Book Reviews – Page 54

The Red Pyramid

Egyptian culture has always been a special interest of mine since I was a high school sophomore, when most of our subjects for the year were tied up with Afro-Asian civilization. One quarter of that school year was devoted to Egypt, and I remember being fascinated with the history of pharaohs in Social Studies class (my personal favorite was Hatshepsut!), and Egyptian mythology and the concept of afterlife in Literature class.

I actually like Egyptian mythology over Greek mythology so even though I wasn’t all that fond of the Percy Jackson series, I was eager to try out The Red Pyramid, the first book in Rick Riordan’s new series, The Kane Chronicles.

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The Mockingjay has landed!

(first published in Manila Bulletin)

The long wait is finally over for fans of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, as “Mockingjay,” the final installment in Scholastic’s hottest property since Harry Potter, was released worldwide this week.

Since “Mockingjay” was announced in December 2009, fans have kept an eye on the countdown clock as they held their breaths on the fate of the series heroine, Katniss Everdeen, and the nation of Panem. Much of the fandom is based online: fan pages, countdown counters and badges, miles of fan fiction, online book clubs and book discussions, and blog tours.

“Mockingjay” has been so highly anticipated that even those in the literary circles were scrabbling about for advance copies, but to no avail. Scholastic kept it under wraps, more closely guarded than “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” that furor ensued all over the internet when Andrew Sims, administrator of Harry Potter fan site mugglenet.com, tweeted that he got ahold of a copy nearly two weeks before the release.

And when a video of Suzanne Collins reading the first few paragraphs of “Mockingjay” was posted on the internet one day before the release, fans all over the world hung on to her every word.

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Cats!

I read T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats last year and found out it was the book on which the musical Cats was based. I didn’t think I would get to see the musical on its Manila run because the tickets are fabulously expensive, but a couple of orchestra tickets magically fell into my hands on Friday afternoon, courtesy of my boss (thank you! thank you!), so my sister and I got to watch the musical that same night.

Cats is one of the longest-running shows in the history of musical theater. Its composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, counts Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats as one of his favorite childhood books, and most of the musical is based on the cats in Eliot’s verse, except mainly Grizabella the glamor cat (who has grown old and gray) and a few other cats, who (presumably) were written in to tie the story together.

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Suzanne Collins Marathon

Still counting down to Mockingjay!

In an attempt to slake my excitement over Mockingjay, I brought out all the Suzanne Collins books in my possession (and bought one more) and have been reading voraciously for the past five days. I started with Gregor the Overlander, the first book of the Underland Chronicles last Friday, but I didn’t have book 2 yet so I decided to reread Hunger Games and Catching Fire on Saturday. By Sunday, I was already reaching for the copy of Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane that I’d bought the day before. And then I started reading Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods yesterday, and now I’m out of the Underland Chronicles, so the marathon’s on hold (at least until I can find myself copies of Gregor and the Marks of Secret and Gregor and the Code of the Claw).

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Hearing Voices

I like good, strong voices in fiction. I like characters that ring true, make a distinct impression, and keep me engaged in the story.

In the past week, I read The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides and The Lacemaker and the Princess by Kimberley Brubaker Bradley. These two novels each offered a unique point of view: one from the outside looking in, and the other from inside looking out.

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