It is time!! Time for our Hunger Games Pow Wow! Are you ready? I can’t emphasize enough how excited I’ve been to hear what you all thought of the books and what they made you think about. Any reactions, impressions, kvetches, complaints, and celebrations welcome!

Last week, I posted a series of questions that I had in my mind as I was reading the books. Feel free to respond to them if you like, or pose questions of your own. And do check back for responses, as I’ll be conversing with everyone in the comments section as well.

Here are the questions I posed last week, for convenient reference:

* All right, up front: Team Peeta or Team Gale?

* How did you read the very end of the book, as depicted in the Epilogue? Hopeful? Bleak? Dubious?

* Do you think it matters that the main character is a girl? How do you think the books might have been different if told from a male perspective (i.e. Peeta’s or Gale’s – or even Haymitch)?

* I’ve seen that these books have been added to Christian high school and bible study reading lists, citing sacrifice as a major theme. Do you see Katniss as a Christ figure? Do you think the books are Christian in nature?

* How do you read her “yes” vote at the end? What do you think was her motivation?

* Did you find the violence of the Games or the violence of the war harder to read? Why?

* Who were your favorite characters and why? Are there any characters you wish had been more fully fleshed out?

* For me, the evolution (or devolution) of character from victim to perpetrator and blurring of lines between the two categories is a really interesting theme in the books. Others have talked about the issues raised regarding classicism and feminism. Were these important themes to you? Did anything else stand out?

* There is a scene about 40% of the way through the third book, where Katniss is playing with the cat, Buttercup, making him chase a flashlight and she has a realization about Snow. Here is the excerpt:

You simply wiggle a flashlight beam around on the floor, and Buttercup tries to catch it. I’m petty enough to enjoy it because I think it makes him look stupid. Inexplicably, everyone here thinks he’s clever and delightful…It’s on the third night, during our game, that I answer the question eating away at me. Crazy Cat becomes a metaphor for my situation. I am Buttercup. Peeta, the thing I want so badly to secure, is the light. As long as Buttercup feels he has the chance of catching the elusive light under his paws, he’s bristling with aggression…When the light goes out completely, Buttercup’s temporarily distraught and confused, but he recovers and moves on to other things. (That’s what would happen if Peeta died.) But the one thing that sends Buttercup into a tailspin is when I leave the light on but put it hopelessly out of his reach, high on the wall, beyond even his jumping skills. He paces below the wall, wails, and can’t be comforted or distracted. He’s useless until I shut the light off. (That’s what Snow is trying to do to me now, only I don’t know what form his game takes.)

Katniss believes this is what Snow is doing to her: dangling bait in a way precisely calculated to drive her crazy and get what he wants. But is Snow the only one to do this? Are there ways in which Katniss does it too?

* And finally, what do you think of Katniss’ decision to assassinate Coin? Was it expedient? Do the “ends justify the means”? What do you think it suggests about her views on power and the role of government? Do you think she believes in democracy, or is she essentially an anarchist?

So tell me: what did you get from the books?

So about a month ago, I had the “brilliant” idea to host a Hunger Games trilogy discussion, and I promised to post some potential discussion questions a week in advance. But the closer I got to the date, the more I started freaking out about how providing discussion questions might be a total flop. What if the questions made people feel too limited? What if the questions were boring and didn’t spark a conversation at all? How could I do this in a way that doesn’t sound too much like homework? But the trilogy sprouted so many questions in my head and raised so many issues for me to think about! I’ve been dying to hear what others thought and what other issues the books might have raised for them. (And, dude. Let me just say, patience is not one of my virtues.) I wanted to give people a chance to go back and take a look at the books if they wanted to. Or maybe I’m just a total nerd and am the only one to find that kind of thing exciting.

Well, okay, let’s face it. I am a total nerd. But…does anyone else want to be one with me?

So I’m just gonna’ go ahead and wing it and post my questions. Just know these are the questions I’ve had stewing in my brain as I was reading the books, and I’m just super curious to hear what others think. The discussion will be held Wednesday, April 25 - one week from today. Feel free to respond to the questions and/or bring your own observations, reactions, kvetches, and celebrations.

Also note: These questions refer to the entire trilogy. If you haven’t read all three books, proceed with caution. Spoilers are involved. Plus, I strongly doubt you can have a complete view of the author’s intentions without reading all three. In fact, just reading the first book alone, I think, makes for a very skewed interpretation of what the books are about and who the characters really are.

Ok, here we go. Hunger Games Food for Thought:

* All right, up front: Team Peeta or Team Gale?

* How did you read the very end of the book, as depicted in the Epilogue? Hopeful? Bleak? Dubious?

* Do you think it matters that the main character is a girl? How do you think the books might have been different if told from a male perspective (i.e. Peeta’s or Gale’s – or even Haymitch)?

* I’ve seen that these books have been added to Christian high school and bible study reading lists, citing sacrifice as a major theme. Do you see Katniss as a Christ figure? Do you think the books are Christian in nature?

* How do you read her “yes” vote at the end? What do you think was her motivation?

* Did you find the violence of the Games or the violence of the war harder to read? Why?

* Who were your favorite characters and why? Are there any characters you wish had been more fully fleshed out?

* For me, the evolution (or devolution) of character from victim to perpetrator and blurring of lines between the two categories is a really interesting theme in the books. Others have talked about the issues raised regarding classicism and feminism. Were these important themes to you? Did anything else stand out?

* There is a scene about 40% of the way through the third book, where Katniss is playing with the cat, Buttercup, making him chase a flashlight and she has a realization about Snow. Here is the excerpt:

You simply wiggle a flashlight beam around on the floor, and Buttercup tries to catch it. I’m petty enough to enjoy it because I think it makes him look stupid. Inexplicably, everyone here thinks he’s clever and delightful…It’s on the third night, during our game, that I answer the question eating away at me. Crazy Cat becomes a metaphor for my situation. I am Buttercup. Peeta, the thing I want so badly to secure, is the light. As long as Buttercup feels he has the chance of catching the elusive light under his paws, he’s bristling with aggression…When the light goes out completely, Buttercup’s temporarily distraught and confused, but he recovers and moves on to other things. (That’s what would happen if Peeta died.) But the one thing that sends Buttercup into a tailspin is when I leave the light on but put it hopelessly out of his reach, high on the wall, beyond even his jumping skills. He paces below the wall, wails, and can’t be comforted or distracted. He’s useless until I shut the light off. (That’s what Snow is trying to do to me now, only I don’t know what form his game takes.)

Katniss believes this is what Snow is doing to her: dangling bait in a way precisely calculated to drive her crazy and get what he wants. But is Snow the only one to do this? Are there ways in which Katniss does it too?

* And finally, what do you think of Katniss’ decision to assassinate Coin? Was it expedient? Do the “ends justify the means”? What do you think it suggests about her views on power and the role of government? Do you think she believes in democracy, or is she essentially an anarchist?

Hope to see you all here next week!

The Marriage Plot

by: Jeffrey Eugenides

This book was a lot of fun, and a bit of a surprising departure from Middlesex, but every bit as good. (I mean, heck, it’s been named Best Book of 2011 by a variety of sources.)

Actually, this is the book I wish I had in college, when I was reading up on critical theory. This book would have made all that so much more interesting and inviting – it even inspired me to do a quick refresher and wikipedia a bunch of theorists to learn about their lives and ideas. (Don’t tell my old professors.)

Anyway, the book. The Marriage Plot is set in the early 1980s, where three students – the beautiful Madeleine Hanna, charismatic Leonard Bankhead, and earnest Mitchell Grammaticus – are studying together at Brown. Madeleine’s professor contends that the Novel died with Jane Austen and her ilk, and that what was good for women’s rights, ultimately killed the marriage as plot. That very idea gets tested as Madeleine, and incurable romantic, navigates her own way through college and into real life, torn by these two very different men who have their own journeys to explore.

This book is both light-hearted and deep, witty and wry, sweet, with just a touch of bitter irony. Plus you learn a bit along the way! If you’ve ever read and loved Sophie’s World, by Jostein Gaarder, this is a book for you. The beginning third, especially, is very much like Sophie’s World - for adults.

I had a lot of fun putting together my family tree. Here it is:

What’s yours? Link it up and join in here!

Journaling Life in Thailand

Happy Tuesday everyone! Sorry I missed coffee last week. I needed a bit of a hiatus to catch my breath – a.k.a. read The Hunger Games and process what the heck I just read. Seriously, those books gave me so much to think about. They’re still on my mind a week later. Have you read them? I’ve been chewing on them so much, I decided I’d like to hold a Hunger Games discussion forum on my blog here, so I can hear what you all thought of stuff that came out of the books. We could have a Hunger Games Pow Wow.  I’m going to hold it on Wednesday, April 25. Just a little over a month out, so that those of you who haven’t yet finished the trilogy have time to read them, and those of you who are kind of thinking about reading up on what all the fuss is about have some time to pick up the books too. Sound like fun?

About a week before hand, I’ll post some potential discussion questions that we can talk about, and if there’s anything in particular that stood out about the books for you too, please feel free to submit some questions you’d like to put to the group. To give you a taste of some of the questions I’ll pose, I’ll tell you I’d love to talk about how people read the ending of the trilogy. And I’ll ask: do you think the books are Christian in nature or agnostic? Do you think Katniss is an advocate for democracy, or is she essentially an anarchist? And: Team Peeta or Team Gale?

Anyway, aside from that, things here have been interesting. I think I mentioned before that it’s burning season here, where people burn down old crops to fertilize the soil for the new year, which pretty much means the sky is filled with smoke all. the. time. I try to go for runs in the evening, but it’s getting so bad, I can feel my lungs tighten. No bueno. But last week, we had some serious storms rage through here. The winds were so bad they ripped off part of the roof of our resource center at SOLD and started dumping rain on one of the staff bedrooms. So we had to get that fixed. And our security guard to our little neighborhood must have got caught out in it because, as we were going to dinner, we saw him wandering around the neighborhood in his undershorts. It’s not often we see toothless old men walking around in their skivvies. The upside of the rain, though, is it did clear the air for a couple of days.

I don’t really want to pray for rain because the heavy rains we had last year is part of what caused those horrible floods in Ayutthaya and Bangkok. (But I’m kind of praying for rain – just not as much rain as we got last year.)

On Saturday, I did a special Dental Health class for the kids at SOLD, and they were so surprised when I told them that you have to floss all the way up into your gums when you floss; not just the sides of your teeth. They were like, “Doesn’t it hurt?” Umm, no. And if it does…get thee to a dentist.

By the way, I read (and I have no idea if this is accurate information or not, but I did see it on a kids’ dental health website) that in the early 1900′s, it was common practice to have ALL your teeth removed as a 21st birthday present. The idea was teeth just give you grief in the end, so take them all out at once and just wear dentures. (Umm…what? No, thanks.)

The other thing that happened was Toby and I went out to dinner and just as we started to eat, one of the lenses popped right out of Toby’s glasses – the frame had totally snapped. He’s been thinking about getting LASIK done for awhile now, especially since it’s so cheap here in Thailand compared to the States, the doctors are excellent and they often have newer equipment. He vowed never to have to buy another pair of glasses. So now he’s making do with contacts (which he hates because they really irritate his eyes), until he can get down to Bangkok to get LASIK done. Have any of you had it done? How did it go for you?

And the biggest excitement going on here is that Toby’s cousin, Susi, is coming out to visit from Berlin! We haven’t seen her since about 2009, so we’re very excited. She gets here on Saturday and I just can’t wait to show her around.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ve prattled on long enough. Tell me, what’s going on in your part of the world?

Image Source: http://www.thehungergamesunitplan.com/

The benefits of reading were never something I’ve questioned. From a young age, I always loved how books could suck me in to a totally different time and place, expose me to new thoughts and ideas, and encapsulate feelings I had in more poignant and erudite ways than I could ever coin.

I love books that emphasize honor and hope, I love when characters become real to me, and I love when books make me see the world or even just a facet of it in a new light. I love when books expose a truth.

But I begin to wonder: can books actually change your mind? Sure, they may open our minds to something we hadn’t considered before, and thus may shape our opinions or way we think about things. But what about already-established opinions? Or, even more difficult, what about already-established habits and behavior? Leaving aside nonfiction, I want to focus on fiction and the use of story and allegory, metaphor, and trope to make an argument.

I started reading The Hunger Games. (If you haven’t read them and don’t like spoilers, you might want to skip the rest of this discussion because I’m going to talk about the books in a way that assumes you’ve already read them.) Right around the time Katniss’s team starts prepping her for her interview before the games in the first book, I was struck with an overwhelming sense of unease. It struck me as highly ironic, and perhaps even manipulative, that the author was sending us a message about the horrors of violence and our addiction to violence-as-entertainment simultaneously as she draws us into an addictive, violent story.

Not every one reads the books for the violence, obviously. People are drawn into the story by things like the empathetic characters (which, in that same scene before her interview the characters discuss what makes a character empathetic…again, another poke from the author), the love triangle, innocents like Rue, and heartbreaking moments like the finger-to-mouth salutes, and the underdog/David v. Goliath storyline.

Through the book, the author conducts an in-depth exploration of PTSD, how horrific events can change a person, and the power of war to strip a people of who they are. She offers a formidable indictment against society for its appetite for violence and for its capacity to sacrifice innocents for the security of the whole. And she shows how victims themselves can become perpetrators. (All themes, given my work, I’m very aware of and sensitive to, as I see in the real world where hunger is not a game, and where children are forced to do terrible things, in the name of the state, for the sake of entertainment.)

The books, as I see them, are quite bleak. I appreciate them for sucking me in and exposing truth, but the trajectory of the book is not, in the end, a happy one.

And yet, there is such fanfare and great excitement surrounding the books and the movie, it strikes me as a little odd…like having a 1984 celebration or a Clockwork Orange party, featuring the Manchurian Candidate.

Again, not everyone is in it for the violence or to revel in dystopianism. But when people start saying that it makes them want to watch Battle Royale again to see kids duke it out with other kids, and speculate on what person would live or die if it happened to them, and marketing execs know it’s targeted to young adults who also drive the horror film industry…it’s hard to argue that the violence isn’t at least some part of the draw.

I watch movies with violence in them too – generally of the political thriller variety. And yet, as sympathetic as I am to the books’ argument, is this going to make me stop watching violent movies? Doubt it. As much as people might get the central message, will it actually change our minds about how we view violence-as-entertainment? Do we accept we have a natural human proclivity to schadenfreude, or do books like these actually encourage us to change our behavior?

These books are being included in high school classrooms and Christian Bible study groups and book clubs around the country, ostensibly to share some of the books’ lessons with kids in an easily digestible format. And yet, as a teacher who created lesson plans around the books to share with other teachers, has said, “Students will be so hooked on Katniss Everdeen’s struggle to survive in the murderous arena, they won’t even notice that they are learning about dystopian literature and totalitarianism.” She said it as if it’s a good thing.

This raises a question for me about the power of books to really change minds. Books like 1984, due to their literary nature, will only reach a narrow audience. Books like The Hunger Games have a wide, popular appeal…but do the elements that make them popular also distract from the underlying themes? Do we nod our heads blithely at the lessons and societal criticisms, while focusing on the love stories, rebellious spirit, and fantastic costumes and imagery? People who are averse to violence and violent themes don’t need the books. But people who tend to approach violence in ways that are sometimes unthinking…or worse…what effect, if any, do the books have on them?

At the end of the day, the question I’m left with is: do books preach only to the choir?

This week, my Bigger Picture Moment came not in the form of an answer or revelation, but a tricky question to which I have no answer. I’m open and curious to hear what others think. It’s possibly a provocative question, but hopefully not a judgmental one. Sometimes, for me, part of living life with intention is asking myself questions, even if I might not like my own answer.

Each Thursday, we come together to celebrate living life with intention by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment. Have you found yourself in such a moment lately? Share it with us! 

The Lost Wife

I seem to be finding quite a few books these days through stumbling across intriguing quotes from the author. Richman said she got the idea for the book from a comment she overheard at a wedding. The groom’s grandfather happened to meet the bride’s grandmother at the wedding rehearsal. He recognized her immediately and asked her to lift her sleeve, revealing the number tattooed on her arm. He knew her. “You were my wife,” said he.

From this true story, Richman weaves a really touching tale of love and loss, loyalty and separation, the depths to which we will go for family even amidst the most horrendous, incomprehensible destruction. The characters are full and rich and endearing, and the premise hooks you from the very start.

I only had two quibbles with the book. One, in several scenes the writing keeps switching back and forth between past and present tense. It gets really distracting. If it was intentional, I can’t figure out why. If it wasn’t intentional, I have no idea how that got past editorial. And two, the part focusing on life in the ghetto and work camps dragged on a bit too much for me. I feel horrible saying that, but I say it only because it felt like this book wasn’t a book really about the Holocaust and what happened there. If it was about that, then it glosses over the horrors and doesn’t serve its function much. I certainly wasn’t reading it to learn more about the Holocaust, because there are plenty of other resources for that, that do a much better job. Meanwhile, what I would have liked to see more of was the aftermath: life after destruction. That part was pretty much summarized just before the end, and it felt like a lost opportunity.

While I was reading the book, I felt annoyed by these two things and prevented me from fully immersing in the latter half of the book. However, after I put the book down, it really did stay with me. I found myself thinking about it as I went about my day, and even bringing it up at dinner with my husband, and if a book can do that, that’s saying something. I think, because it was at hear about love and the impossible decisions we’re sometimes confronted with, it made me feel in a much stronger way what things were like before the Final Solution. I found myself wondering how long I would have waited. I can’t even comprehend how or what choice I would have made in the same situation. I wonder if I, too, would have waited until it was too late.

All in all, a worthy read and not your typical story from the Holocaust.

Are you a writer, or someone who wants to get back in touch with writing? Join in our book club for writers at Bigger Picture Reads! Find me there today!

Happy Friday everyone!

At Bigger Picture Blogs, we’re hosting a Book Club on Fridays – a book club for writers! We’ll be reading books on writing together and sharing what inspiration comes out of it. Sound like fun?

Everyone is welcome: from published author, to blogger, to those who doodle in notebooks, or those who compose entirely in their heads (I swear that’s me, half the time!). Artists, photographers, and other creators are also welcome to join in the fun – because one inspiration can always beget another!

So, please, come join us, at Bigger Picture Blogs!

When I normally introduce books to savor, I usually mean we can savor the language, the beauty of the words, the sharp poignancy of meaning… This book might actually be delicious.

The Book of Salt tells the story of Binh, a 26-year-old Vietnamese cook working in the house of GertrudeStein (said all as one word) and Alice Toklas, in Paris in the 1920′s. He’s the silent observer to all that goes on in the literary echelons, and he brushes fingertips with power of the likes of the young Ho Chi Minh, as he battles his own questions and memories of home in Saigon, and looks for love in the city that both flaunts it and smashes it to smithereens.

{Aside: Am I just on a kick, or is there a remarkable resurgence of all things Jazz Age, especially Paris? Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Paris, 1920′s, slick prose and loose morals…these elements keep popping up all over the place! I suspect there’s a renewed fascination with that age since we seem to be going through its mirror image now, what with the highlife followed by a market crash and the malaise that follows. I digress…}

This book was actually a Christmas gift to me, but Vietnamese cook transplanted on foreign soil, food, literature and Paris? I’m in. The language is beautiful and erudite, told in a compelling voice, all that much more plaintive and rich in contrast to the protagonist who himself is silenced and fumbles for words in a foreign tongue he can never own. In lieu of French expressions, he must convey all his sensibilities through the language of food, a thousand words served in an omelette, a hundred hopes on a plate of foie gras.

Truong’s debut novel is full of delights and fascination. The narration does stretch past a few traditional limits at times, frankly observing and relating what the narrator could not quite plausibly see. I don’t mind a little rule-breaking so long as it makes sense. In this book, most of the time the narration gets a bit far out of course, the reader can blithely make excuses and continue along her merry way. But there was an instance or two where the narration says something that the narrator simply would not have said, it being so contrary to his nature, and there my willingness to play along ran a tad thin.

Nevertheless, that’s a minor quibble for a book that should otherwise be a tasty treat to the foodies, the wishful, and the transplanted.

This book. was. awesome. The story of Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), whose brother passes away leaving the rather sticky question of how best to reunite a pair of precious heirloom guns unresolved. The Major is left quite alone to deal with a generation of unrepentantly irreverent younger relatives and community folk who all seem to have abandoned everything he finds good and essential in life: honor, decorum, duty, and a decent cup of tea served in a proper mug.

But as the story unfolds, he finds himself drawing ever closer to Mrs. Ali, a Pakistani shopkeeper and perennial foreigner in his English countryside town, as they bond over literature and the loss of their respective spouses. Their deepening relationship unfolds, despite the follies of interfering society hens and boorish relatives, all told in delightfully droll British wit that had me literally laughing out loud as I turned the pages.

It’s a perfectly quick read, where one gets immediately drawn in. It’s light and sweet and funny, wonderful for lazy afternoons. But there’s surprising twists and little poignant moments, where themes of honor and tradition, prejudice and presumption offer resonating bass notes to make you stop and pause and truly appreciate that this man, who so stoutly believes in tradition, becomes tempted to flout it in the pursuit of happiness and love.