why he's gotten involved with the burgeoning online-revolution, and the loneliness inherent in his lifestyle. Each major character has a moment when they question fighting for a cause with people in countries they will never go to, and comrades they will never meet, to fantastic effect: the "real world" becomes an outmoded term, and the world of the gamers asserts itself.
These elements in conjunction with Doctorow's strong use of inte
By: maggie,
on 4/13/2010
Blog: Gob Wrote A Book (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: spirals, Manga, independent booksellers, badassitude, Add a tag
humbling) recommended Uzumaki by Junji Ito to cure me of my manga-phobia. And it worked. Badass art and the awesome conceit of a town haunted by spirals (the noun and the verb) make this manga a total page turner that'll have you shuddering every time you see a spiral in real life. Which is often, being that the spiral is a crazily commonly occurring shape in nature, being that it's the best basic visual for a fractal. Which leads me neatly to my only complaint, which was that the spiral conceit, at least in the first volume (there are 3) is not exercised to its fullest potential, and by the end I did feel like the stories were getting a bit repetitive. However, if I'd read this at ages 13-16, the intended age of the audience (it was originally published in installments in a Japanese girl's magazine), it would have scared the pee out of me. The visuals are haunting and terrifying, and there were moments that made me shudder, need to put the book down, then immediately pick the book back up again. A perfect read for the morbid set of reluctant readers, and for silly adults like me who did not believe in the power of manga. 
By: maggie,
on 3/3/2010
Blog: Gob Wrote A Book (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: fights to the death, badassitude, crazy violence, YA, Add a tag
For ages at least 15+, this book may fill the void that Mockingjay (the last in the Hunger Games trilogy) is leaving in the bloodthirsty pit of YA-reader's souls. Though it's not as cleanly (or expertly) written as Hunger Games (which may be in some part on account of being translated) it's almost as addictive, and for added morbidity, the children in this novel have all known each other for years. What follows is an incredibly violent, bloody and horrible fight to the finish, with the most loving descriptions of brains hanging out of a crushed skull that I am likely to ever read.
And if that's not graphic enough for you, check out the manga version.
By: maggie,
on 3/3/2010
Blog: Gob Wrote A Book (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: swords, badassitude, Foucault, sentient prisons, YA, Add a tag
Already published in the UK (and recipient of the Times Children's Book of the year) Incarceron is an awesome YA novel I'm very excited to hand off to fans of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Though Incarceron is not as readily accessible as Hunger Games 
(and therefor less likely to appeal to the precocious readers who read UP for Hunger Games), it does have the same undeniable (and addictive!) sense of forward prepulsion. Like Hunger Games, Incarceron is a page turner, with enough violence to appeal even to the blood thirstiest young readers. However, thematically, Incarceron stands very much apart. Set (half) in an enormous, sentient prison, the characters in Incarceron are very much aware that they are under constant surveilance. Even in the parts which take place outside the prison, the characters bear the same burden. Imagine Foucault wrote a speculative sci-fi fantasy novel. For kids. Kids who took to the sight and surveilance themes of Little Brother by Cory Doctorow may also enjoy this novel, if they are willing to go into an alternate universe. Add these themes into a world of a constantly shifting and unstable reality, along with enough serpentine plot twists to make you dizzy, and you have the world of Incarceron.
I liked this book so much that, despite never using Amazon in the US, I hopped on Amazon UK to order the sequel, Sapphique, which is not out in the states yet. And it was TOTALLY worth my lapse of moral consumerism! It is a worthy follow-up indeed, and it does exactly what a second book in a trilogy should, which is to expand the world we've already encountered and to complicate the problems and relationships of the characters. Fisher uses varying points of view for maximum tension, even that does occasionally mean switching POV as a way of punctuating exciting moments. I am wary of saying too much about this sequel, since I enjoyed it so much because it was so suprising, and I would hate to ruin that experience for anyone else. Suffice to say, it was a pleasure to read, and I anxiously await the third book, which is due out in May (in the UK).
By: maggie,
on 7/8/2009
Blog: Gob Wrote A Book (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: independent booksellers, Berkeley, badassitude, Add a tag
3086 Claremont Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94706.
Go there, for stacks and stacks of the most eccentric, awesome, obscure, culty, random collection of titles ever. The books are literally falling off the walls, in something that resembles alphabetical order, and it's literally my favorite place to waste hours and money. There are plenty of books that I could write down the titles of and order through my store (and plenty used or UK editions that I could not) but I buy them there. Why? Because it's the only place I know that would stock everything that they stock and so they deserve the sale.
Recently purchased there:
The Wizard in the Tree by Lloyd Alexander,
and 3 Bellairs middle-grade horror/mysteries, including one recommended on the Dark Carnival website, The Chessmen of Doom.
Thanks for being awesome, Dark Carnival.
http://www.darkcarnival.com/
