Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins

Again, this final installment of the Hunger Games trilogy was a true rollercoaster of emotions; I feel drained out. Which is great praise indeed for a novel!
It's only while reading this book that I truly understood that everything takes place in the future, and I thought that Panem's society was very television-centric indeed (seriously, someone could probably build a Master's thesis on the role of media in science-fiction aimed at teenagers, and this series would be a big chunk of that thesis. Along with Westerfeld's Uglies/Pretties/Specials/Extras series. Hey, maybe I should write that thesis? Nah, I like science too much to change fields.).
Anyways, the war that pits the rebelling districts against the Capitol (and more to the point, its creepy president Snow) is well under way, and I think I'll leave at that because I could be so SPOILER-RIFFIC right now it's not even funny.
Oh, and I also love how Katniss (our ass-kicking protagonist) is a more than excellent lead character: she is strong, she is three-dimensional, she undertakes character growth, she has her flaws and weaknesses, and still in the end you can't help but  root for her. Even when she makes what you just KNOW is the wrong decision.
Ok, enough rambling: this book is excellent, a great cap to an amazing series, and I absolutely will re-read this trilogy several times in the future. It's just that awesome.

Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins

I started this second installment of the Hunger Games trilogy five hours ago - and I've been (figuratively) glued to its pages ever since.
IT IS SO FREAKING AWESOME
YOU HAVE NO IDEA
UNLESS YOU'VE READ IT, in which case you would have an idea. It's amazing, isn't it?
Intrigue, action, violence, a rebellion against the Capitol, personal drama, character growth, present-tense narration, and ALL-AROUND AWESOMENESS; this book has it all. And sprinkles of more.
asdkljfaksofkf; I'm incoherent in my excitement.

I really wish I could be more articulate about every single detail that made me love this book SO FREAKING MUCH, but that would be rather spoilery. And really, you should read the book yourself; you really, really should.

Kraken - China Miéville

This is a

• horror
• fantasy
• mystery
• science-fiction
• dystopian
• "let's mess with time!"
• cult (about)
• apocalyptic
• London
• quirky
• very well written
• weird
• full of Lovecraftian allusions
• and also of more mainstream references

novel.

Seriously, I liked it. 

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

This book is really awesome - I read it in a single day (two sittings). Loved it!
It takes place in a dystopian future (yay, dystopia!), in Panem, which was built on the ruins of North America. One city, the Capitol (set in the Rockies) rules over the twelve remaining Districts - and every year, to remind them of its dominance, it requires two tributes, a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18, who will compete in the Hunger Games.
These games are televised, and it is mandatory for everyone to watch them - to watch as the tributes fight the environment of the arena, as they fight the traps that the game masters have put to make everything more exciting, and as they fight each other. Of the 24 tributes, only one will survive, and they'll have a life of luxury and fame afterwards.
Now, our protagonist, Katniss, is a sixteen-year-old from the poorer part of District 12; and when her twelve-year-old sister (who she loves very much) is picked as the district's tribune, she takes her (the sister's) place and must compete in the very lethal Hunger Games. There's also a love interest somewhere; it's not very subtle, but it's there. You'll see.
The writing was excellent, really; some scenes felt as though I was seeing an action movie rather than reading a book, and now I just can't wait to read the sequel.

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

This book is HUGE, and challenging, and I'll have to pay some overdue-book library fines for it. Oh well.
Let me put it into hard data for you: the story is 981 pages long, and we're talking about some standard-size, 43-lines long, size 12 text here. And then you have 98 pages' worth of endnotes (388 endnotes total). Which makes for a 23.5 cm (9.5") long, 15 cm (6") wide, and 5 cm (2") thick brick - and that's with a soft cover.
Now, about the story itself: it's a nonlinear narration that follows a bunch of characters. These include a competitive-junior-tennis player and total pothead who attends this tennis academy his parents have founded, his older brother, his older brother's super pretty ex-girlfriend, an ex-Demerol addict dude with a huge head who now works at a halfway house down the hill from the tennis academy, and a superviolent Québec separatist terrorist cell descriptively named Les Assassins en Fauteuils Roulants (The Wheelchaired Assassins). Plus a bunch of other characters. Who are all, in twisted and non-obvious and often surprising ways, interconnected.
This novel (published in 1996, hey look at that right after the last Québec Referendum; this might explain why Québec Separatism is such a huge thing in this book) takes place in the future - that is, at about this point in time. However, I don't know that for sure since a new time-naming system has been conceived to help keep the North American economy strong; years are sponsored by different products. So you get the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. Or the Year of the Whopper. Or the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (which is the year of the story). Which is rather confusing until, after a few hundred pages or so, a convenient list of the years' chronological order just appears.
Ok, so what else... A huge northeastern chunk of the United States and of eastern Canada (bye-bye New Brunswick and southeastern Québec!) is called the great Concavity. You see, instead of filling up landfills everywhere in north america, the O.N.A.N. just launches its garbage (on prime numbered days only!) into that region, the Concavity. Which is the site of so-called "annular fission", a weird thing that removes toxic waste from the environment to provide literally clean energy to the ONANite countries. So essentially what happens is that in the early part of the month the Concavity is this teratogenic, carcinogenic, toxic wasteland, and in the late part of the month it becomes this super lush and overgrown jungle full of feral hamsters and "insects of Volkswagen size". You know what? I think this means it's a dystopian novel. Because seriously, wtf?
The thing about this novel, though, is that the entire story feels like a giant foreshadowing of this dark, looming and terribly awful thing that's going to happen - and after the first chapter you know something really messed up happened - and yet it never tells you what happened. Or really, what will happen; the novel ends on a completely unresolved note (um, spoiler alert I guess?). It's a great read, though; a challenging one, but even without resolution I think it's worth it.
On a final note: although it didn't take me 100 years to read Infinite Jest (yes, I'm bragging right now), it did take me almost two weeks. I wasn't reading anything else. IT'S JUST SO HUGE!

The Amulet of Samarkand - Jonathan Stroud

This first installment of the Bartimaeus Trilogy has two protagonists. There's Nathaniel (shh, that's his birth name! And names have power!), later called John Mandrake (his official magician's name), an eleven-year-old magician's apprentice. He's apprenticed to a weak, abusive magician who takes out his frustration about his stagnant political career on Nat. In this world (set in contemporary time), magic is real and magicians are the (educated) ruling class; they control the British government, and by extension the rest of the Empire. Whose entire power comes from their mastery of demons, from the weak imps and foliots to the common djinns to the powerful afrits to the so-powerful-at-least-two-magicians-are-needed-to-summon-and-control madrits, to even more powerful (but fortunately uncommon) beings.
Speaking of the supernatural, our second protagonist is Bartimaeus. He's a medium-power djinn who shapeshifts a lot, and has a quick wit, plenty of sass, snark and sarcasm, an over 5000-year-long backstory (barely hinted at in this book), and an oversized ego. The chapters told from his (first-person) perspective are also a much more fun read than those from Nathaniel's (third person narration), not only because of Bartimaeus' wit but also because of his liberal use of footnotes. This makes sense if you've read the book.
I particularly liked how the vocabulary and themes were beyond what is expected of a YA novel: Bartimaeus is a very articulate djinn indeed, and this novel doesn't shy from tackling prejudice, social injustice, oppression, and other interesting stuff. It's a really good novel! Read it now!

The Island - Aldous Huxley

Have you read Brave New World, the hugely dystopic novel by the same strangely-named author? Well, The Island (or, more specifically, its setting on the fictional island of Pala) is the complete opposite: it's a society that fosters and makes entire human beings, with all their psychological, physical, sexual, spiritual and social needs.
This depiction of an utopic society mixes Buddhist-like spirituality with a through education in the biological sciences (yay! Interdisciplinary education!), sexual liberty allied with the intrinsic right to autonomy (it's "you belong to yourself, do what you really want" and not "you belong to everyone else" like in BNW), a very interesting concept for child-rearing ("Mutual Adoption Clubs" where several families kind of adopt each other; it takes a village to raise a child, and should there be conflict with the biological parents the child can go live with one of their other parents, thereby avoiding potentially toxic living arrangements), and plenty of other interesting things that I would love to see implemented - or at least tried - in society.
This is an Aldous Huxley novel, though, so of course dystopic elements have to be present and ruin everything (uh, spoiler? sorry) - which, by contrast, only makes you root for the idealized tanned shirtless people even more.
This novel was a bit preachy at times, a bit boring at times, but very interesting overall - I would definitely recommend it. It's a welcome rebuke to the prudes who only see the sexual aspects of Brave New World as being problematic (and who ignore the whole class thing) - and it contains some very interesting ideas (free contraception and Mutual Adoption Clubs, anyone?). An enjoyable read indeed.

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

Oh look, there's a movie. But why watch a movie can you can read a book? For the cost:hours of entertainment ratio, movies usually offer a 5:1 ratio, whereas a 241-page book such as this one offers a 0:3 ratio. Public libraries: making books a more cost-effective source of entertainment since forever.
This random blurb having been taken care of, let's take a look at this novel: it's set in a post-apocalyptic world (Yay, dystopia!), and follows a man and his son, who travel, survive as they can, and shuffle on through the ashes of the world.
Who are they? I don't know, they never get a name.
What are they doing? Traveling, following the roads and hiding from everyone. Also, surviving, but barely; due to the ash that's everywhere, nothing grows and the only real food options are non-perishable goods (which will run out eventually) and cannibalism (ditto).
Why did the entire world burn? Who knows.
Where are they, exactly? No idea, but I suspect it might be somewhere close to the east coast of America.
When is this novel set? Again, no idea; but I suspect the world burnage might have gone on 4-6 years prior, since the son was born during that time. But nothing concrete is ever shown or explained.
I haven't read any of Cormac McCarthy's other novels (which includes No Country For Old Men, by the way), but insofar as you can figure out an author's style with only one of their novels, here is what I figured out about this author:

1. He doesn't like to put apostrophes in words that have a contracted "not". Or rather, he "doesnt" like to do that.
2. He has never found out about quotation marks. Especially not about their use for dialogue.
3. He thinks that you should figure everything out on your own. Explaining the basic Who/What/Where/When/Why/How is beneath him.
4. Clear sections in a novel? Chapters?! NEVER!

Overall, I judge this novel to be bleak, a good read albeit a somewhat repetitive and semi-descriptive one, that might lack in explanation but makes up for it in realism. It was okay; it was heartbreaking at times, but it mostly left me indifferent.

The Carbon Diaries 2015 - Saci Lloyd

Don't mind the weird and spoiler-riffic cover; it's a book that's well worth the read. Here's why:

The year is 2015; the place, London. The UK is the first (and so far only) country to implement carbon rationing, a system that aims to reduce CO2 emissions by 60% by giving its citizens a limited amount of "carbon points" that will "pay" for everything, from their heating to their electricity to what food they buy. It's the kind of radical action that's needed - because countries haven't really done anything about global warming/climate change/carbon consumerism, but this does cramp everyone's style. Including Laura Brown's, a punk rock 16-year-old who plays bass for her band, whose family is pretty much breaking apart, and that pretty much gives voice to the frustration, angst, wit and sassiness of her generation. (I like her!)

This book is her diary for the year, and through it we learn about the various disasters that she must endure through: the winter cold with limited heating allowed, the drama surrounding the boy she likes who also happens to live next door, the droughts, her father's unemployment and subsequent depression, her repeated exam flunkage, the drama and excitement surrounding her band, and of course the HUGE disaster that happens in December and that wipes out London and Londoners alike.

I really enjoyed this book and was (figuratively) glued to its 320 pages; the British slang was a bit weird at first, but I quickly figured out what the terms meant - and eventually saw that a glossary was provided at the end of the book. Nice. Also, the end of the book features a little explanation about the British school system (useful for non-Brits like myself), as well as a Celsius-to-Fahrenheit temperature conversion thing (useful for non-Celsius-using people), a glossary of "ecoterms" (useful for people who don't know that much about environmental jargon), and a bunch of URLs to sites for people who "Want to learn more about living green". Woooh, it's not a bibliography but close enough!

So yeah, this is a really enjoyable book, that deals with subjects such as environmentalism, and various social issues such as have/have not tensions, feminism, activism, governmental hypocrisy, the whole mafia/black market phenomenon, how people cope, how cults are started, youth rebellion and others. And it wasn't preachy about it.

Read it!

World War Z - Max Brooks

He's the author of The Zombie Survival Guide, so you know Max Brooks knows what he's talking about when it comes to zombies. In this 342-page novel, he tells the story of the Zombie War: its initial warning signs, the general denial and blame game that followed, the Great Panic when everyone realized what was happening, the "Turn of the Tide" where humanity started to get organized and strike back against the undead menace, tales from the USA and around the world (and above it), the Total War, and some of what happened afterwards. All of this was told from the perspective of random people all over the world, who had survived the zombie war and, twelve years later, had agreed to conduct an interview to tell of their experiences. Most narrators only appear once, except for a few who told a bit about what happened afterwards.
It is a very good, thought-provoking, paranoia-inducing dystopian novel. It makes you wonder what you could do in the narrators' situation; what would you be willing or able to do? Furthermore, I very much appreciated the fact that not all the narrators were able-bodied, young, sane, American, ethical or even likable.
I recommend this novel if you like(d):

• Anything with zombies
• Post-apocalyptic tales
• War stories
• Novels that can freak you out and make you paranoid

All I can say, really, is that I enjoyed it.

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Science fiction! Space! Aliens! War! Dystopia!
This novel won a Nebula award and a Hugo award, which are pretty BIG THINGS in the world of science fiction literature. For once, I agree with the bestowment of awards; this was a very good, heart-wrenching novel. I was (figuratively) glued to this book's 226 pages.
It follows the life of this boy, Ender, who is a Third, a third-born child. Now, this takes place in (where else?) a dystopian future, where overpopulation has made it necessary to limit the number of children allowed; two children per pair of parents is the limit. Ender, however, was allowed to be conceived because Earth needs a military genius, and through unexplained genetic modification two people who were almost good enough were made: Ender's older brother, Peter (too sadistic), and his older sister, Valentine (not violent enough).
When he is six years old, Ender is taken to the Battle School, where gifted children are essentially taught and conditioned to be the soldiers Earth needs. There, he proves to be a tactical genius, and after five years of training and growth, he commands Earth's starship force and destroys the alien menace. However, he did so without knowing he was commanding actual spaceships against the actual alien enemy; he was manipulated to believe it was a big simulation, a big game.
Now that almost all the spoilers have been revealed (not gonna apologize), let's look at a few things that bothered me about his novel, shall we?
First, there were very few girls at the Battle School, because "centuries of evolution" were "working against them" (p.17). Part of it is true; we do have centuries of social conditioning that have instilled the idea that girls are "mild" and "soft" and "meek" - but evolution itself has nothing to do with it. In fact, how do you think girls can be so cruel, psychological-, emotional- and social-bullies, especially when they have a little posse to support them? It's because girls are even more severely punished than boys when they resort to physical violence, aggressiveness needs an outlet, and psychological and emotional bullying are much more "acceptable" ways in which girls can be total assholes.
Second, all the kids at the Battle Academy did not sound like children; those were adults, or at least teenagers speaking, but the characters were all under twelve years old. But I guess this was the point; these children, training to be soldiers since they were six years old, could not possibly have had any childhood... Which is what made this novel so heartbreaking.

Generation A - Douglas Coupland

"Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not, you just want jobs, right? Well, the media do us all such tremendous favors when they call you Generation X, right? Two clicks from the very end of the alphabet. I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures as Adam and Eve were so long ago."

So said Kurt Vonnegut during the Syracuse University commencement address of 1994. I read it after the title page, and before the story proper began in Douglas Coupland's latest bit of dystopian fiction, Generation A.

Now, this 297-page novel isn't set in a future that far away; most of the technology and slang showcased already exist. As for it being set in a dystopian future, the signs aren't all up in your face as you start the novel; they're just mentioned as a matter of fact at various points in the book, and treated as perfectly normal by the characters. After all, they live in this world, they've had years to get used to everything. Amongst other things, they treat it as normal that:

1. Bees are believed to be extinct (before I read the quote above, I thought that maybe the "A" in the title had to do with "abeilles", bees, but I guess not)
2. Most insects have also disappeared
3. As a result, there are no flowers anywhere except where people hand-pollinate them
4. Fruits are also ridiculously expensive, and the black market thrives
5. There's basically no petrol left; air travel is only for the very rich now
6. There's this new "chronosuppressant" drug called Solon that shifts people's perception of time and of the future; as a result, people can live without any sense of loneliness even if they are in total social isolation, anxiety about the future can disappear, and time can seem to pass much faster.
7. This drug is 100% addictive
8. This drug is also actually composed of the spliceosomic protein snRNP-171, which removes introns from pre-mRNA strands so that this mRNA strand codes for a neuroprotein that has a chronosuppressant effect. (You're allowed to say "whaaaaat?")

Now that we've got the dystopian elements in play, let me quickly introduce the quirky characters Coupland has come up with this time:

1. Harj, from Sri Lanka; he's lost his entire family in the 2006 tsunami, and he talks and thinks like a sales brochure. Which makes sense considering what he's done with his life since 2007.
2. Zack, from Iowa; he's a corn farmer and son of a meth chemist, who is introduced to the reader when he rants about how "Cornfields are the scariest things on the entire fucking face of the planet." He sounds a lot like T-Rex from Dinosaur Comics, at times, but with more swearing.
3. Sam(antha) from New Zealand, who isn't a very memorable character.
4. Julien from France (more specifically Paris, 12e arrondissement), another somewhat generic character (by Coupland standards)
5. Diana, the Baptist dental hygienist from North Bay (Canada), who has Tourette's syndrome as well as a pretty graphically violent imagination.

These five characters were the center of a media/scientific/government/international frenzy when they were all stung by bees. Yes, bees came out of extinction to sting them. Weird stuff ensues, and pharmaceutical companies become shadier and shadier.

This novel was pretty entertaining, not the least because it's slightly unhinged, like the best of Douglas Coupland's novels. It wasn't depressing like The Gum Thief, it wasn't as quirky as jPod, and I actually like it better than Generation X (because let's face it, most first novels aren't that great, especially if the author writes more books).

I also particularly enjoyed the research that went into making Solon into a credible-sounding drug; spliceosomes are made of snRNP (small nucleic ribonucleoproteins), and they do remove introns from pre-mRNA (pre-messenger ribonucleic acid) segments, and release the introns to be quickly broken down by nucleases. And mRNA is the template that's followed to create proteins. But proteins take a lot of energy to make, and when things are done to neurons neurotransmitters are usually involved instead of proteins. Now, neurotransmitters can be amino acids (which are the building-blocks of proteins), but I am not sure that proteins - big, complicated proteins which would be coded by a mRNA strand that needed the removal of specific introns - would be effective neurotransmitters, even assuming that "chronosuppression" is possible. I'm not a neuroscientist (yet), though, so don't take my word for it.

Oh well, it's a dystopian novel, not a how-to manual!