Lovely Little Shelf

The Book: Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins

The Story: This is the second book in a three part series.  The first book was called The Hunger Games and is pretty awesome.  If you haven’t read it, read it.  If you haven’t read The Hunger Games and plan to possibly read it, don’t go any further in my synopsis.  You’ll be mad at yourself later.

This book picks up right where The Hunger Games left off.  Katniss and Peeta are headed back to District 12.  Her family (and Gale) are ecstatic that she is coming home and that they get to live the good life now.  However, (there’s always a “however”) the Capitol is mad.  Mad that they’ve been tricked and that it was by kids and that they got away with it.  They start cracking down and people start getting frustrated.  Little by little, through the first part of the book, little bits, little “clues” start popping up through different sources that under the surface, something larger is happening.

In one really heart-stopping scene, Katniss is hunting outside of the District’s fence and meets some women in Peacekeepers uniforms.  Through these women, we learn that in other districts the sounds of rebellion are even louder and that Katniss is kind of the poster girl for the rebellion.  The Capitol knows this and kind of gets after her.  And, also, The Capitol is crazier than ever.  So, typical dystopian madness ensues.

Also, going on during all of this is the Gale vs. Peeta love triangle story, and another guy is thrown into the pot, just for good measure.  During the second half of the book, Gale is not around to hold up his end of the tug-of-war, but Katniss is still feeling that pull and the readers are reminded of him every so often.  I’m not going to tell you who I’m rooting for, but I will say I was glad that she was with Peeta for what happened in the second half of this book.

I don’t want to give away any more than that, but I do want to say that the last chapter blew my little brain to pieces.  I had to re-read.  Then I had to come home and read some teenager’s blog to make sure that I knew what actually happened.  I didn’t. But thanks to some 16 year old who is clearly smarter than me, now I do.  It’s wild.  It’s a cliffhanger.  I can’t wait to read the third one.

What I Thought: A few of things: First, I always feel kinda silly reading YA books.  I know that a lot has changed in the world of YA books since I was in prime YA years, and that these books are actually well written and thoughtful, but I still can’t shake the fact that I’m reading kid books.  If only this would have started 10 or 12 years earlier.  I would have been all over that crap.  Now I sneak them, all embarrassed, every once in a while. Second, I didn’t want to buy this so I read it over about a month of bookstore trips, with interludes of listening to the audiobook in the car.  So it was all stretched out for me and I found myself confused more than once, just because I had forgotten what had happened when I read a couple weeks ago.  I think that this probably changed how I felt about the book.  Third: I am a sucker for any dystopian book. I eat them up.

How did I feel about the book?  I think it was worth the read.  I did not, however, think that it was better than The Hunger Games.  I guess part of me felt like, even though stuff was happening, that it was just slow. The middle of the book really drug for me.  I think that part of this was that a lot of time was spent setting up the rebellion, and for awhile there was just very little action.

I did love the characters.  I especially love Katniss.  I love that she’s a little trouper and a little thinker and that she just generally kicks butt.  She is kind of naive and flighty and lovestruck (over and over again), but she’s a teenage girl.  I have to admit that I was a little upset to see that Katniss, as a person and as a character has not really developed too terribly much.  I feel like she showed in the second games just how little she had learned in the first games.  Even at the end, she was just marching around without knowing what was going on, ready to kill people.  I just want to see her become a thinker, a decision maker, a leader.

I think that Suzanne Collin’s writing style is kind of incredible.  Her voice is just refreshing to me.  Although I feel stupid parading around with YA books, it is great to know that this is the type of book that are available to kids. She writes about tough issues in this really smart way.  The book makes you think and puts you in these moral situations and leaves you wondering what would you do, how would you respond.  I like this, and I especially like that it has kids in the same place.

Conclusion: Read this series.  I think that this one was weaker, but there is still one more coming and I will read it without a doubt.  And, if you want, I’ve found that swapping dust jackets takes away a lot of the embarrassment of reading kid’s books in public!