January Reviews

Happy New Year! We're kicking off the new year with a theme: adaptations. It started as an accident, but then I figure why not keep it going? So all the books I read this month have some form of screen adaptation, and I kept up with watching the adaptation afterwards for about half of them.

Let's get to it!

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

I read The Hunger Games trilogy back in high school and, like more of the world, loved it. It took a bit longer to convince myself to read this one, but I'm very glad that I did.

Coriolanus Snow, penniless but pretending not to be, is one of the academy students chosen to mentor the tributes of the 10th annual Hunger Games. But he's been assigned the lowest of the low; a girl from District 12, a songbird performer named Lucy Gray. Snow is convinced she won't win, but maybe they'll able to put on a good show along the way. Only, Lucy is something special, and even the Capital can see it. Maybe they stand a chance. 

Coriolanus is such a fascinating character. We knew him as President Snow during the Hunger Games, and hearing he was the main character of this prequel was what had me hesitant to read it in the first place. How can you root for someone you know is going to turn out evil? But this story packs so much District, Capital, and Snow history into it, and builds up even more meaning for the events of the trilogy. Snow is conniving and clever, obsessed with his own image and the power he could one day wield. He thinks one thing and says another, playing whatever role he needs to in order to survive (I'm so excited to see how they portray this two-facedness in the movie, where you can't have a running inner dialogue to show what he lies about and what he doesn't). He's careful but impulsive, and willing to do just about anything to save himself.

TBOSAS is a love story and a political commentary and a brutal survival tale rolled into one. It was fascinating to see what would become the thing Katniss eventually destroys, to see the threads that would grow into something more formed by a group of academy students and the doctor leading the charge. The cast of characters was sometimes hard to follow, since there were so many of them, but the important ones stood out in the end. There was also a cool song element to this story, since Lucy Gray is a singer songwriter. Collins talked about in her acknowledgments which songs came from poems, which were taken from the Hunger Games movies, etc, and that was a cool peek behind the curtain.

This book had a restless, hungry feeling to it, a sort of guilty desperation that left the ending hollowly triumphant. Snow lands on top, but we already know how that story ends and the terrible things that lead up to it. Great read.

Update: the movie was phenomenal and a very accurate representation of the book.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet

I was swept into this book during an abrupt period of reckoning with my loved ones' mortality, and what better way to do that than reading a book about Armageddon.

Crowley and Aziraphale, a demon and angel respectively, have been placed in charge of the antichrist, who will bring about the end of the world. Only, they seem to have misplaced him, and so begins a week long hunt for an eleven year old boy, involving the forces of heaven and hell, a book or prophecies, witch hunters, a dog, and the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The world will be changed, potentially end, and maybe even be saved.

I'm obsessed with Gaiman and Pratchet's writing styles. I've had Good Omens on my shelf for so long, I think I just had to wait long enough to forget the TV show a bit and trick my brain into consuming "new" content. And even then the first season is a fantastic nearly perfect adaptation of the book, so that was delightful. 

There is a certain kind of irreverence only found in people who write about religion in the way Gaiman and Pratchet do, and it makes my dumb little raised religious but not anymore heart very happy. Because they're taking the bible and angels and demons and the will of god and creating something that is more about humanity than anything. The lengths that people will go, the changes they'll make for the things and people they care about. The sides that don't matter in the end. 

It's witty and subtle in places and very much not in others. It's very British and very 1980s, but also completely timeless if not wholly universal. I just really liked it, it was the perfect thing to read for an overwhelmed brain seeking escape.

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

I've had my copy of this book for years-- I may or may not have taken it from a previous job and then it moved states with me before I ever read it. But after deciding that January would be the month I read books with screen adaptations (it was not intentional at first but I might as well continue the pattern), I knew this one had to be next.

This books is like. You could write so many meta papers about this book and undoubtedly people have. It's a story within a story, where Goldman has made up the abridgment of a very long book written by a man he also made up. With annotations and an opening commentary that serves to build and confuse. 

I don't know that I can appropriately sum up this book. It's grand adventure and romance and torture and sword fighting, and it's really worth consuming in either or both ways that you can (movie or book).

It is also, almost verbatim, exactly like the movie. Which means it's exceptionally clever, funny beyond belief, and a really beautiful love story. The book has some extra bits for sure (it's over 400 pages, you can't fit all of it into a movie), but I completely understand why parts were left out of the adaptation. I still really really liked reading the extra bits, gave it a bit if it's own exciting new identity for someone who grew up watching the movie.

And it was nice to step into that world for a little bit. The comments from Goldman are the grandfather from the movie, a check in to make sure we're not too afraid, a cheeky joke to get us laughing, a comment on his own love of the story. And this edition came with all sorts of extra written pieces, including a tidbit of an almost sequel and a very confusing letter to start it all out (I am a little embarrassed to say I was googling some things when I started, just trying to track all the pieces of fiction being told).

Honestly, this was delightful. If you have the chance to read it, do.

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Another adaptation because I love a trend, and this was another one I've had for a while but didn't read until now.

Reynie has convinced himself that his life at the orphanage is fine enough, until his tutor shows him a mysterious advertisement in the paper calling for gifted children. After a series of tests, Reynie finds himself admitted into a rather exclusive club of children, tasked with taking down a great evil. Now Reynie and his new friends Sticky, Kate, and Constance must face danger greater than they thought possible, and work together to save the world.

This was a very cute and charming read. It's definitely a kids book (middle grade for sure), despite being almost 500 pages, and is full of strange child-like adventures and ideas, packed around a very real feeling threat. The MBS deals with a generalized "Emergency" that is causing grown ups to panic and act irrationally, with messages confirming they can't trust one another, the government, etc. And that all feels very real in a like, social media and capitalism are all consuming and there is always a crisis type way that feels intrinsic to adulthood. But looking at all of it from the lense of children trying to save the world it all feels...not quite manageable, but definitely an acknowledgment of how overwhelming it can all be made to seem.

The writing is clever and feels appropriate for the age range of the characters, and while I had moments of feeling old or bored sometimes, I definitely also had moments of joy and laughter and triumph. I appreciated the different ways the story portrayed children with different strengths and bravery.

This is part of a larger series that I don't plan on continuing with, but I am glad that I read this one. 

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

This is one of those classics that I feel like I've heard a lot of people talk about reading in school but was never part of my curriculum. But it's on theme and I've been meaning to read it for years, so the timing was perfect.

Charlie Gordon, a man with incredibly low intelligence, has been selected as a candidate for an operation to make him smarter, something they had previous success with on a lab mouse named Algernon. As the treatment takes effect Charlie's intelligent expands even beyond the scientists who performed it, and he becomes a breakthrough marvel, experiencing life unlike anything he'd thought possible. But when Algernon starts to deteriorate, it feels like only a matter of time before Charlie does as well.

Holt shit this book was a lot. I'll first recognize that it was published in the 50s, so the terminology is pretty out of date, but the intention is still incredible. The book is epistolary, following Charlie's progress reports from before the operation through his rapidly advancing intelligence, up until (big spoilers) he's back to how he started. Keyes uses so many cool writing methods to track those differences, both subtle and glaringly obvious, which made the growth so exciting and the deterioration so terrifying. The parallels!!! 

This book is heartbreaking in a few ways. Charlie is such a sweetheart who is clearly mistreated by people he cares about. And once he begins to remember things from his childhood and beyond, it just got hard. The learning of shame and embarrassment but also the anger that no one else seemed to recognize that he was a person who deserved kindness and respect. 

I didn't super love Charlie's journey through sex, but that's fully on me and was still a very important aspect of the book. This was the first book in a while that made me want to write a book report just to get all my feelings and analysis down. The circle of it, the irony, the recognition of self and how painful that can be. This really was a phenomenal book, and I can absolutely see why it's considered such a classic.

I feel like I have to stop because otherwise I will write a book report, and I don't know that my brain can handle that right now.

And that's it! Way to kick off the new year!

Literary recommendation: Self-Made Boys by AM McLemore

Media recommendation: I think I recommended it last month too, but it's in the spirit of adaptations, the Percy Jackson series on Disney+ is very good