The Hunger Games

Since I have new mommy brain, it’s pretty much mush (say that three times fast) and I don’t know if I’ll give this review my best shot.

Basically, all I need to say is READ THIS. You won’t be disappointed. The Hunger Games is the first of the series, Catching Fire is second, and Mockingjay is about to be released. Yes, it’s YA. No, it’s not cheesy.

All ages and genders will appreciate this series. It’s exciting and nail-biting and page-turning. You know how soap operas always leave you on the edge of your seat at the end of every episode? That’s how the chapters of these books are. You won’t be able to put them down. Honestly. Just go read them!

Twenty-four are forced to enter. Only the winner survives.

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Each year, the districts are forced by the Capitol to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the Hunger Games, a brutal and terrifying fight to the death – televised for all of Panem to see.

Survival is second nature for sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who struggles to feed her mother and younger sister by secretly hunting and gathering beyond the fences of District 12. When Katniss steps in to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games, she knows it may be her death sentence. If she is to survive, she must weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

*Quote and photos from Scholastic.com

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Newspeak

I’m in the middle of Orwell’s 1984 and I haven’t gotten very far, but I have gotten to the descriptions of Newspeak and the dictionaries that they are creating for the new-fangled vocabulary. If you’ve never read 1984, “Newspeak” is the society’s attempt to combine words in order to make them shorter. Sort of a short-hand, if you will. Like I said, I haven’t read much of the book yet, but I will give you an example: “Ingsoc” (English Socialism [not sure why they used an “I” instead of an “E”]) and “dayorder” (order of the day). Clearly, Orwell put much more thought into Newspeak than we do, but if you think about it, we’ve started using Newspeak in a way: J.Lo, LiLo, Bennifer, Brangelina. Granted, these are directed at pop culture icons, but think about the word “ginormous” (gigantic/enormous), which was recently recognized by Webster’s Dictionary as a real word.

In the book, one of the main character’s “comarades” (co-workers) is working on the 11th version of the Newspeak Dictionary. And all Oldspeak (or Standard English) will be phased out by 2050. The comrade tells Winston (the protagonist):

By 2050–earlier, probably–all real knowledge of Old speak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron–they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be.

I wonder if this will ever come true. Heaven forbid we mess with literature or try to censor free speech. Again, if you’re unfamiliar, the term “Big Brother” came from this book. We use it everyday to describe “The Man” or the government and that came from this book.

Anyway, I don’t have many more thoughts on this, but feel free to discuss if you feel so inclined.

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