Karen Sandler

Tag: the hunger games

  • RTW — My YA Buddy IRL

    This week’s YA Highway prompt is What IRL people can you talk to about YA? I confess it took some head-scratching to figure out what IRL meant. Yes, I’m an old fogey (hah! how many of you even know the word fogey?) and sometimes I have to look up those Internet acrynyms. For those as fogeyish as me, it means In Real Life.

    After figuring that out, it took a little more cogitation to come up with an answer. My hubby might read YA if I told him it was a fab book. He read my book TANKBORN (and even got annoyed with me when I interrupted him while he was reading it), so why not other recommended YA books? Well, you should see this guy’s TBR pile (hah again! see, I do know some Internet acronyms). He’s got books piled everywhere and he often only has time to read late evenings (when he promptly falls asleep) and weekends (when he sometimes falls asleep). Plus most of my YA books are on my Kindle and he likes reading paper.

    My younger son reads some YA (Neil Gaiman for example), but he’s often the one giving  me recs for books. Also, he’s got his own eclectic tastes and I’m pretty sure the YA books I’ve been swooning over wouldn’t be to his liking.

    Then there’s older son. Since he lives in Osaka, Japan, we bought him a Kindle so he could buy and read new books without having to have them shipped at great expense. I have lent him nearly every lending enabled YA Kindle book I own and have strongly recommended he buy others if I’m not able to lend. I lent him The Hunger Games after I read it, and when I didn’t get around to buying the other two books, he told me he would if I didn’t. So I got him somewhat hooked on YA.

    So I guess he’s my YA buddy IRL. I look forward to sharing many more books with him in the future.

  • Can a Heroine be Weak?

    Mindy Ruiz blogged yesterday about weak vs. kick-ass heroines. In response, a commenter on G+ wondered why a strong heroine has to show her vulnerabilities, but the same didn’t seem to be true for heroes, i.e., that male characters don’t always have those same weaknesses.

    Here’s what I think. Characters in your stories, whether they’re male, female, or some fictional other-gender, have to be complex. They have to be complicated. On the surface they can be simple and seemingly one-dimensional, but as the reader gets to know them, as they peel off layer after layer in the course of the story, the character should become more and more compelling, more and more relatable and appealing (if we’re talking hero/heroine) or more and more repellent (if we’re talking villain).

    So that kick-ass character Mindy was talking about, if she’s able to use her strength and martial arts skill in every situation she encounters, if she can immediately solve every problem that she encounters, your story is gonna be b-o-r-i-n-g. (Side note and confession: I found the first HP book a bit boring because Harry seemed to solve his problems too easily.) If on the other hand you set your heroine up as that kick-ass girl/woman, seemingly invincible, then introduce her Achilles’ heel, whether it’s physical (think kryptonite) or emotional (think Katniss’s sister Prim), the reader will care about what happens to that character and will be more engaged in the story.

    In my opinion, an emotional Achilles’ heel trumps a physical weakness every time. Katniss faced innumerable physical threats in The Hunger Games, but her love and caring for Prim, Peeta, and Gale made her far more vulnerable than did anything thrown at her in the Arena.

    In my own book, Tankborn, Kayla is physically abused more than once by the enforcers. But while those blows are painful, she shrugs them off as part of her life as a GEN slave. Where she’s truly vulnerable is through the threat of having her self ended by the trueborns. She’s terrified of being wiped away, her personality erased by trueborn enforcers. I would think that any of us can relate to the fear of our mind, memories, our entire being torn away from us in retaliation for the most insignificant infraction.

    So your main characters have to be complex. They have to be the actors in the play you’ve set for them. They can’t drift along in the story letting others take action while they stand back and watch. That’s the danger of a “weak” heroine/hero. While they can appear weak, they have to be layered enough to have an inner store of strength  so that they can be the one to change their world.

  • What’s Science Got to Do With It?

    Last Thursday, #MGlitchat’s topic of the week was science fiction in middle grade books. I write YA rather than MG, but I was kind of jonesing for a writerly discussion (and science fiction is a subject dear to my heart), so I joined in. It proved to be a lively topic.

    In the course of the hour or so I was participating, a few of us got into a side discussion of what constituted science fiction. Since I’m of, ahem, a certain age, and have been reading SF for a few decades (no, I won’t tell you how many), I ascribe to the classical definition of the genre. That is, it’s science fiction if, were you to remove the science element, there would be no story.

    One of the other folks on the chat wondered if that definition is no longer valid. I think it’s a fine question to ask, but I just can’t think of another definition that would serve the same purpose. It is, after all, science fiction, so there has to be science. I guess the only question would be, can you call it SF if there’s no actual science? Or if the only “science” aspect are space ships, or laser guns, or people use unfamiliar slang?

    Are there books that one might want to call science fiction, but have no science integral to the story? For instance, is Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games science fiction? It certainly has a science fiction feel to it. But what’s the science?

    How about the Games themselves? There’s a great deal of science not only in the creation of the horrific arenas, but also in the tracking of the participants every moment. There’s a certain scientific aspect to the projection of the future as well (although that element of the series could also be labeled “speculative fiction,” which is a more generic term).

    What about my own book, Tankborn? Is it truly science fiction? I believe it is. Yes, I could have created a straight fiction novel based on the Indian caste system but it would have been an entirely different book. Instead I used caste in a futuristic novel in which a bastardization of that system re-constitutes itself in a society that has left earth and colonized another planet. There is science in the creation of the genetically engineered GENs, science in the circuitry wired in their bodies that is used to control them, science in the devices that are used to interface with the GENs’ annexed brains. Some of the “science” in the book, e.g., my lev-cars and illusory holographic projections might not be strictly necessary to the story, but they do flesh out the setting. However if the science of the GENs were pulled out of Tankborn, many crucial aspects of the story would fall apart.

    So are dystopian books, in and of themselves, automatically science fiction? I can’t speak for every dystopian out there since I haven’t read them all (yet :-)). But in addition to the Hunger Games trilogy, there are other dystopians that would certainly qualify in my mind as SF. Neal Shusterman’s Unwind is an excellent example, as is Mary E. Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox. In both books, certain scientific advances (in addition to social changes) led to the dystopian world depicted in the story. In fact, without the science and social aspects in tandem, there would not be a story.

    I’d love to hear others’ opinions of what science fiction means to them. I’d like to hear what books you think are science fiction and why you think they are. For instance, I believe Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a fantastic SF book, but some might call it literary. So what are you reading in science fiction? And what’s science got to do with it?

     

  • Fave Books–A Progress Report

    It’s really too early to list my favorite books for the year. But I have realized there’s one cool aspect to owning a Kindle. It keeps track of all the books in my library. And since I’ve only read a few non-e-books since I bought my Kindle, I can refer back to that list to review nearly every book I’ve read this year.

    Ranking these books in any particular way, i.e., trying to figure out which was the best book I read, then the next best, etc., is an exercise in futility. I read eclectically and there’s no way to compare a 700-page autobiography to a fun, fast-paced YA. So I decided to come up with my own “award” categories for the books I’ve read in the last ten months. Here goes:

    Most haunting book–Unwind by Neal Shusterman, both because of its thought-provoking story and the creepiest scene I’ve ever read in a book.

    Book that really lived up to its hype–The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, because this book (in fact the series) did not disappoint.

    Most moving, heartfelt book–A tie between Rules by Cynthia Lord and Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine, because I felt a personal connection to the main characters.

    Longest book that I just couldn’t put down–Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1 which was fantastic, although I have to confess, I didn’t read all the footnotes (which comprise 40% of the book).

    The hands-down most compelling first-person narrative–Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue, which was another haunting book, but for an entirely different reason.

    The most laugh-out-loud, yet still heart-warming, book–Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan because God-I-loved-this-book.

    The book I probably recommended to more people than any other–The Help by Kathryn Stockett which made me see my own book, Tankborn, through new eyes.

    The book I was most annoyed that I couldn’t read the sequel to right away—Matched by Ally Condie because, harrumph, I want to read Crossed now!

    The funnest, coolest science fiction future–the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld, because who wouldn’t want a hoverboard?

    The funnest, most romantic books set in Europe–a tie between Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins, and by Maureen Johnson, 13 Little Blue Envelopes and The Last Little Blue Envelope, because I wasn’t sure I’d like them, but they completely won me over.

    The most mind-twisting book–Liar by Justine Larbalestier, because I never was quite sure what to believe, right up to the end.

    There are more that I’ve read, but I’m going to leave it at this. How many of these have you read? Do you agree or disagree with my “awards?” Let me know.