2011 Book # 43: The Mysterious Benedict Society

I generally like kids' novels - Harry Potter, for instance, or The Hunger Games, or The Golden Compass, or The Blue Sword, etc, etc, etc. I think it's because I can usually identify with the characters, and an adult having written them probably helps. That said, The Mysterious Benedict Society didn't work for me. It might be aimed at a younger crowd than I'm used to, though these kids are 11 and 12, and Harry Potter started out at that age. I was also somewhere around 18 at that point - certainly nowhere near 30.

The Mysterious Benedict Society is about four kids, all of them basically orphans, who see an add in the newspaper offering adventures to kids who can pass a test. They're the only for who pass, and they're taken to a large house and, eventually, told what's going on: There's a Bad Guy who is sending out subliminal messages saying that he is awesome and that they should do whatever he says. He runs a school on an island just out of town, and they're supposed to infiltrate it and discover his secrets. Well, they do both, then, in a heroic move, they decide to stay and try to destroy him. Things continue to happen. The end.

Again, I'm not a fan. It almost seems like Trenton Lee Stewart started writing a novel for a slightly older age group, then, mid-novel, decided he should aim a bit younger. I liked the beginning well enough. Stewart's style is okay, though the characters are a bit flat, and there aren't any particularly slow points. I found myself thinking too many times through the novel that the kids were being dumb and taking risks that even kids wouldn't take. They seemed to be acting even younger than they were, which really irritated me. And then there are some stupid twists that made me roll my eyes. For instance (spoiler!): one of the kids is really short and pouty, though she turns out necessary. She's probably as smart of the rest of them, but she has a really bad attitude. We find out why at the end of the novel: she's a precocious two-year-old. Urrrrgh. Then, there are the life issues brought up in the beginning and then tied up way too simply at the end. Like (another spoiler!) one of the kids has a ridiculous photographic memory, and his parents take advantage of him, signing him up for game shows and amassing piles of money. He runs away, and his parents get tons of donations to help find him, which they spend on themselves. The kid seems a bit bitter, as he should be. At the end of the novel, though, when all the kids are being adopted (meh), his parents show up all apologetic, and all, saying they decided they missed him and went into debt looking for him. Instead of being angry like any normal kid would do, this particularly smart kid is perfectly happy to be reunited with his parents, and things go on as if nothing had ever happened. Yeah, right. I was annoyed.

So I guess I've just found a novel aimed at too young an audience with which I can identify, though the top of the book's cover claims that it was at the top of the New York Times' bestseller list, and I don't know how it could do that without a bunch of adult readers. It's also a series: the Mysterious Benedict Society has quite a few adventures on the bookshelves. I won't be checking those out anytime soon.

2011 Book #15: Mockingjay

I think I've said all I want to about the Hunger Games trilogy. Mockingjay was just like the other two, but this time, instead of ending with a cliffhanger, it just ended. Think about the end of Harry Potter, the summing up several years in the future, but badly. In Harry Potter, I think such an ending was a good choice and provided closure at the end of an absorbing series that many kids had grown up with. Sticking an ending like that on a series like the Hunger Games was kind of pointless and dumb. Just sayin'.

All three books were quick reads, and they were entertaining enough. Mockingjay is my least favorite because, by this point, the reader knows exactly what is going to happen. It's entirely predictable. Collins even includes another trip to the Hunger Games - of sorts. The format is exactly the same as the other two, and so is the style. I got bored pretty quickly, and I'm glad I've gotten these books out of my system. That said, I did enjoy them well enough.

2011 Book #9: The Hunger Games

Well, The Hunger Games is certainly a quick read. It's the first kids' book I've read in a while, and I liked it well enough. Suzanne Collins isn't an especially good writer - it's purely pop fiction like Dan Brown and all those other authors I usually can't bring myself to read. That said, I was entertained, which I guess, is the point of novels like this.

The Hunger Games is a dystopian novel set in an Oceania of the United States. There was a war between the capitol and thirteen districts after a rebellion, and the capitol won. Each year, to punish the districts, two kids between twelve and eighteen are chosen to compete in the Hunger Games. They're put into an arena and forced to survive in the wilderness as they kill each other off. The one who kills all the others wins. The two main characters, Katniss and Peeta, both from District 12, survive and fight and all that. It's violent and gory at times. It ends ambiguously, halfway making me want to pick up the trilogy's second book immediately to find out what happens.

But I won't because it's really not that good of a novel. And I hate novels that end with cliffhangers. I think that one reason I liked the Harry Potter series is that Rowling provides a relatively neat ending - except in the sixth book, and I remember being frustrated because the seventh was a year away. I think Philip Pullman tidies things up a bit more at the ends of the His Dark Materials books, too. And Ursula LeGuin with the Earthsea trilogy. The City of Ember series is a little better about it than The Hunger Games. I consider Lord of the Rings to be one giant novel, so the same standard doesn't apply. I like what Terry Pratchett does with his Discworld novels: each is on its own, but there are enough recurring characters and places that it's still a series. But that's neither here nor there.

I knew The Hunger Games wouldn't be particularly good early on. Or, at least, not particularly well-written. I tend to judge writing style by how authors describe their characters. If it's a crappy novel, it might go something like this:

I knew my brother would turn into a panther before he did. As I drove to the remote crossroads community of Hotshot, my brother watched the sunset in silence. Jason was dressed in old clothes, and he had a plastic Wal-Mart bag containing a few things he might need - toothbrush, clean underwear. He hunched inside his bulky camo jacket, looking straight ahead. His face was tense with the need to control his fear and his excitement.

In case you're wondering, that's the opening paragraph of Charlaine Harris's Dead as a Doornail , one of the books in her Sookie Stackhouse novels and of True Blood fame. I got through maybe ten pages of it and decided I'd be incapable of reading it. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by like-minded friends, and we passed it around, reading random passages aloud. A good time was had by all.

Anyway, good authors tend to do things a little differently. Being a good English major, I should root around and find an example, but being lazy, I'm not going to. Think about Faulkner - or even Rowling: would you ever see a description like that? Of course not. I didn't have to wait long, though, for Collins to disappoint:

I watch as Gale pulls out his knife and slices the bread. He could be my brother. Straight black hair, olive skin; we even have the same grey eyes. But we're not related, at least not closely. Most of the families who work the mines resemble one another this way. That's why my mother and Prim, with their light hair and blue eyes, always look out of place.

Urgh. I will give Collins credit here: her writing gets a bit better as the novel progresses, and I can't think of another instance when I was that irritated. Descriptions like that make me think of bad romance novels - of which I've only read half of two because the writing is so horrid.

To sum things up: The Hunger Games isn't a terrible novel, though it's not that good, either. The plot is interesting, but the style is mediocre at best. I might pick up the others, or I might not. I'd put my money on the latter.