58. Suzanne Collins - Catching Fire

I can't say too much about this week's book, because it's the sequel to The Hunger Games I read last week. I don't want to give anything away that happened in the previous novel and therefore I can't describe any of the events in Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire. 

I can only tell you that it's well worth reading. It's completely different from the first book and it takes a few steps away from the actual Hunger Games spectacles (so its not so similar to the sequel to Battle Royale, apart from the rebellion). It was a sunny week in Edinburgh this week and this novel is a perfect read when you lie in the park and bask in the sun. 

I'm afraid I will be able to say much less about next week's novel because that's the last book in the trilogy, but I will be able to report if the trilogy as a whole is worth your time or if you should just wait for the films to come out. 

57. Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games

I've had a very exciting weekend, because my Scottish football team Heart of Midlothian has won the Scottish Cup on Saturday. I managed to get a ticket, because my boyfriend knows one of the star players Rudi Skacel. Needless, to say I had an amazing weekend. 

Now to the book I read this week, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It's a bit lame reading a book right after it has become famous because of a film, especially when you read it after you have seen the film. I must say, however, that it was a good read nevertheless and even though I remember every part of the story; the film was so similar to the story, that I can't laud the film maker enough for making it so. 

For those who don't know The Hunger Games yet, it's basically the American answer to the gruesome Japense novel and film Battle Royale, where whole school classes are shipped off to an island where they have to kill each other. The American version is a bit more subdued, because here it's only 12 districts that compete and every district brings forth a very unwilling girl and boy to fight. There can only be one victor.

In the first book Katniss and Peeta are picked from District 12 to fight for survival. It's a very powerful story and if you haven't seen the film yet, the book will keep you on the edge of the seat. I would not call this the Twilight version of Battle Royale as some people do, because it's not as sappy as Twilight is in the slightest and the body count is immense. I can't wait to start reading the second book now though, because I don't know what's going to happen there. 

56. Laura Hillenbrand - Unbroken

It is not surprising that Laura Hillenbrand has only written two books. The first book Seabiscuit: The True Story of Three Men and One Racehorse she finished in 2001. And as I wrote in my blog about this book, the amount of research she put into that novel was astounding. If anything, she put more research into writing Unbroken, that's why I'm not surprised it took her seven years to write it. The story is about a young American lieutenant Louie Zamperini who is stuck on a raft for weeks after his plane went down over the Pacific.

It's such an interesting novel, because you can sense in everything sentence you read that Hillenbrand knows what she is talking about. Everything she writes has been thoroughly researched. Remarks and description are never made in vain and everything that is written carries weight. So much so, that I have already bought a book she quotes as a source. Saying that the story is extraordinary does not do Zamperini's life any justice. The way his odyssey is described is not sad, it's uplifting and at the same time nerve-wrecking. 

It's not Hillenbrand's fault that you can't read the story through Zamperini's eyes and that you distance yourself from the narrative. It's because the human mind is designed not to imagine such hardships, because even thinking about going through one or two of the things he goes through is unthinkable. One cannot fail to compare Seabiscuit to Zamperini. Hillenbrand has set a path for herself in describing someone's hardships and overcoming them against all odds. I don't mind if it's going to take another nine years and I don't care what the next book will be about, but Hillenbrand please keep writing! 

55. Iain Banks - Walking On Glass

The reason I'm a few days late with this week's book is because I was on a holiday in Egypt. Internet access is quite restricted there and pricey as well. That does not mean I did not finish the book well before Sunday. That's the benefit of lying on the beach all week. 

This week's choice of beach read was Iain Bank's Walking On Glass. Not a very light novel in the sense that it's difficult to understand what it's about. The separate stories are easy to read and quite enticing. One is about Graham, whose in love with a girl and in his chapters he is on his way to her while he reminisces about their past. The next story is about Steven Grout a paranoid person who believes he is under constant threat to be attacked by the Microwave Gun. He believes he is from another world. Then the third story is about Quiss who is a war criminal. Together with Ajayi he has to solve puzzles inside a science fiction castle to get out. 

I guess you have to have one foot settled deeply in SF to actually understand what this book is about and how deeply this stories correlate. For me they were just pleasant to read and apart from the fact that the first story is quite disturbing, they did not really mean that much to me, but according to the Literary Encyclopedia the author slightly agrees: "Iain Banks commented that the book didn’t do exactly what it set out to do and I think you have failed to an extent if the reader can’t understand what you’re saying. I worry sometimes that people will read Walking on Glass and think in some way I was trying to fool them, which I wasn’t."