Whitewashing the Hunger Games

One day I'll post my feelings on Mockingjay, and you can see how I REALLY felt about The Hunger Games trilogy. The short version is that I liked the first two books and ABSOLUTELY HATED the last one. But that's not the point right now.

On my Google Reader, I found this article from Jezebel: The Imminent Whitewashing of the Hunger Games Heroine

Basically, the article mentions how Jennifer Lawrence is the frontrunner for Katniss in The Hunger Games movie (which makes me a little sad, since I was totally rooting for Hailee Steinfeld), and Jennifer Lawrence is, of course, very white and very blond.

Now, the article includes the description of Katniss in the book, which is this: "Straight black hair, olive skin, gray eyes." Which, in terms of description, is pretty scant. What exactly IS olive skin, anyways? But I guess people take olive skin to mean "non-white", which, in my opinion isn't necessarily true. I think of "olive" as more of an undertone than an actual color. You can be white as a ghost and have an "olive" complexion. One of my roommates in college was from Chile, and he had what I would describe as an olive undertone to his skin. He was pale, but I would definitely classify the tone of his skin as "olive," You can also be black and have an "olive" complexion.

Furthermore, it seemed obvious to me that the Seam (where Katniss lives) is in the Appalachian Mountain region. Which is a largely white population, even today, after that area has been populated for centuries. Ethnographically speaking, it would make sense for Katniss to be white. But then again, considering that by 2020, the United States will have a population with a fairly even spread of white, black, and hispanic races, it also makes sense for Katniss to be a woman of color.

None of that, however, is the point here. I think the beauty of the term "olive" is that it can mean anything you want it to mean. Which is part of what makes Katniss a great heroine--she could be anybody. You can think of her as a member of your own race, or as a member of a different race. She could be like you or like someone else. That's what made her so beloved by millions of fans.

For me, race was never an important issue of the books. I always saw the class commentary as a FAR more important aspect of the book. I mean, THAT part was so obvious that it smacked me straight in the face. And any sociologist will tell you that it's not JUST about race or class or gender, but that it's a COMBINATION of all factors that disadvantage certain groups.

Okay, I'm getting WAY off topic. I guess my main point is that there's not enough of a description of Katniss in the book to merit all these cries of whitewashing. Because in my mind, "olive" is a neutral descriptor. So in Gary Ross's mind, Katniss looks like a Jennifer Lawrence or a Hailee Steinfeld. In somebody else's mind, she could be a Zoe Saldana. Katniss can be anyone. That's the point.

Also, if you've read ANY interview with Gary Ross about how he's adapting the books, he says he's had EXTENSIVE conversations with Suzanne Collins about the vision he is seeking to put on screen. So if the AUTHOR OF THE FREAKING BOOK approves of the actress playing Katniss, so should you.

Edit Much?

I don't know if it's because I do so much reading, or that I have a degree in English, but lately, I've been noticing a lot of copy errors in the books I'm reading. Granted, most of them are in my Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management textbook (apparently, librarians are not the greatest spellers in the world. Who knew?) But I've seen a few show up in fiction as well.

Now, these are errors that should be caught in copy-editing. They're not spelling errors; they're usually grammatical errors. And going further, it's usually a matter of a missing word or a subject/verb issue. And for the most part, I can ignore these mistakes. I mean, take my Collection Development book—it's 400 pages long. There's bound to be a few mistakes in there, especially if they fall into tricky-English-rules land. I don't expect perfection when it comes to copy-editing. After all, there's still a very human element to that process and let's face it, nobody's perfect.

However. There are some errors that I've spotted recently that I think occurred more out of laziness than an honest mistake.

There's a rather significant mistake in Delirium by Lauren Oliver, which is what inspired this post. And by significant, I mean, this seemingly innocuous mistake actually serves to undermine the theme of the book.

My previous post gave a brief summary of what the book was about: a world where love is classified as a disease. Okay, so given that information, you'd think that the word “love” would be a pretty loaded word in this book, more so than in any other book. That's why I was able to make note of this incident.

On page 16 of the book, Lena is talking with her aunt about her final evaluation before she is cured, and Lena launches into an “acceptable” speech about her likes and dislikes. She states “I really like children” and when her aunt tells her that she makes a face when she says it, Lena replies, “I love children.” Now, I thought this was a little odd when I first read it, because this is a world where love is considered a disease. It seems rather odd that the world would be used so freely in the novel.

However, Oliver takes great care to construct a world that isn't necessarily in the future—that is, except for the whole “procedure” to remove the ability to love, the world Lena lives in is pretty much identical to ours. No cool medical advances, no awesome pieces of technology...nothing. So, I thought, since this world is so similar to the one in which we actually live, she's keeping with the colloquialisms. Perhaps Lena is just being sarcastic when she says “I love children,” in response to her aunt's nagging.

Except. When Lena is out in the Wilds with Alex, he shows her the stars. On page 298, he asks her what she thinks of them, and this is the passage that follows:

“I love it.” The word pops out, and instantly the weight on my chest dissipates. “I love it,” I say again, testing it. An easy word to say, once you say it. Short. To the point. Rolls off the tongue. It's amazing I've never said it before.

Wait, what? Lena has said this word before, 212 pages earlier. And in a lighthearted, meaningless way.

I don't think it could be argued that Lena use of this word on page 16 is a simple case of her just being a teenager and being sarcastic. This passage on page 298 clearly attests that Lena knows that this word has meaning. And that she's never used it before, until now. Allegedly.

Talk about a huge, gaping error. Now I realize, not everyone is going to nitpick or remember like I am, but sometimes, it's the little things that can completely derail a story. My thesis advisor told this great story about how one of her students wrote a decent story, but that there was this coffee cup that showed up in every scene. Which doesn't seem like a big deal, but the action of the coffee cup wasn't consistent. One moment the character would be pouring a new cup, the next she'd be rinsing it out because it had stayed on the counter all night. This coffee cup was a completely tertiary detail to this story, but because it was inconsistent, it threw focus off the real action of the story and as a result, the fiction lost its impact.

Which, basically, is what happened with Delirium. Once again, I recognize that nobody is perfect, and mistakes do happen. But I know that as a writer, if I were going to attach that much significance to a single word, I'd do a simple ctrl+f to make sure that I wasn't contradicting myself. As the passage on page 298 is written, Lena using the word “love” is a big step in her character development. But because she used the word earlier in the novel, this is basically meaningless. Don't you think, if Lena speaking the word “love” was going to be such a big moment, you'd do a simple ctrl+f search of your manuscript just to make sure you hadn't accidentally slipped it in earlier?

And now that I think about it, I know I've encountered a similar problem in another book recently. I can't remember the specific book or the problem, but I do remember that once I spotted the contradiction, I was pulled from the story and its effectiveness was lost.

Now, the Delirium example that I gave is an extreme one. I guess my point here is that even in a 400+ page book, the little things matter. And people will notice the little things. There's a lot of things you can get away with in a book that you can't get away with in any other form of media. But then again, there's an equally long list of things that you absolutely cannot get away with in books. Minor contradictions, no matter how asinine they may be, are one of them.

Makes you appreciate the job of a copy editor that much more, doesn't it?

10/100: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Delirium by Lauren Oliver was a book that I think I saw mentioned on Parajunkee. I thought it sounded interesting, so I snagged a copy.

Basically, this book falls into that ever-popular subcategory of Young Adult literature, the dystopian novel. I think everyone can agree that the bellwether of YA dystopian lit is Lois Lowry's The Giver. Pretty much everybody had to read that book in school, and I honestly think that it is the one piece of required reading that EVERYBODY loves. I honestly think I have yet to meet a person who didn't like this book. Because let's face it, it's a friggen masterpiece, so it's deserving of every accolade.

And naturally, not everything can be that good, so I usually use Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series as a basis of comparison when I'm dealing with dystopian YA.

So. Delirium is the story of 17-year-old Lena, who lives in the United States of the future, where cities are walled in from “The Wilds” and everyone, on or around their 18th birthday, undergoes a procedure in which they are cured of a disease called amor deliria nervosa, a disease more commonly known as “love.” People don't fall in love in this world. They are “cured” of all desire, and then they are matched with a mate and are expected to reproduce.

For the most part, the US in Delirium is identical to the one in which we live today. In fact, the only thing different about it is this procedure curing people of love. Other than that, there's not any futuristic technology in the book. There's a roundabout reference to the idea that the US has depleted its supply of oil, but other than that, it's the world we live in today.

So, as you can imagine, Lena, our heroine, is eagerly awaiting the day she'll be cured. After all, the government told her that the deliria is a disease, one she doesn't want to catch. But of course, a few months before her procedure, she falls in love with a boy named Alex.

I'll start off by saying that Delirium reminded me of Uglies SO much. Like, the two books were almost plaigiaristically similar, in my opinion. You know, girl in the have-nots is waiting for a procedure so her life will be better has a friend (who is part of the “haves”) is flirting with the fringes of society. Said friend leads main girl to this “other” world, and then main girl slowly changes her mind about the society in which she lives. This is kind of standard stuff for YA dystopian lit, so I go with it. In this case, the “other” world is called the Wilds, and the people who live in it the Invalids. As you may have guessed, Alex is an Invalid.

I guess Delirium is different in the fact that it's not so much a dystopian novel with a love story in it, it's a love story with a dystopian twist.

Where Uglies succeeds and Delirium fails is in the sense of scope. By the end of Uglies, both you and Tally (the main character) understand how sinister this society is and why it needs to be stopped. You understand why Tally decides to go back to the city to become Pretty, even though it means sacrificing the boy she loves and potentially losing herself.

No such luck with Delirium. By the end of the book, I didn't really feel like Lena understood that there was a “greater good” out there. Everything she was doing was for her and Alex. It was all about them. I get that this is a love story, but if there's going to be this dystopian element, you have to, well, acknowledge the resistance. Get the main character involved in it. Otherwise, it becomes just another dumb love story with no real purpose. So instead of Delirium telling the story of one girl's triumph over a corrupt government, it's a story of a selfish girl turning her back on a world that just doesn't understand her.

Holy crap, Lena's emo.

Ahem. ANYWAYS, you get what I'm saying. That the story is constructed as Lena's World vs. Their World, not Lena vs. the World. In the end, Lena choose her world, with love in it. Which is all fine and dandy, but if that's the case, if Lena has no sense of duty to spread love to the rest of the world, then it's going to be a hard sell as to why I should read the rest of the series.

If that's the case, then there's no urgency. I get that the government is bad, and that they're perpetrated lies about love, but if you're reading YA dystopia lit, you're familiar with the genre. I was waiting for something bigger and badder here. Like in Uglies, when you find out that the government isn't just making people Pretty, they're making them mindless drones. And then it just get worse. But in Delirium, I didn't get why the government was such a Big Bad. I mean, ostensibly, I know why: love isn't really a disease, they're suppressing people's ability to feel, blah, blah, blah. I get that. But I was waiting for a greater truth to be revealed, something more than the fact that the Regulators brutally beat people (we've all read 1984. I think by its very definition, dystopian lit requires an overly-zealous and harsh government). Lena's major revelation is that “The government has been LYING to us!! About everything!” WELL NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. This is textbook dystopian lit here; realizing that the government has been lying isn't exactly a major revelation.

Not to mention that by the end of the book, I about wanted to fucking punch Lena in the face. Ahem. Okay, I get the fact that love is THE major theme of this book, but good God, Lena is CONSUMED by her love for Alex. I mean, given the way she's acting, I can almost see why the government would want to ban love. Like, she's borderline Bella-in-New-Moon bad.

HOLY CRAP. The government was banning Twilight-type love (because, apparently, in this book, that's what love is). Well, in that case, I totally agree with their decision.

I mentioned that I was reading Delirium in my Collection Development class, and the girl I was sitting next to, a YA Specialist, said that everyone she had talked to about the book gave it a solid “meh.” I'm inclined to agree with that assessment. However, I am still interested in where this series is going. Since the book ends with Lena heading out into the Wilds (a plot twist for which I was glad; if it ended up that she had the procedure, I totally would have called copy on Uglies), Oliver really has no choice but to broaden the scope of the story.

One can only hope.

Books Read: 10/100
Currently Reading: The Crimson Thread by Suzanne Weyn

Among Other Things...

Okay, so it's been a month since I posted. And I haven't been doing much reading lately, so that's a big ole fail on that count as well. In order to keep "on pace" with 100 books in a year, I'd need to read 8-9 books a month. And I'm only on book #10 right now. Yikes. Well, I certainly have some catching up to do, that's for sure.

To be fair I did read a 12-book manga series after I finished The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown, but as I said in my first post, I'm not counting manga in the book count.

So I guess that really doesn't count for much.

I'm kind of stuck in a rut in my nonfictional life, and I think that's transferring over to my reading habits. Hopefully I'll be able to snap out of it sometime soon.

Whoa, I didn't mean for this to get so serious/depressing all at once. Because I'm not depressed or sad or even all that serious! Haha. I just wanted to sort of check and and let everyone know that I haven't abandoned this blog or this project. Just need to get the fire back, that's all!

Books Read: 9/100
Currently Reading: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

6/100: Life After Genius

Life After Genius by M. Ann Jacoby was a book I picked up because it was on an endcap at the library. The description on the book jacket reminded me a lot of the book An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, so it piqued my interest. Plus, it was described as an "academic mystery", which reminded me of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, another book I enjoyed. So I gave this book a chance.

The book is about a boy named Mead, who at 18 years old, is about to graduate college with a degree in mathematics. He's made a significant discovery about a mathematical concept called the Reimann Hypothesis, and he's due to give a paper on it. However, the day before he's due to give a presentation on his work, Mead leaves school and heads back home for reasons unknown to everyone but himself. The novel switches between flashbacks of Mead's childhood and life at college and present day, where everyone is trying to figure out why Mead dropped everything and came back home.

I'm a little torn about what to think about it. I was interested in the story, but not enough to block out a whole afternoon to marathon the rest of the book (which is what I usually do). The beginning and middle of the book are really strong, but in the last 50 pages or so, the story sort of fell apart. Not the whole story, but parts of it.

I think the key issue here is that I felt that a lot of the conflicts didn't necessarily match their resolutions, either in depth or scope. For instance, a significant part of the end of the book is dedicated to people confronting the death of Mead's cousin, Percy. Percy's mother, Aunt Jewel, has had a mental breakdown--but the way that aspect of the story is written definitely downplays the significance it has at the end of the book. It's hinted at throughout the story that Mead has some mental issues of his own--so it's perfectly reasonable for you as the reader to think that Mead is just imagining things about his Aunt Jewel. In the end, of course, we find out that Aunt Jewel really is off her rocker and it's this huge big thing--but up until that point in the story, it's never been THAT big of a plot point. So in comparison with the rest of this plotline, the resolution of Aunt-Jewel-is-crazy seems way out of proportion.

Mead also has HUGE issues with his mother--but they all seemed to get magically resolved when he finds out she kept a science report of his from grade school--the only thing he ever got a C on. The explanation is sweet and meaningful and motherly and all, but it seems to magically resolve Mead's issues with his mom (who he is very close to outright loathing by the end of the novel), and that's just not believable.

The biggest thing, though, is the academic part of it all. The WHOLE book, you are wondering why the hell Mead ditched school just before he graduated. You know it has something to do with a guy named Herman Weinstein, and you can guess it has something to do with blackmail, but you don't know exactly WHAT happened until the very end of the book. They build up this "Why did Mead leave" thing for over 300 PAGES. When you find out what happened, it is the most anticlimactic thing you've ever seen. I'm thinking that Herman threatens Mead or does something to him...but no, not really. He just kinds of pressures Mead into making him a co-author of Mead's work on the Reimann Hypothesis. Nothing particularly dangerous about it. Mead just kind of lets it happen. And you're like "Really? You're painfully awkward, yet you can ask a girl out and feel her up, but the next night you can't stand up to a simple schoolyard bully? ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU KNOW THAT HE SLEPT WITH A TEACHER AND THEN BRIBED SAID TEACHER?!?!" Seriously, Mead had more than enough ammunition to bury Herman--and Mead had reason to believe that people would trust his information. And nothing in the rest of the novel suggests that Mead is the type to take the moral high ground. Ever. Mead is supposed to be a genius here, and in this particular scene (the big revelation scene, when you find out what it was that precipitated Mead's leaving school), he comes off like a fucking idiot. And sadly, this scene kind of caused me to lose respect for Mead, so by the tail end of the novel, I didn't really care what happened to him.

As I mentioned earlier, Mead at times seems like he's a bit cracked in the attic. So when he mentions things that Herman does to him, you think that Mead's just a sucker or he's just being paranoid. You don't think Herman really is as bad as Mead thinks he is--or, if Herman is really that big of an evil dick, then he must be one twisted fuck. Nope. Herman is just a guy who was ignored by his father growing up. He's an ass, sure. And in the last 20 pages of the book, you find out that he really is crazy (you find out that in the 3 years he's known Mead, he's stolen Mead's girlfriend, slept with a professor, bribed a professor, stalked, kidnapped, and tried to kill Mead). Now, all together like that, Herman sounds like one sick fuck. But this is stuff you have already suspected throughout the whole book. So it's not exactly relevatory, except for the killing Mead part of it all. I expected Herman to be REALLY twisted, but instead, he's kind of a generic villain.

The book just ends with a bunch of loose ends. You have no idea if Mead's going to go back to college or work in the family business. You are terribly unsure where things are left between him and his mother. And he has this pseudo-girlfriend by the end of the book, but that story is dropped like it's hot and never mentioned again. There really was no closure by the end of this book, and I remember getting to end and thinking "that's it?"

I liked the first 300 or so pages of this book. The characters, setting, and story were all very rich and I was interested in seeing how all the conflicts were going to be resolved. But the conflict resolution itself fell very flat. The ending felt rushed, and a lot of things in the last 50 or so pages felt very tacked on. I don't want to say I didn't like this book, because like I said, the beginning of the novel is well done. I guess the best way to put it is that I was disappointed by this book. I expected the end to be as interesting and engaging as the rest of the book, and sadly, my expectations were not met.

Books Read: 6/100
Currently Reading: Queen of Babble by Meg Cabot

Win an ARC of BUMPED!

Megan McCafferty is one of my FAVORITE authors, and I'm super excited about her new book, BUMPED, coming out in April (you'll see that it's on my to-read list). However, there's a blog giving away a free ARC of the book. Go check it out!

Books Read: 5/100
Currently Reading: Life After Genius by M. Ann Jacoby

5/100: Across the Universe

The best way to describe Across the Universe by Beth Revis is that it's a mash-up of The Giver and Uglies with a bit of Wall-E thrown in there.

Odd, I know. But I love all three of those things, which tells you that this is a good book.

It's the first in a planned trilogy, which I'm thankful for, since that helps me overlook some of the issues I had with the book. Across the Universe tells the story of Amy, a girl who is cryogenically frozen with her parents to go on a spaceship to terraform a new planet, Centauri-Earth. This journey will take 300 years, hence the freezing. However, Amy is pulled out of her state 50 years too soon--and the only way that could have happened is if someone tried to murder her. When she awakens, she meets a boy named Elder, who is in training to be the warden of the ship she is on. Elder is in the midst of discovering secrets about the ship and his role in its leadership. The book is told through the alternating perspectives of Elder and Amy.

There is a lot to love about this book. It's original, and it's got a great tone to it. Revis does a great job of letting your emotions follow along with Amy and Elder's. And I think Revis does a FANTASTIC job of writing Amy's emotions. Amy is 17, so it would be real easy for this book to devolve into melodrama. But Amy's reactions to major events in her life are very earnest, and her struggles with her feelings for her old boyfriend, Jason (even though, logically, she knows he's dead by the time she wakes up), ring true. It's refreshing to see a heroine who isn't boy-crazy, but isn't totally without romantic feelings. You know, someone who actually acts like a 17-year-old girl. It's definitely one of the book's strongest points.

I can't talk a lot about Elder without giving away a lot of the book, so let me put it this way: considering the context that Revis has placed him in, she's done an excellent job at capturing that sort of character.

My major complaint is not with the story itself, but with the telling of it. There are few instances where the writing isn't as smooth as it should be. For instance, on the whole ship, there is only one medical doctor. This isn't really made clear until later in the book, so when Elder calls him "Doc" and Amy calls him "the doctor," I was confused as to who each was actually talking about. I get that that's not terribly major, but sometimes it's the little things, you know?

The book does take awhile to get started, but as soon as I read this exchange, I was hooked:

"He sounds like a regular Hitler to me," Amy mutters.
I wonder what she means by that. Eldest always taught me that Hitler was a wise, cultured leader for his people. Maybe that's what she means: Eldest is a strong leader, like Hitler was.

My other beef relates to the fact that while all the major questions are answered, they're done in such a way that I'm not even sure if they're all answered. The answers are a bit muddled. Even now that I'm finished with the book, I'm still left with a lot of questions. Actually, now that I think about it, there is one mystery that wasn't solved. It was mentioned at the beginning of the book and never mentioned again after Amy is pulled out of stasis. It's nothing huge, per se, but the way it was presented makes me think that it was important.

And there was this great big buildup to the "secret" of the ship, and when we finally learn what it is, everything happens so fast and action is taken that I don't really have time to process it all correctly. And since it did happen so quickly, I didn't really feel like there was any "true" danger for our protagonists. I had only just grasped the severity of the conflict, and as soon as that happened, it was all over. In fact, during the reveal, I began to see the Big Bad's side of the issue--and that maybe they weren't so wrong in their way of thinking. That's not a bad thing. Just something to consider. However, this leads me to believe that Revis has something bigger and better planned for books 2 and 3, so I'm remaining cautiously optimistic at this point.

There was a bit of a random plot twist thrown in at the end (that I halfway suspected at various points during the novel), which definitely adds to the story, but it seems VERY thrown in there at the last minute. It doesn't feel out of place, per se, but it's not necessarily integrated into the story all that well, either. Like, there are things that happen earlier in the novel that don't make any sense considering what you learn at the end. It's a bit of sloppy writing, but since it is such a good, believable twist, I'm willing to overlook it.

And then Elder says something in the last chapter he narrates that kind of sours my opinion of him. It's not so much WHAT he says, but how Revis has written it. Because what he says actually makes sense within the context of the story and is absolutely believable for his character. But it's somewhat devoid of context and that makes for a bit of character assassination on his part. However, I'm sure it will be addressed in the later books, so I'm going to let it go for the time being.

This is a dystopian novel, and I liked how it didn't go straight from dystopia to utopia. No society is perfect. There will be problems--and that's what the subsequent books in this series will address--at least, I hope they will!

This book is definitely worth reading. In terms of how I felt while reading it, it reminded me a lot of The Host, which is easily one of my favorite Sci-Fi novels. So basically, that's a glowing recommendation from me. As this post attests, this book is not without a few minor faults, but if you read it with the idea that it's part of a trilogy, those faults are easy to get past.

Books Read: 5/100
Currently Reading: Between books