Speaking of body builders, I've caught myself flexing in the mirror a few times lately.
I have muscles now. It's very strange.
Over the past four years I've overhauled my lifestyle and now I do things like exercise and eat vegetables (actually, I always ate vegetables, but my vegetable-to-nonvegetable ratio has shifted in favour of vegetables). This proved to be quite a useful thing to do, as I was around 98kg at the time of my cousin's wedding, but last year I got down to 75kg. It took me over four years to do it, but I think I'm less likely to suddenly put it all back on again.
Since taking up fencing, I've decided I may as well throw my hat into the "sporty" ring at take a stab at being athletic.
As a result, I've developed a bit of muscle definition. It's quite pleasing, I must say. It's a lovely little buzz to be able to look in the mirror and see improvements (much better than always seeing something that needs improving). I'm now 73kg and a respectable amount of that is muscle mass. My "goal" is 70kg, and I suspect I might make it.
I had a weird thought the other day - I look more like myself now than I have for decades.
I've always hated photos of myself, because they never looked like me. The version of me that I had in my head did not match the version of me I saw in the photo.
It seems like a strange thing to say, but I feel like I stopped looking like myself after the age of 9 or 10. If you compared a photo of me at the age of six to a photo at the age of 10, you would be forgiven for thinking the older kid was the uglier, fatter, kind-of-stupid-looking cousin of the younger one.
I can see pictures of myself from when I was a little kid and think "that was me", but for the past twenty years I've looked at pictures of myself and thought "No, that can't be right - I don't feel anywhere near as stupid as that person looks..."
But for the past year or so I've actually seen myself in photos. I've looked at recent photos and seen the grown up version of the younger kid - the one that looked like me.
And, strangely, I actually feel a bit sharper, too. A bit more clear-headed and capable of noticing things than I have been for years. It's like I walked into a fog when I was ten, and I've only recently walked out the other side of it.
I went for a walk on my 33rd birthday and realised that a) I'm in the best shape of my life, and b) I'm probably going to get better before I get worse.
That's a pretty good place to be.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
The best shape of his life...?
Earlier in January, I was browsing through the magazines in the sports section of my local newsagent when I noticed a familiar face on the cover of Ironman.
My first thought was "Hey, Michael O'Hearn is still kicking around!" Which was promptly followed by "What has he done to himself?" As he was actually featured in an article, not just gracing the cover, I flicked over to see it was titled something like "The Best Shape of His Life".
2004 was the year I discovered body building. I didn't actually take up body building (as photographic evidence will attest) - I just suddenly became aware of it as something beyond "body builders look weird". I had developed a strong interest in 1960s Italian Sword and Sandal flicks (Hercules Unchained, Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World, that sort of thing) as well as Tarzan films, and it turns out that a lot of the actors involved in these films (well, the ones who played the leading men, at any rate) were from the American "body culture" scene. The good old "Muscle Beach" set.
Now, these fine fellows (Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott, to name a couple of my favourites) looked pretty darn muscle-y, but they didn't look like the steroidal monstrosities I had previously associated with body building. I investigated further, and worked out that the "look" I didn't like in body builders was actually quite recent in the world of body sculpture. The "classic" body builders of the 50s and 60s looked quite all right, really.
At about the same time I found the short fan film World's Finest, which starred Michael O'Hearn as Superman and Clark Bartram as Batman. I thought these two men also looked "not completely ludicrous". They weren't covered with straining, snaking veins trying to escape skin that looked like oiled-up sandpaper. They didn't look like (to borrow a phrase) "a condom full of walnuts".
When I knew you could still get body builders who looked like this:
The pictures in the article showed a lot more "definition", as they say. He looks... well he looks like the other guys. The ones I didn't like. It's like Dylan going electric. He's sold out, man. He's jumped on the "bigger is always better" bandwagon, when I liked him for being more balanced and refined than the other guys.
The article was all about how he's in the best shape of his life, and it doesn't matter what age you are, you can still be bigger, more cut, more ripped - kick it up another notch, find the reason to push harder and heavier...
But, dammit, I liked the shape he had ten years ago. I think he looked better when he was going for quality rather than . "Best shape of his life"? I guess that's subjective.
My first thought was "Hey, Michael O'Hearn is still kicking around!" Which was promptly followed by "What has he done to himself?" As he was actually featured in an article, not just gracing the cover, I flicked over to see it was titled something like "The Best Shape of His Life".
2004 was the year I discovered body building. I didn't actually take up body building (as photographic evidence will attest) - I just suddenly became aware of it as something beyond "body builders look weird". I had developed a strong interest in 1960s Italian Sword and Sandal flicks (Hercules Unchained, Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World, that sort of thing) as well as Tarzan films, and it turns out that a lot of the actors involved in these films (well, the ones who played the leading men, at any rate) were from the American "body culture" scene. The good old "Muscle Beach" set.
Now, these fine fellows (Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott, to name a couple of my favourites) looked pretty darn muscle-y, but they didn't look like the steroidal monstrosities I had previously associated with body building. I investigated further, and worked out that the "look" I didn't like in body builders was actually quite recent in the world of body sculpture. The "classic" body builders of the 50s and 60s looked quite all right, really.
At about the same time I found the short fan film World's Finest, which starred Michael O'Hearn as Superman and Clark Bartram as Batman. I thought these two men also looked "not completely ludicrous". They weren't covered with straining, snaking veins trying to escape skin that looked like oiled-up sandpaper. They didn't look like (to borrow a phrase) "a condom full of walnuts".
When I knew you could still get body builders who looked like this:
I got it.
I realised that body building - or, rather, "body sculpting" - wasn't just about building bigger muscles "no matter what" and constantly pushing beyond the levels of normal human muscle mass. There was an element of "art" to it because the people involved could aim for a particular kind of physique, rather than just constantly trying to be bigger.
It was like when I realised I didn't hate all abstract art - I hated certain styles of abstract art. Other styles were brilliant. I don't think all body builders look like they've completely forgotten what human beings are supposed to look like, just a certain style of body builders. Mike O'Hearn was one of the people that made me realise there were different "looks", and some weren't half bad.
Well, now he looks like this:
The article was all about how he's in the best shape of his life, and it doesn't matter what age you are, you can still be bigger, more cut, more ripped - kick it up another notch, find the reason to push harder and heavier...
But, dammit, I liked the shape he had ten years ago. I think he looked better when he was going for quality rather than . "Best shape of his life"? I guess that's subjective.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
...if You Do...
Late last year I bought a T-Shirt that says "I'll Learn Esperanto if You Do". I actually have three of them now, but I only bought one. Long story.
Anyway, I bought this T-Shirt because I thought it was a fine joke. The point of Esperanto is that we all agree to learn it for the sake of communicating with other people. No one has to learn it - no one needs to learn it. It's just something you choose to do, which only really works if other people choose to do it, too.
However, I recently learnt that there's a deeper level to the joke on my shirt. When Zamenhof first published his little book trying to convince people to take up a brand-new language, he put something in it: a form people could sign and return, promising that they would learn the language if 10 million other people agreed to learn it as well. Right from the very beginning there was an "I'll learn it if you do" challenge built into the language.
According to Okrent, less than a thousand people sent the form back (actually, I seriously doubt the book - which was only published in Russian at the time - would have been printed in a big enough run for ten million forms to even exist...) but that's still around a thousand people who were willing to say "Sure, I'll learn it if someone else does".
And that's how Esperanto works. That's how any constructed or planned language works - a bunch of people all agree to learn it and speak it, and - hey presto - there's a language. Without people agreeing to speak it, it's just an academic activity.
I'm reading Arika Okrent's In the Land of Invented Languages at the moment, and thoroughly enjoying it. However, I do have one niggling complaint. Okrent writes like an apologist who has forgotten what an apologist does. Instead of saying: "hey, this deserves to be given some respect because it is terribly interesting", she seems to be saying "I'm only looking at this because it's quite interesting, but please don't think I personally have any connection to these people apart from scientific curiosity (I wouldn't want you to think I was weird, or anything)".
I don't know, there's just something about the way she writes that makes it seem like she's desperately hoping she can enjoy the same things the nerds enjoy without getting stuck eating lunch with the nerds every day.
Or, occasionally, it seems more like she's desperately hoping she can enjoy the same things the nerds enjoy without losing the opportunity to laugh at the nerds for enjoying such nerdy things.
There's always something vaguely sad about someone who has to qualify "I'm interested in this" with "but I'm not one of those people who are interested in this".
Anyway, I bought this T-Shirt because I thought it was a fine joke. The point of Esperanto is that we all agree to learn it for the sake of communicating with other people. No one has to learn it - no one needs to learn it. It's just something you choose to do, which only really works if other people choose to do it, too.
However, I recently learnt that there's a deeper level to the joke on my shirt. When Zamenhof first published his little book trying to convince people to take up a brand-new language, he put something in it: a form people could sign and return, promising that they would learn the language if 10 million other people agreed to learn it as well. Right from the very beginning there was an "I'll learn it if you do" challenge built into the language.
According to Okrent, less than a thousand people sent the form back (actually, I seriously doubt the book - which was only published in Russian at the time - would have been printed in a big enough run for ten million forms to even exist...) but that's still around a thousand people who were willing to say "Sure, I'll learn it if someone else does".
And that's how Esperanto works. That's how any constructed or planned language works - a bunch of people all agree to learn it and speak it, and - hey presto - there's a language. Without people agreeing to speak it, it's just an academic activity.
I'm reading Arika Okrent's In the Land of Invented Languages at the moment, and thoroughly enjoying it. However, I do have one niggling complaint. Okrent writes like an apologist who has forgotten what an apologist does. Instead of saying: "hey, this deserves to be given some respect because it is terribly interesting", she seems to be saying "I'm only looking at this because it's quite interesting, but please don't think I personally have any connection to these people apart from scientific curiosity (I wouldn't want you to think I was weird, or anything)".
I don't know, there's just something about the way she writes that makes it seem like she's desperately hoping she can enjoy the same things the nerds enjoy without getting stuck eating lunch with the nerds every day.
Or, occasionally, it seems more like she's desperately hoping she can enjoy the same things the nerds enjoy without losing the opportunity to laugh at the nerds for enjoying such nerdy things.
There's always something vaguely sad about someone who has to qualify "I'm interested in this" with "but I'm not one of those people who are interested in this".
Sunday, January 13, 2013
High Jerk Mode
I've been in a bit of a high jerk mode recently, so my apologies to everyone.
I'm thoughtless and insensitive at the best of times - something I'm not terribly proud of or happy about, but the thing about being thoughtless and insensitive is that you don't tend to notice it at the time. It's hard to alter behaviour when you only register it sometime after it has occurred.
Generally speaking, it takes me longer than you would expect to realise that I've been thoughtless and insensitive, and by the time I realise I owe someone an apology, I also realise I owed them that apology some time ago. Apologising for a small cut delivered two years ago seems daft, so I tend to not do it... which just means I end up delivering dozens of cuts over the years which I never apologise for.
That makes me a jerk. However, I also go through phases where I am not only thoughtless and insensitive, but also intolerant and snarky. I start expecting a level of thoughtfulness from others than I'm not capable of delivering myself, and become unforgivably unforgiving when people display faults that are much like my own.
This is my "High Jerk Mode", and I realise that I become thoroughly unpleasant on multiple levels.
If it makes you feel any better, I usually can't stand being in the room with me when I'm in this mode, either.
So, as I said, my apologies to everyone. Trying to pull my head in, but sadly I think I will still be thoughtless and insensitive - all I can really hope for is "a little less obnoxious".
I'm thoughtless and insensitive at the best of times - something I'm not terribly proud of or happy about, but the thing about being thoughtless and insensitive is that you don't tend to notice it at the time. It's hard to alter behaviour when you only register it sometime after it has occurred.
Generally speaking, it takes me longer than you would expect to realise that I've been thoughtless and insensitive, and by the time I realise I owe someone an apology, I also realise I owed them that apology some time ago. Apologising for a small cut delivered two years ago seems daft, so I tend to not do it... which just means I end up delivering dozens of cuts over the years which I never apologise for.
That makes me a jerk. However, I also go through phases where I am not only thoughtless and insensitive, but also intolerant and snarky. I start expecting a level of thoughtfulness from others than I'm not capable of delivering myself, and become unforgivably unforgiving when people display faults that are much like my own.
This is my "High Jerk Mode", and I realise that I become thoroughly unpleasant on multiple levels.
If it makes you feel any better, I usually can't stand being in the room with me when I'm in this mode, either.
So, as I said, my apologies to everyone. Trying to pull my head in, but sadly I think I will still be thoughtless and insensitive - all I can really hope for is "a little less obnoxious".
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Some else-where
This is the song I've been trying to remember for the past three months (huzzah to ERR for reminding me the name of the band):
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Road to High Saffron
One of my favourite books of all time is one I "read" (kind of) in 2011: Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde.
Japser Fforde is one of my favourite authors. I've kept up with his Thursday Next series, even though I'm pretty sure it should have stopped at book four. I've been waiting patiently for another book in the Nursery Crimes series, although I'm beginning to think I won't get one. I've only read the first book in the Last Dragonslayer series, but that's just because I haven't finalised my birthday list yet...
... and I loved the first book of the Shades of Grey series, and would dearly love to believe there's going to be a second (although, as I have recently noted, sometimes books are better off without sequels).
I say I "read" (kind of) the book because I haven't actually read the whole thing from start to finish. I listened to the audiobook version one holiday and asked for the print copy for Christmas that year. When I got it, I had a few other books to read as well, so I didn't actually re-read the book, just read bits here and there to remember key lines.
So, I heard the book, more than I read it. I still loved it. I still love it. It's possibly the best post-apocalyptic story I've ever read (if for no other reason than it's set so far beyond the "something that happened" that Fforde can comfortably make a post-apocalyptic story based around a guy who lied about seeing a rabbit).
I've been thinking about it in the light of the whole Hunger Games thing, recently. There are a lot of strange similarities between the Colourtocracy and the Capitol. Mostly, though it's the excellent world-building and way everyone is just getting on with life in this "completely normal" place, in a future that's both simpler and more complex (technologically speaking) than our present.
Plus, both books involve a game where blood will be spilled (although, in Road to High Saffron, it's just the boys v girls hockey match...)
When I have time to re-read books, I'll have to go back to that one - if only to spend some quality time in a universe where everyone knows the hex codes for colours (it could save your life) and people say things like "Munsell's hoo-haw!" when they swear.
Japser Fforde is one of my favourite authors. I've kept up with his Thursday Next series, even though I'm pretty sure it should have stopped at book four. I've been waiting patiently for another book in the Nursery Crimes series, although I'm beginning to think I won't get one. I've only read the first book in the Last Dragonslayer series, but that's just because I haven't finalised my birthday list yet...
... and I loved the first book of the Shades of Grey series, and would dearly love to believe there's going to be a second (although, as I have recently noted, sometimes books are better off without sequels).
I say I "read" (kind of) the book because I haven't actually read the whole thing from start to finish. I listened to the audiobook version one holiday and asked for the print copy for Christmas that year. When I got it, I had a few other books to read as well, so I didn't actually re-read the book, just read bits here and there to remember key lines.
So, I heard the book, more than I read it. I still loved it. I still love it. It's possibly the best post-apocalyptic story I've ever read (if for no other reason than it's set so far beyond the "something that happened" that Fforde can comfortably make a post-apocalyptic story based around a guy who lied about seeing a rabbit).
I've been thinking about it in the light of the whole Hunger Games thing, recently. There are a lot of strange similarities between the Colourtocracy and the Capitol. Mostly, though it's the excellent world-building and way everyone is just getting on with life in this "completely normal" place, in a future that's both simpler and more complex (technologically speaking) than our present.
Plus, both books involve a game where blood will be spilled (although, in Road to High Saffron, it's just the boys v girls hockey match...)
When I have time to re-read books, I'll have to go back to that one - if only to spend some quality time in a universe where everyone knows the hex codes for colours (it could save your life) and people say things like "Munsell's hoo-haw!" when they swear.
Monday, January 7, 2013
Many died, and some survived
I just read these sentences at the beginning of an LPLP article by Humphry Tonkin (2011):
"The Holocaust had a profound effect on the Esperanto movement. Many of the
leading members of the Esperanto language community perished, and some
survived."
My first instinct was to say "well, duh." It seems redundant to say "some survived" - after all, he didn't say *everyone* died, did he - just "many"...
But, on reflection, those are two very different tragedies which both deserve acknowledgement.
Many scientists and scholars died in the Holocaust. So did a lot of other people, but the scientists and scholars had their ranks thinned rather considerably. Losing your thinkers in a bloody war is a tragedy for any field of study - I think you can't look at any area of scholarship in Europe without wondering how it would have progressed if so many of the researchers, inventors and ground-breakers hadn't been stripped away.
But... some survived. Living through the Holocaust and losing family, friends and colleagues has got to have an effect on the way you see the world. The scientists and scholars that survived would have been altered in ways we can't even begin to imagine. How did that alter the paths they chose, the things they studied and the conclusions they drew?
Many died, and some survived. Both the deaths and the survivors had a profound impact on the way their fields were researched and the way the science moved forward.
"The Holocaust had a profound effect on the Esperanto movement. Many of the
leading members of the Esperanto language community perished, and some
survived."
My first instinct was to say "well, duh." It seems redundant to say "some survived" - after all, he didn't say *everyone* died, did he - just "many"...
But, on reflection, those are two very different tragedies which both deserve acknowledgement.
Many scientists and scholars died in the Holocaust. So did a lot of other people, but the scientists and scholars had their ranks thinned rather considerably. Losing your thinkers in a bloody war is a tragedy for any field of study - I think you can't look at any area of scholarship in Europe without wondering how it would have progressed if so many of the researchers, inventors and ground-breakers hadn't been stripped away.
But... some survived. Living through the Holocaust and losing family, friends and colleagues has got to have an effect on the way you see the world. The scientists and scholars that survived would have been altered in ways we can't even begin to imagine. How did that alter the paths they chose, the things they studied and the conclusions they drew?
Many died, and some survived. Both the deaths and the survivors had a profound impact on the way their fields were researched and the way the science moved forward.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Mockingjay
Okay, I'm talking about the ending of the last book in this post, so anyone who doesn't want spoilers LOOK AWAY NOW.
So, I've just spent the last week hot-housed in Katniss Everdeen's head, more or less, and it's feeling a little hard to shake. I read the first half of Hunger Games over the course of a week or so, whenever I had time to get in a bit of free reading and enough head-space to deal with something more complicated than a magazine. Then, for the week I had free over Christmas, I finished the rest of the book in a couple of evenings, and grabbed the second book.
I blitzed through the second book and immediately reached for the third, which I practically read in one day (I actually started it the night before), whilst holed up in a house taking care of a dog who hates storms. With the storms coming and going outside and the dog trying to figure out how to climb onto my lap, I followed Katniss down the rather desperate and depressing path she was on - and came out the other side of the book feeling incredibly bummed out.
The third book of the trilogy is terrible. And, by association, the second book in the trilogy is also terrible.
The first book was one of those "wow" books - the ones that make you sit up and take notice. No matter what you may think of the characters or the settings, it lodges itself firmly in your brain and makes you want to follow the characters wherever they may take you. The first book in the Wheel of Time series was like that. Same, unfortunately, with Twilight.
And, like both of those series, the second book is something that pushes you forward to whatever will follow, even if (in hindsight) nothing much happens in the grand scheme of things.
What these series all have in common was the fact that I followed the characters further than I really wanted to in the subsequent books. At some point, I realised I was hating it. I no longer liked these people. I no longer cared about them the way I did when I started - I just wanted to see what happened to them in the end. The Twilight books made me want to punch all of the characters in the head (and then track down the author and smack her around a little). The Wheel of Time series just dragged on for so long that I realised it had lost everything that had drawn me to it in the first place.
As for The Hunger Games series? Well, the first book was something magical. The second book built you towards something that could be very, very good. The third book lost the plot towards the end and left you feeling sad, depressed and surrounded by loose ends - loose ends which were kind of tied up, but just not satisfactorily. No closure.
Whatever drew me to the characters and the story in the first book was either dropped, killed or maimed by the end of the third. I could see how it could all come to this - there was an extent to which the story really couldn't end well. It was like the author had grabbed the tail of a snake, and there was no way she could put it down without either killing the snake or being bitten. The ending was always going to be tinged with sadness... But I couldn't figure out why it felt so "blah". Then I realised: I still wanted to know what happened to the "star-crossed lovers from District 12", and they hadn't been properly acquitted.
It felt like Suzanne Collins gave up on that story, by the end. Actually, it kind of felt like she gave up, full-stop. After following Katniss in almost real time for the first two-and-a-half books, the end of the third flagged into a different kind of story-telling, glossed over things that would have (and should have) been given more attention if they had happened earlier in the piece. So many things suddenly mentioned, given little attention, and then dismissed. So many times when someone should have thought of or remembered a key detail (to help connect the past with the present) and didn't.
Back when I used to try to write books, I always struggled with getting past the fifth chapter (or, for short stories, the first third). My attention span could only keep me going for so long, and then I felt like I really couldn't continue to put the same level of effort into finishing it off. Most of the time I just didn't finish the next chapter at all, but I would occasionally find myself "getting it over with" - like I was just trying to get to the finish line, but was seriously flagging.
I'd throw in a few half-hearted ideas and then try to pad them out to make it look like I actually had a plan, rather than just an idea of what I wanted the last line to be and a flaky concept of how to get there that I really couldn't flesh out properly. This is probably why I hardly ever finish things - I hate the downhill slope I inevitably find myself on. Well, that, and I'm rather crap, really.
It felt like this happened in the last few chapters of Mockingjay. Like Collins starting concentrating on a way to get it to the finish line and ended up going for impact, rather than resolution.
Sure, war is hell and people you love will die. It did feel a little bit like we were killing characters off just for the sake of the "oh, no, not her!" moment. The fact that no one (and I mean no one) commented on the fact that the entire series of events was triggered by saving this character, so killing her off at the end pretty much made everything in the middle pointless, seemed odd. I would have thought a moment of reflection - even of the "why am I alive and not her?" kind - would have been in order.
And the thing with the presidents? "I'm going to kill him, I'm going to kill him, I'm going to kill him. I'm going to ignore the deaths of people close to me so I can kill him. I'm going to push on against all the odds so I can kill him... I'm going to have one conversation with him that I don't really think about quite as much as I would have, if I had had this conversation in the last book, and then I'm going to kill someone else. Oh, he died too. Well, there you go."
And after so much angst over figuring out what she does and doesn't feel about Peeta, she never even spares a thought for how he'd feel if she succeeding in killing herself? And then never feels bad about not giving him a thought?
Which brings us to the star-crossed lovers thing. In the first book, there was basically an A plot and a B plot. The A plot was a coming-of-age-under-challenging-circumstances thing. Girl who tries to shield her heart from harm meets Boy who would do anything to touch her heart; they struggle together against a challenge, and will he win her in the end - will she connect with her feelings in order to feel something for him? The B plot was post-apocalyptic-world-where-maybe-it's-time-for-a-rebel-uprising. Will the Girl defy the powers-that-be and live?
In the first book, the B plot was an undercurrent that made the A plot a little more interesting. In the second book, both plots took equal space. In the third book, the B plot took over almost entirely, then beat the A plot to a bloody pulp. Who has time for love stories when we have war and cruelty and reluctant heroes falling apart?
So, by the end of the book, the love story is almost completely trashed and abandoned and has become a story about damaged people trying to work out if what they once felt for each other (whatever that might have been, since Katniss never did work it out) is going to stop them from killing each other. Oh, but wait! Here, at the very end, are two paragraphs saying that they eventually got a bit better and lived the rest of their lives mostly-okay-ever-after.
In the end, Collins gave more attention to the food served in the Capitol and District 13 than she did to the resolution of the "star-crossed lovers" plot.
Given how much we invested in them in the first book, I feel we deserved more. We needed that moment where she realises she really does love him to be more than a pithy handful of lines thrown in at the end to tidy things up. It warrants a whole scene, dammit!
So, you could say I'm not happy with the third book in the trilogy. Since the second book was building up to the third, and isn't worth reading on its own, I'm not happy with that one, either. The first book was brilliant, though. I'd recommend it to anyone.
So, I've just spent the last week hot-housed in Katniss Everdeen's head, more or less, and it's feeling a little hard to shake. I read the first half of Hunger Games over the course of a week or so, whenever I had time to get in a bit of free reading and enough head-space to deal with something more complicated than a magazine. Then, for the week I had free over Christmas, I finished the rest of the book in a couple of evenings, and grabbed the second book.
I blitzed through the second book and immediately reached for the third, which I practically read in one day (I actually started it the night before), whilst holed up in a house taking care of a dog who hates storms. With the storms coming and going outside and the dog trying to figure out how to climb onto my lap, I followed Katniss down the rather desperate and depressing path she was on - and came out the other side of the book feeling incredibly bummed out.
The third book of the trilogy is terrible. And, by association, the second book in the trilogy is also terrible.
The first book was one of those "wow" books - the ones that make you sit up and take notice. No matter what you may think of the characters or the settings, it lodges itself firmly in your brain and makes you want to follow the characters wherever they may take you. The first book in the Wheel of Time series was like that. Same, unfortunately, with Twilight.
And, like both of those series, the second book is something that pushes you forward to whatever will follow, even if (in hindsight) nothing much happens in the grand scheme of things.
What these series all have in common was the fact that I followed the characters further than I really wanted to in the subsequent books. At some point, I realised I was hating it. I no longer liked these people. I no longer cared about them the way I did when I started - I just wanted to see what happened to them in the end. The Twilight books made me want to punch all of the characters in the head (and then track down the author and smack her around a little). The Wheel of Time series just dragged on for so long that I realised it had lost everything that had drawn me to it in the first place.
As for The Hunger Games series? Well, the first book was something magical. The second book built you towards something that could be very, very good. The third book lost the plot towards the end and left you feeling sad, depressed and surrounded by loose ends - loose ends which were kind of tied up, but just not satisfactorily. No closure.
Whatever drew me to the characters and the story in the first book was either dropped, killed or maimed by the end of the third. I could see how it could all come to this - there was an extent to which the story really couldn't end well. It was like the author had grabbed the tail of a snake, and there was no way she could put it down without either killing the snake or being bitten. The ending was always going to be tinged with sadness... But I couldn't figure out why it felt so "blah". Then I realised: I still wanted to know what happened to the "star-crossed lovers from District 12", and they hadn't been properly acquitted.
It felt like Suzanne Collins gave up on that story, by the end. Actually, it kind of felt like she gave up, full-stop. After following Katniss in almost real time for the first two-and-a-half books, the end of the third flagged into a different kind of story-telling, glossed over things that would have (and should have) been given more attention if they had happened earlier in the piece. So many things suddenly mentioned, given little attention, and then dismissed. So many times when someone should have thought of or remembered a key detail (to help connect the past with the present) and didn't.
Back when I used to try to write books, I always struggled with getting past the fifth chapter (or, for short stories, the first third). My attention span could only keep me going for so long, and then I felt like I really couldn't continue to put the same level of effort into finishing it off. Most of the time I just didn't finish the next chapter at all, but I would occasionally find myself "getting it over with" - like I was just trying to get to the finish line, but was seriously flagging.
I'd throw in a few half-hearted ideas and then try to pad them out to make it look like I actually had a plan, rather than just an idea of what I wanted the last line to be and a flaky concept of how to get there that I really couldn't flesh out properly. This is probably why I hardly ever finish things - I hate the downhill slope I inevitably find myself on. Well, that, and I'm rather crap, really.
It felt like this happened in the last few chapters of Mockingjay. Like Collins starting concentrating on a way to get it to the finish line and ended up going for impact, rather than resolution.
Sure, war is hell and people you love will die. It did feel a little bit like we were killing characters off just for the sake of the "oh, no, not her!" moment. The fact that no one (and I mean no one) commented on the fact that the entire series of events was triggered by saving this character, so killing her off at the end pretty much made everything in the middle pointless, seemed odd. I would have thought a moment of reflection - even of the "why am I alive and not her?" kind - would have been in order.
And the thing with the presidents? "I'm going to kill him, I'm going to kill him, I'm going to kill him. I'm going to ignore the deaths of people close to me so I can kill him. I'm going to push on against all the odds so I can kill him... I'm going to have one conversation with him that I don't really think about quite as much as I would have, if I had had this conversation in the last book, and then I'm going to kill someone else. Oh, he died too. Well, there you go."
And after so much angst over figuring out what she does and doesn't feel about Peeta, she never even spares a thought for how he'd feel if she succeeding in killing herself? And then never feels bad about not giving him a thought?
Which brings us to the star-crossed lovers thing. In the first book, there was basically an A plot and a B plot. The A plot was a coming-of-age-under-challenging-circumstances thing. Girl who tries to shield her heart from harm meets Boy who would do anything to touch her heart; they struggle together against a challenge, and will he win her in the end - will she connect with her feelings in order to feel something for him? The B plot was post-apocalyptic-world-where-maybe-it's-time-for-a-rebel-uprising. Will the Girl defy the powers-that-be and live?
In the first book, the B plot was an undercurrent that made the A plot a little more interesting. In the second book, both plots took equal space. In the third book, the B plot took over almost entirely, then beat the A plot to a bloody pulp. Who has time for love stories when we have war and cruelty and reluctant heroes falling apart?
So, by the end of the book, the love story is almost completely trashed and abandoned and has become a story about damaged people trying to work out if what they once felt for each other (whatever that might have been, since Katniss never did work it out) is going to stop them from killing each other. Oh, but wait! Here, at the very end, are two paragraphs saying that they eventually got a bit better and lived the rest of their lives mostly-okay-ever-after.
In the end, Collins gave more attention to the food served in the Capitol and District 13 than she did to the resolution of the "star-crossed lovers" plot.
Given how much we invested in them in the first book, I feel we deserved more. We needed that moment where she realises she really does love him to be more than a pithy handful of lines thrown in at the end to tidy things up. It warrants a whole scene, dammit!
So, you could say I'm not happy with the third book in the trilogy. Since the second book was building up to the third, and isn't worth reading on its own, I'm not happy with that one, either. The first book was brilliant, though. I'd recommend it to anyone.
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