CBR III #5 - The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games was recommended and lent to me by a coworker.  I got through it in two nights and thoroughly enjoyed it.  After having the Twilight series recommended to me by another coworker, I was pleasantly surprised to find The Hunger Games to be an intelligent work of young adult fiction.  The main character, Katniss, is smart, capable and brave.  The story has actual substance and thought behind it.  Obviously there were still some elements that are apparently necessary for the teen market; the love triangle for one.  But, at least in this first book in the trilogy, it wasn't too in your face and obnoxious.

The book is set a bit in the future after a major war when everything has been divided up into districts surrounding the central government which has taken to an iron authoritarian method to keeping the districts under control.  Katniss lives in one of the poorest districts with her mother and younger sister.  Each of the districts, through one of the methods the government uses to keep the districts under control, must submit two candidates, a boy and a girl, for the Hunger Games.  The candidates are chosen through a lottery after which they are sent to compete to the death.  Katniss ends up being one of her district's candidates.

The pacing and the plot of the book also carries it forward.  Once set into the Hunger Games, the book moves forward quickly with different alliances and realliances.  There were gut-wrenching losses and heart-warming moments that didn't feel overtly emotionally manipulative, but were instead scenes that seemed to flow directly and naturally from the Games and the situations arising from the Games.

The Hunger Games, as well as serving as an oppressive measure to keep the districts in line, also serve as entertainment for the Capital's citizens.  They are riveted to it and uncritical of it as a source of entertainment.  They go with the flow of the manipulation of their emotions and give no thought to the  candidates as actual human beings beyond their entertainment value.  It is this background commentary on society and the fearful glimpse of a possible thoughtless, uncaring, self-centered, entertainment-centric future of humanity that sets this book apart from some of the more thoughtless additions to young adult fiction.

CBR III #4 - Beginner's Greek by James Collins

Beginner's Greek was a fairly easy novel to whip through.  The pacing of the plot kept me turning the pages long after I should have been asleep each night.  Despite enjoying the book and finding it hard to  put down, I was not terribly invested in the two main characters.  I found them likeable at first, but then partway through, I found I couldn't care less whether they found what they were looking for or achieved a happy ending.  Neither of the main characters, Peter or Holly, seemed to have grown from when the  reader meets them in the first pages to ten years later.  In fact, they seemed to almost become less well-rounded and become more two-dimensional.  Holly seemed to only function as a jawline with reddish hair and Peter was a caricature of a semi-reluctant corporate climber.  The narrator explains to the reader that they are both good and interesting people, but nothing the narrator describes them doing is either particularly good or interesting.
The character who held my interest the most was Holly's stepmother Julia.  She had a few sections devoted solely to her character about halfway through the book and I was a little disappointed when the book flipped back to the Holly, Peter and Charlotte triangle.  She was more well-rounded and without resorting to just explaining how good and interesting she was, the narrator actually gave her a back story and thoughts that showed her to be an interesting; and the background of her past, less than good, deeds made it all the more compelling when she actually struggled with a decision and ended up making a more morally decent choice.